Delivering on CIRM’s mission of “accelerating stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs” requires the participation of multiple stakeholders to span the research, development, and commercialization phases of bringing a new product to market. In this post, I am pleased to highlight two recent examples of CIRM-funded projects moving beyond their period of CIRM funding by establishing partnerships with industry and investors to further develop the underlying CIRM-funded technology.

In 2000, Dr. Jill Helms, an academic investigator at Stanford University, received a $6.5 million grant from CIRM under an Early Translational award. The title of Dr. Helms’ project was “Enhancing Healing via Wnt-Protein Mediated Activation of Endogenous Stem Cells,” and the goal of the award was to develop a novel, protein-based therapeutic platform to accelerate and enhance tissue regeneration through activation of adult stem cells. The five-year award achieved many critical milestones along the way, including the initiation of two preclinical studies aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of a protein called L-WNT3A to improve the success of spinal fusion surgery and to treat a degradative bone disease called osteonecrosis, both of which represent unmet medical needs.

Through CIRM funding, Dr. Jill Helms’ team was able to demonstrate that treatment with a protein called L-Wnt3a regenerates and promotes bone formation in animals models (Figs D,F: untreated; Figs E,G: Wnt3a treated). (image credit: Leucht et al. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2013;95:1278-88)

Dr. Helms’ work attracted considerable interest from the investor community during the lifespan of her grant, and during the final year of her award Dr. Helms’ WNT3A technology platform was successfully spun out of Stanford into a newly created company called Ankasa Regenerative Therapeutics. Ankasa was established with the financial support of Avalon Ventures – a La Jolla based life sciences venture capital firm, Correlation Ventures – an analytics driven venture capital firm, and Heraeus Medical – a diversified global medical device company based in Germany with over $1 billion of annual revenue. Ankasa has raised an initial $8.5 million in the first round of the total $17 million Series A financing to continue the development of the previously CIRM-funded technology.

Dr. Daniel Lim’s CIRM-funded BranchPoint Device allows neurosurgeons to deliver cell based therapies to multiple areas of the brain with just one needle penetration.  (image credit: Silvestrini et al. Stereotact Funct Neurosurg 2013;91:92–103)

The second recent example comes from a CIRM Tools & Technology grant to Dr. Daniel Lim, a neurosurgeon at UCSF. Dr. Lim was awarded a $1.8 million grant to develop a more efficient device for transplanting stem cells into the brain, titled “Development and Preclinical Testing of New Devices for Cell Transplantation to the Brain.” Dr. Lim successfully developed a platform technology that enables Radially Branched Deployment (RBD) of cells to multiple target locations at variable radial distances and depths along the initial brain penetration tract with real-time interventional magnetic resonance image (iMRI) guidance. This technology is a huge leap forward over the conventional and crude syringe and needle device that are typically used to inject living cells into the brain.

Dr. Lim’s work attracted the attention of Accurexa, a publicly traded medical device company that licensed the CIRM-funded technology from UCSF. Under the guidance of Accurexa, a 510(k) application was submitted to the FDA for the newly coined “BranchPoint Device.” In June of this year, Accurexa successfully raised $2.5 million in equity financing to continue the development and for commercialization of the BranchPoint Device.

Overall, there remains a lack of industry pull for early stage stem cell technologies, however, both Drs. Helms and Lim’s stories represent successful examples of CIRM providing public dollars for early stage research with the resulting potentially life-saving applications attracting interest from investors and companies. These new investors will further fund and develop the technologies well beyond current CIRM funding and, assuming they are successful, deliver them to patients with unmet medical needs.