“Latest Stem Cells News”

After Barack Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections, the economic community, in the middle of a recession and the worst financial crisis in the past decades, continues to hold its breath. The Democrat’s victory induce change and potentially more difficult times for the energy, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, and defense sectors, while the biotechnology and alternative energy sectors could be strengthened by the outcome of the elections. Obama has promised to increase investments in wind and solar energy and to spend 150 billion dollars in 10 years to hasten the development of hybrid automobiles and to increase the use of alternative energy on an “industrial scale”.

The sector that will probably gain the most will be stem cell research, which has had extremely limited federal funds in the past years, since they are considered immoral by the Bush administration. Obama favors public investments for stem cell research, and in all likelihood, will remove current restrictions, restoring the confidence of private investors in the sector. “It will remove a lot of uncertainty among investors since we are almost an illegal industry,” said Richard Garr, Managing Director of Neuralstem. Obama also supported the idea of working the idea of research for generic drugs developed with biotechnology in order to lower health care costs. Companies like Amgen, Genentech, and Teva virtually would have no competition in the pharmaceutical industry, because the approval of their products would not fall under the authority of the Food and Drug Administration. “We know that expanding the use of generic drugs and eliminating barriers for that objective must be a central issue in all health care reform efforts,” said Dora Hughes, one of Obama’s health care advisors.