dr. krickstein will be hosting an exceptional scientific symposium. fitting that japanese scientists who now holds an appointment here at the ucsf affiliated gladstone institute will be a keynote speaker. in 2006, he stunned the field when he reported that ordinary skin cells could be turned back to an embryonic-like state. this discovery has given hope that someday these cells might be used in regenerative medicine and has given scientists a potential way to reprogram the skin cells of patients to see how their diseases develop. the excitement generated by the finding and all of our researchers'commitment to advancing the science is probable. while advancing the sites in the field, ucsf scientists are beginning to move their work towards human clinical trials. a team of ucsf pediatric specialists and neurosurgeons are carrying out the nation's second stem cell clinical trial ever conducted in the brain, trying to treat a rare, fatal disease that occurs in boys. four teams of ucsf scientists supported by grants are working to develop clinical trials t

dr. arnold krickstein. he is the director of the center of regeneration medicine and stem cell research at ucsf. under his visionary leadership, our scientists have been performing groundbreaking work in the fields of the generation medicine. with the help of this new building, i'm confident we will make even greater steps towards the goals of new therapies for our patients. arnold. [applause] >> thank you. distinguished guests and friends, thank you for being here and participating in these festivities. doctors are often famous for their gallows humor, and i remember 30 years ago, when i was a junior resident, after a very long day when we had eight amputations that we could do very little for -- patients with strokes and als, and so on, very little we could do -- if she neurologist summed up what we could do in those days in two words, and those were diagnosed and adios. [laughter] over the years, i think all of us have been frustrated by patients that we see with diseases that we really cannot manage or