Another interesting one just in from England:
" * Dolly cloning company to set up diabetes arm PPL Therapeutics, the UK company which cloned Dolly the sheep, said on Friday it would set up a subsidiary to study the use of human stem cells in the treatment of diabetes. The new company - to focus on the conversion of stem cells into insulin-producing islet cells - may be separately listed, possibly on Nasdaq, said Dr Ron James, the managing director of PPL. "We could offer equity to academic groups whose intellectual property we need to make it all work," he said. "This technology has significant potential, which is currently largely unrecognised in terms of shareholder value. One way of realising this is to create a subsidiary company." Islets are small groups of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete the hormones insulin and glucagon. Stem cells have the ability to develop into various types of specialised cells including blood and nerves. The new company will focus its efforts on "ethical" stem cell research, which does not require a human embryo. Source: FT.com Robert Bartell
