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AcuraStem has announced the members of its Scientific Board of Advisors comprised of PhDs, professors, tech entrepreneurs, and successful drug company veterans.

AcuraStem announces the addition of Monica Zhou, Ph.D. to their team as Principal Scientist. Zhou is in charge of industrializing the expansion of AcuraStem’s groundbreaking iNeuroRx platform and its multiple applications, ensuring their accuracy and efficiency.

AcuraStem a fast-growing and innovative biotech company located in Monrovia, California, has been awarded a $3.7 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Fast-Track grant (#R44NS105156) by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to continue research for the development of a small molecule therapeutic, “AS2015”, focused on treating patients with the genetic form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) caused by expansion repeats in the gene C9ORF72.

AcuraStem is pleased to announce that it has been selected as a finalist in the 2018 Start-Up Stadium event at the BIO International Convention, June 4-7 in Boston.

Dr. Justin K. Ichida was recently profiled by Seema Sharma with Mendeley as a part of their series on stem cells and regenerative medicine. In the interview Dr. Ichida discusses his research, career path, and shares advice for those seeking a transition from postdoctoral to tenure-track.

In a recently published article for The Hollywood Reporter, Acurastem co-founder Dr. Justin Ichida shares a personal account of how famed publicist and ALS patient Nanci Ryder, and her friends in the fight, have helped to accelerate groundbreaking in vitro research being done at his USC-based laboratory (results of which were published in a recent Nature Medicine article).

AcuraStem co-founder Justin Ichida co-authored the groundbreaking research paper "Haploinsufficiency leads to neurodegeneration in C9ORF72 ALS/FTD human induced motor neurons," published in Nature Medicine February 5.

This two-day event, which immediately precedes Rare Disease Day on February 28, 2018, will be held at the Icagen Oro Valley location (North of Tucson). The Symposium will feature presentations from a mix of academic and industry speakers from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology communities as well as key opinion leaders from foundations committed to the identification, treatment, and cure of rare diseases.

The award recognizes Dr. Ichida's "pioneering work to convert patients’ skin cells into disease-affected neural cells, enabling them to screen thousands of drug-like compounds in search of potential therapeutics that could slow or stop ALS."

AcuraStem has been awarded a $225 thousand Phase I SBIR grant by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The grant will fund continued research of AcuraStem’s laboratory models of age-associated ALS, supporting the evaluation of different molecular methods to create motor neurons in the laboratory that more accurately reproduce the ALS disease state in aged patients.