Information Week is reporting on a Chinese company that markets an experimental stem cell therapy directly to patients, without going through the proper regiment of double-blind clinical trials. Apparently, Chinese regulatory agencies don’t do much regulating when it comes to domestic medicine, allowing companies to collect payments of tens of thousands of dollars without having to prove the efficacy of anything. Beike Biotechnology‘s slogan is “Tomorrow’s Treatments Today”, a better bet than boring clinical trials, displaying sure confidence in the technology and the company investors’ keen prediction of the future.
From Information Week:
The company, Beike Biotechnology, uses non-embryonic stem cells to treat a variety of ailments including heart disease and neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, muscular dystrophy, and optic nerve hypoplasia, a primary cause of blindness in children. Beike’s technology, which has not been subjected to double-blind clinical trials of the sort required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, uses a combination of umbilical cord cells and stem cells derived from the patient being treated. Beike is based in Shenzhen, in southeastern Guangdong Province.
Founded in July 2005 with funding from Beijing University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Shenzhen City Hall, Beike hosted the first China Stem Cell Technology Forum in late July. The forum was described in a report in ChinaBio Today, an online newsletter that covers the biotechnology industry in China. The Mandarin-language conference was attended by “over 300 of the world’s most renowned stem cell researchers,” the company said, including several native Chinese scientists based in the U.S.
More at InformationWeek…
Press release: Beike Uses Research Forum to Showcase its Stem Cell Therapies…