This consists predominantly of products made by Blackstone Medical, Nutech and Osiris. These three companies will account for the $35 million plus in sales projected for 2007, Young said. Adult stem cell products generated sales of $16.4 million in 2006.

Young has a breakdown for how much each company is expected to generate in sales in 2007 but won't release that data until February at the Stem Cell Summit in San Diego that his company sponsors.

About 70 percent of the products are used in spine fusion cases, but other uses include situations where there is concern about a patient's ability to grow bone and non-union fractures or fractures that are not healing well.

The products are relatively new, but now that physicians are gaining more experience with them, they seem to be working well and are very promising, Young said.

The field is expected to grow rapidly over the next couple of years, exploding from $35 million this year to $178 million by 2009.

"Big growth," Young said.

The success "will excite capital markets and we should expect to see a fair amount of capital coming in to help support these companies," he added.

By 2009 there could be as many as seven or eight companies in this area, including TiGenix, Aastrom, Cytori and Harvest Technologies.

Cartilage repair will become a big niche in this field, but bone growth and repair will still account for the majority of products, Young said.

Companies engaged in adult stem cell products will "start flooding into the market in the next four or five years," he said. He tracks 106 companies involved in this field but says only about one-third will probably make it all the way to market with a viable product.

The adult stem cell products also will make it easier for embryonic stem cell-based therapies to reach the market.

"These products are creating markets, demonstrating very clearly how to use stem cells on very standard kinds of procedures to accelerate healing and improve patient outcomes," Young said, calling it the beginning of the next phase of medicine.

"These products are growing so well, they set the stage for everything that comes next, including embryonic stem cells," he added.

Robert Lanza, vice president of research and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology, a company pursuing therapies based on embryonic stem cells, told UPI he agreed the growth of adult stem cell therapies opens the door for other stem cell products.

His company plans to file an investigational new drug application with the Food and Drug Administration later this year for an embryonic stem cell therapy for treating vision disorders, followed by another IND in 2008 for cardiovascular disease.

Geron recently said it anticipates filing an IND this year for a treatment for spinal-cord injury derived from embryonic stem cells.

The Democrat-controlled Congress is expected to push for relaxing restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research -- although the move is shaky, given a virtually certain presidential veto -- and new research rekindled an already controversial subject.

Anthony Atala, head of Wake Forest's regenerative medicine institute, and colleagues recently announced they had found embryonic-like stem cells in amniotic fluid -- the liquid surrounding fetuses in the womb -- using a procedure that does not require destroying embryos.

However, these cells may not hold the same potential as embryonic stem cells. Lanza, who called the findings "an exciting breakthrough" that may speed the day embryonic stem cell-based therapies reach the clinic, noted the amniotic cells may not be able to do as many tricks as embryonic stem cells.

"Certainly, this isn't a replacement for embryonic stem cells," he said. "It would be premature to rule out any line of stem cell research," he added, noting that adult and embryonic stem cells have their respective strengths and weakness, and one may be more suitable for certain diseases or conditions than the other.

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