Osiris stem cell treatment can't beat placebo in diabetes study

It takes a considerable level of patience, but if you dig deep into Osiris Therapeutics's latest update on its mid-stage study of the adult stem cell therapy Prochymal for Type 1 diabetes, you'll find that after a year of treatment patients taking the therapy aren't doing any better than the placebo arm when it comes to a key endpoint of the study.

The study still has a year left to run, and the biotech touted data on how well patients tolerated the treatment and how it matches the placebo on adverse events. Then there's this note: "No significant differences in the rates of disease progression, as measured by stimulated C-peptide levels at the one year time point, have been observed. However there was a trend towards fewer hypoglycemic events for patients treated with Prochymal as compared to controls."

Osiris ($OSIR) has been harshly criticized in the past for spinning the news on Prochymal, which ran into some severe trouble in the clinic when it was studied as a potential treatment for graft vs. host disease, Crohn's disease and more. TheStreet's Adam Feuerstein, in particular, has enjoyed heckling the company for its sunny releases. And he wasn't missing a beat following today's announcement.

Following a note on Osiris's regulatory troubles, Feuerstein notes: "Osiris finds it easier apparently to bamboozle retail investors about failed stem-cell therapies than regulators."

- check out the Osiris release
- here's the story from TheStreet