Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first quarter 2008 Geron Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr. David Greenwood, the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please proceed, sir.

Good morning and welcome to the Geron earnings call. I am David Greenwood. With me is Tom Okarma, CEO. This is an earnings related call and we will begin with a summary of operating results for the first quarter. Our agenda then includes an overview of recent operating highlights at the Company and a summary of our operating plans for 2008. Following that presentation by Tom, we will have a general Q&A session. Two informational items, in the event any forward-looking statements are made during this call, please understand those comments are made subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Securities and Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statement involves uncertainty and we refer you to the risk factors detailed in filings with the SEC. Secondly; as the operator mentioned, all participants are currently in listen-only mode. The lines will open for the Q&A and this call will be available for a webcast replay until the end of May. Please go to our website for more information. As you can see on the condensed income statement attached to last night's announcement, revenues were up over the comparable three month period in 2007, principally due to a milestone payment. The milestone marks the FDA's publication of their risk assessment related to the health of food products from cloned animals. As you may recall, we formed a JV Nuco to hold the license rights for all non-human applications of our nuclear transfer or cloning intellectual property. This IP estate has been well tested over the past two or three years by others wanting into the field and has withstood every challenge. For food producers; nuclear transfer is simply generation three breeding technology, more efficient than sorting animals on the farm or using artificial insemination to bring forward quality, quantity and…

Thank you, David. Good morning everyone. Thank you for dialing in this morning. So I will give a brief synopsis of the major press releases in the first quarter and a brief top down summary of the progress on the oncology side of the company today. First; in early January we announced that we had granted to Sienna Cancer Diagnostics, an Australian diagnostic company, a worldwide exclusive license to detect telomerase activity for in vitro diagnostics. Their first application will be testing urine with their technology in a bladder cancer application. In consideration for the license we received an equity interest in the company and a royalty on sales. And just to be clear, the in vitro diagnostic rights, we convey to Sienna in this license is restricted to non-PCR and non-Elisa methods. Those technologies PCR and Elisa remain in the license to Roche. The Sienna technology we like a lot. It uses a proprietary biosensor technology that appears to us to be quite reliable, so we are actually quite enthusiastic about a rekindling of interest in using telomerase activity assays as a predictor and a diagnostic screen in this case for bladder cancer, and other applications are in the works. Secondly; the main public events in the first quarter really revolve around our intellectual property position and there are several important releases to highlight here. First; in early February we were issued our second broad US patent covering the production of islet cells and hepatocytes from human embryonic stem cells. This patent covers a very widely used method to produce endoderm, which is one of the three germ layers from which, among other cell types, liver cells and islets are then produced. Geron scientists were the first to describe, publish and patent on this widely used method in the…

(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of [Glen Gechlik] with Needham & Co. Please proceed. Glen Gechlik- Needham & Co.: [Technical Difficulty] any further follow-up on the stem cell program and when the IND might be expected.

Well fair question. But again, we will stick to our statements that we're not giving any guidance on the status of that IND, whether or not it's been filed and what's going on, basically to allow the process to run its uninhibited course. Glen Gechlik- Needham & Co.: That's very, very fair. Second question, there'll be an ASCO presentation on solid tumors for Geron 163L?

Yes. Glen Gechlik - Needham & Co.: I take it that won't have a maximum dose but will have information on how the patients are doing?

Right. I mean the main issue there is PK and tolerability. We, for obvious reasons, began the solid tumor Phase I in subjects who have been heavily pretreated and have failed in many cases over a dozen prior courses of chemotherapy. And the world of human telomerase biology in cancer is completely unexplored. We are really writing the book here. And so it was important that we fully understand how to use this drug as a single agent in patients who are in extremis with regard to prior chemotherapy. And that's really the lesson that we are learning in that trial. So you're correct. We will have a presentation at ASCO on that solid tumor trial, and there'll be a second presentation on an ex vivo study that actually may lead to a clinical trial in Europe on T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia, which is an unusual opportunity in that this is a disease in which the telomeres of the malignant cells are extraordinarily short. And what the data will show is an extremely rapid lysis of the cells by our telomerase inhibitor in vitro. And that will probably lead to a clinical study in Europe perhaps next year. Glen Gechlik - Needham & Co.: Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Brozak with WBB Securities. Please proceed.

Hey, gentlemen. Good morning. Let's go back in history here because you've given some color on the telomerase bladder assay system. As far as the platform goes, because you've got a long history, more than ten years of finding telomerase is a wonderful marker for cancer, would you, given the history, at the background and all the research that has been done on the bladder side, would you then look at using the platform because it's ubiquitous as far as detection of other cancers as far as your IP has been filed in the past. What are your thoughts on that?

Thank you, Steve, for that. So to answer your historical question in an historical context, the bulk of the capability existing in the world today to measure telomere length and telomerase activity as you know, emanated from Geron's original discoveries of how to do that. And we currently market a broad variety through sub-licensees of tests to measure telomerase activity in vitro. And these are the gold standards that everyone in the field uses today to do experiments on telomerase positive cells. Now that's the good side of the coin. The downside of the coin is that all of those assays were optimized for use in experimental settings basically where you take a microtiter plate out of the incubator, harvest the cells and make the measurement. They are very sensitive. They all require amplifications of one kind or another of the signal because, as you know, telomerase is a very rare enzyme in cells with estimates as low as a dozen copies of the molecule per cell nucleus. Now the problem that we and others have had in extending that technology from a research setting into a clinical setting is it has been daunting. And it has actually caused us a lot of vexation internally until very recently as we have learned how to reverse the issues. So you have problems of how long does it take to access, store, preserve and ship the sample in a clinical setting that in many cases in our early work actually destroys the activity of the enzyme. So we have to learn how to preserve the activity of the enzyme in ways that were clinically appropriate in a clinical setting, where you have a busy clinic, nurses are collecting samples, and the tubes sit at room temperature for six hours before they're shipped…

Your next question comes from the line of Graig Suvannavejh with UBS. Please proceed.

Hi, guys. Good morning. How are you today?

Fine, Graig. How are you?

Good. Just two questions, if I may. One, on the four Phase I, Phase II trials that will be up and running, let's just say by the next three to six months or so, while you've given some guidance around data in the multiple myeloma study for ASH of 2008, is there a way you might be able to provide just a very rough guidance on when we might be able to get some initial results from the other three trials? And then my second question just has to do [Technical Difficulty]

Your second question is what? I think we've lost him. Operator, are we live on the line?

Yes, sir. I apologize. Your next question comes from the line of --

Wait, wait. Graig, I've lost your line.

Oh, yes, Graig disconnected.

I will try to answer what I think you asked first. I did not hear your second question. So the two new trials that are Phase I/II that are about to begin are a combination myeloma and a combination breast. I doubt very much that we will have significant validated vetted data on either of those two trials by year's end to present at a cancer meeting. So the main event at end of the year will be the single agent multiple myeloma study, which, as we've said many times, is really our main event this year in terms of it being the earliest possible registration pathway. And to reiterate, our enthusiasm for the myeloma target is that it very dramatically fits our four criteria for tumor target on our 163L program. And those criteria are that the tumor has a high expression of telomerase in the tumor cells and that the outcome of patients with that tumor is highly correlated with telomerase expression. The more telomerase activity, the worse is the outcome, the more rapid and complete are the relapses, the more difficult and recalcitrant they are to therapy. Thirdly; we obviously have to have in vitro xenograft activity of the drug as a single agent or in combination, which we have in spades for myeloma. And then fourthly and most importantly, all of the tumors need to have identified tumor stem cells in their tumors. And that is the case for myeloma, lung and breast. And the case of myeloma, we have demonstrated at Johns Hopkins that our drug as a single agent is not only effective at killing the mature myeloma cell, but in a matter of days inhibits the myeloma stem cell. And that is the reason that we are pushing ahead aggressively in the clinic with the myeloma study. So again, and our objective here is not just to achieve an approval of a new cancer agent based on some marginal clinical outcome. We are going for major changes in cancer outcome based upon the inhibition of a widely expressed and critical target in cancer that this drug shuts down completely and which is highly involved in the entire field of tumor stem cell biology. There's more data that will be coming out in the peer reviewed literature over the year that is this year detailing the role of telomerase in cancer stem cells. So we didn't invent that. That just happened to be the case. And for reasons that we're still exploring with a variety of [SRAs], the activity of the drug in cancer stem cells seems to be enhanced over the activity of the drug compared to mature cells from the same tumor sample. So as you know, the world of tumor stem cells is exploding in importance. There are companies that are being founded solely to explore the biology of tumor stem cells. We have a drug that uniquely hits them all.

May I have the next question?

Your next question comes from the line of [Sanford Johnson] with [Retirement Planning Associates]. Please proceed.

Morning gentlemen, I have just a couple of questions. The first question is with our patents on the hepatocytes. Somewhere a few months back the major pharmaceutical companies were talking about developing this type to study the events in the liver and so forth. Would they have to go through us in order to develop these hepatocytes?

Yeah. Short answer is yes. And you're referring to a consortium in the UK that several large pharma companies have contributed to. Our hepatocytes are being evaluated by a pharma for that exact same purpose. We do own the field of generating liver cells for ADMETox, and honestly we have a ways to go yet before these hepatocytes are fully matured, but we're getting there.

But my question was that can they circumvent us and develop their own, since I thought we had the patent on

The simple answer is that no patent can be construed to give full protection for anything. There's always the possibility of an inventive step that circumvents the methods of compositions that are claimed in the IP. However, we don't see that as being likely in the hepatocyte case both because of our IP on the hepatocyte itself and because of the IP that was granted to us in February, which covers our method of generating the precursors to hepatocytes. So the likelihood of your hypothesize happening is very, very low.

Next question?

Your next question comes from the line of Graig Suvannavejh with UBS. Please proceed.

Hey, thanks. Sorry about that before. Thank you for answering the first question. My second actually had to do with just your overall thoughts now that the FDA's advisory panel meeting on stem cells has passed. And certainly there was a lot of at least media attention on that event. I think it was clear it wasn't a review of any of your programs, but now that's kind of settled and is in the background. Just wanted to know what your just overall thoughts were?

Well, I guess it's an example of the excessive froth that's in the media, in the lay public on this issue. As you probably know, this is a standard check-the-box exercise that FDA frequently uses when it begins to seriously regulate new technologies. So as you know, we have been in direct communication with the agency on our embryonic stem cell program since 2004. And all of the points to consider and the principles that were illustrated in that public meeting are consonant with and in part driven by our direct interactions with the agency. So we didn't see that this meeting was going to shed any new information on the regulatory strategy over embryonic stem cells and in fact, it did not. It did give the public, both the lay public and the academic science community, an opportunity to comment on both the FDA's position and on the generic positions that were promoted by both Geron and other invited companies who presented there. We did not learn anything. There were no surprises for us. And simply stated, our philosophy I think of the content of the IND is right on point with theirs.

Next question?

Your next question comes from the line of [Victoria Leasit] a Private Investor. Please proceed.

Gentlemen. I was just wondering, going to the financial side of the issue here. Two questions, one, I noticed that interest income was down for the first quarter pretty substantially, as we should have come to expect given the market. But do you anticipate a need to.

Hello?

Sorry, we lost you again.

One moment, please.

Hello?

Ma'am, your line is open again.

Victoria, would you just repeat your question? Thanks.

Okay. Do you anticipate the need to raise additional capital, is the first question. And then do you have any projection for revenues on the licensing or other revenues that you anticipate in '08?

Yeah, so three questions. First, back on the portfolio. Our interest income is a function of market rates and market rates have been tracking down as the yield curve gets back to a normal shape. Having said that, when we benchmark our portfolio yields against comparable portfolios by fund managers, we actually outperformed them period-to-period by some number of basis points, that's not because we're risk takers because, as I said earlier, we're very careful about what paper we buy, and for instance, made a conscious decision three years or so ago to not invest in the auction rate reset notes and so on. So our earnings from the portfolio will track the yield curve. Your question on financing, we've got almost $200 million in the bank. Our net burn, cash burn in '07 was about $40 million. It'll be a little higher than that this year. It's a little hard to predict with accuracy. But somewhat north of 40, so I think we've got three year's capital on the balance sheet. So I think we can plan strategically and invest strategically. Having said that, we will never find ourselves in a situation where we have lost the ability to do that, so we will keep the balance sheet strong. Having said that, we're not interested in selling a lot of stock at $5, so that's the best answer I can give you on the financing question. And thirdly, your third question was revenue. And our revenues are sort of operating revenues, only amount to a couple million dollars a year. And I think history's a good predictor of the near future on that. There are other milestones associated with different licensing deals that are in place and those could be triggered, which would mean inflows. But those are unpredictable with respect to their success and timing both. So I do think the interest income which probably ought to be around $7 million or $8 million for the year, will be our principle line of business in '08 with respect to generating revenues.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Graig Suvannavejh with UBS. Please proceed.

I think, operator that we circled back to Greg and got his second question.

Okay. He was still in queue again. And so your next question, then, comes from the line of [Al Pincus], one moment. Please proceed, sir.

Yes, good morning. I also have a question about the FDA meeting on April 10th. I read a lot of what was said in the meeting. Is it fair to say that this IND for the spinal cord therapy is actually going to be long, long, time away, sir, or am I just reading something else into this?

There have been comments in the analysis lay press that were, surprisingly to me, dower and predicted just as your question frames, that the FDA is very resistant to granting INDs generally in the field of human embryonic stem cells. While again I can't give you any specific commentary or color on our application, I can tell you that generally speaking, from multiple interactions face-to-face with the agency we do not detect any such resistance that is specific to ES cells or general about cell therapy. There is a widespread notion that for example, the regulatory pathway for embryonic stem cells, be it IND approvals or product approvals, is somehow tortuous or undefined. And that is anything but the truth. And that's coming from someone who's been in the cell therapy field for longer than I care to admit. So we do not in any shape, manner or form subscribe to the crepe hangers who are out there predicting that there is a higher bar for embryonic cell based therapies than for other kinds of cell or gene therapy. Now, having said that, there are of course unique issues surrounding embryonic stem cells and we are quite confident that we and our application have traversed them. So we do not see any generic or specific barriers to proceeding down the clinical pathway in the near-term with embryonic stem cells from Geron.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions).

Okay. Well I think if there are no other questions then we will bring today's conference call to a close. Again, I thank you all very much for your good questions and for your participation. Have a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.