Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

Here are some of the stories that stood out this week at MedCity News:

As the “public option” banner carried by the Obama administration during the nation’s health care reform debate begins to sag, some activist doctors are picking up the slack — and then some. Through groups like Mad As Hell Doctors, these M.D.s are taking their message of a government-sponsored health care option for all on the road to cities like Cleveland, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.

University of Michigan neurologist Dr. Eva L. Feldman will be the principal investigator for the first human clinical trial of a stem cell treatment for ALS, the fatal neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The study was announced after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an Investigational New Drug application from Neuralstem Inc., a Rockville, Md., biotechnology company, to test the safety of treating patients with injections of the company’s patented neural stem cells at several sites along the spinal cords of patients.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic will get $10.4 million in federal grants to investigate new approaches to fighting colon and bone marrow cancers, and finding a better cancer chemotherapy, as well as fresh applications for deep brain stimulation. The largest part of that money — a “transformative” grant of $4.9 million the National Institutes of Health — goes to Case Medical School’s Dr. Sanford Markowitz and his colleagues who are trying to identify patients’ inborn genetic susceptibility to develop colon cancer from other cancers. In addition, Case Medical School researcher Jonathan Karn won a $3.9 million, five-year Avant-Garde Award for Innovative HIV/AIDS research from the National Institutes of Health to find a way to turn the AIDS virus against itself without the use of antiretroviral drugs.

STERIS Corp. in Mentor, Ohio, made news twice this week, first for publishing an H1N1 public service announcement video to help health care professionals use its products — like its hand sanitizers that are selling like hotcakes — to avoid the flu, and again for a collaboration with Intuitive Surgical, maker of the da Vinci robotic surgical system, to produce ergonomically streamlined, technologically advanced surgical suites that can do many types of minimally invasive surgeries.

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s Knopp NeuroSciences is raising $12.5 million for its rapidly developing drug to treat ALS; Ionix Medical in Minneapolis, which is developing a medical device to treat enlarged prostates, raised $1.8 million in preparation for a clinical trial early next year; GT Urological, also in Minneapolis, wants to raise $1 million to continue with research and development of a implantable male incontinence device; and Cardinal Health started putting its CareFusion spinoff cash to work, announcing it purchased $1.1 billion in debt for $1.2 billion.