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Sunday, January 15, 2012

Advanced Cell Technology: Stem Cells and ACTC.OB

Advanced Cell Technology is now the only company in US to have an active FDA human clinical trial with Stem Cells...

If you see "Organ transplant" (heart, kidney, lungs..) the biggest problem is "Histocompatability" Histocompatability is nothing but .. when a new entity enters into the human body..(like a transplanted kidney)  the human body has a defence mechanism which can detect the kidney as foreign body and attack it.

When an organ transplant is done ..the new organ introduced into the body is identified by the "defence mechanism" as a foreign body.. and attacks it.. causing the destruction of the new organ and leads to failure of the transplant and can be life threatening to the patient..  Histocompatability issues cause organ transplant process to include an additional step of "Donor Compatibility"

Now unlike heart, kidney transplant.. which all face "Histocompatability" issues .. there are "immunologically privileged" sites within our body where the body defence mechanism does not attack a foreign body.. "Eye, Brain and testes" ..

Stem Cells science had advanced to a level where complete body parts can be "manufactured" but stem cells technology still has to overcome histocompatability issues except for "Eye, Brain and testes"  which are "immunologically privileged"

ACTC.OB (Advanced Cell Technology) is at present conducting FDA approved Clinical testing for Stargardt’s macular dystrophy and dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD) using retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).

ACTC is targetting the eye for stem cell related cure.. where there are no histocompatibility isues.. latest update state that additional patients are being enrolled (which means positive development for first few patients..) 

So ACTC.OB is something where you need to have an investment.. because it has taken an immunologically priviledged area of the human body where histocompatability issues are not present..



Everybody has heard about "Eye Donation" but have you heard about eye transplant being done between related entities ( ie blood relations ..) In other organ transplants like kidney, heart, lungs etc.. transplants are done only after "Donor Compatability" (Related entities) due to histocompatibility.


Alert:
Now I invested in ACTC at 9 cents per share..when market cap was 56.48 million  right now ACTC has a stock price of 0.15 Dollars ie 15 cents with a market cap of 245 million. So even though the market cap of ACTC has increased 433% since the time I have invested in ACTC my actual gains are just 66.66%
Stock dilution is very high and a cause of concern..  My personal advice is to buy at a price below 10 cents..




There are questions about dilution of equity.. right now ACTC is looking to increase the number of equity shares that ACTC can issue from 1.8 billion shares to 2.8 Billion shares. ( 1Billion additional shares) It seems all 90% of convertible notes and warrant holders have "AGREED" to convert their notes and warrants into equity and hence the company will have to issue 380 million shares and additional 240 million shares.. so total we could see a dilution of about 620 million additional shares..

Insiders like Dr Robert Lanza have inbuilt clause that additional shares will be issued when their holding drops below x% ..

The good part is all notes and warrant holders (90% ) have agreed to convert .. (which is an indication that they prefer stocks over bonds (interest bearing) and could indicate that soon ACTC will not need any more funding (as its going to report good news/data .. my take)  hence this conversion by all notes and bond holders..
PN: ACTC is a 0 or 100 stock.. so invest keeping in mind this could be Zero tomorrow. (Though I doubt that will happen)

Advanced Cell Technologies (website)
ACTC Chairman's Blog
ACTC Company Blog
ACTC Presentation
Link to my old blog about ACTC







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