The beast of cancers
For a disease that is supposedly quite rare, glioblastoma seems to be awfully common. I have lost two friends to the deadly brain cancer in the last few years. Talking to colleagues and friends here at CIRM, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t know someone who has died of it.

Imagery of glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer,  from ImmunoCellular’s website

So when we got an application to fund a Phase 3 clinical trial to target the cancer stem cells that help fuel glioblastoma, it was really a no brainer to say yes. Of course it helped that the scientific reviewers – our Grants Working Group or GWG – who looked at the application voted unanimously to approve it. For them, it was great science for an important cause.

Today our Board agreed with the GWG and voted to award $19.9 million to LA-based ImmunoCellular Therapeutics to carry out a clinical trial that targets glioblastoma cancer stem cells. They’re hoping to begin the trial very soon, recruiting around 400 newly diagnosed patients at some 120 clinical sites around the US, Canada and Europe.

There’s a real urgency to this work. More than 50 percent of those diagnosed with glioblastoma die within 15 months, and more than 90 percent within three years. There are no cures and no effective long-term treatments.

As our President and CEO, Dr. Randy Mills, said in a news release:

 “This kind of deadly disease is precisely why we created CIRM 2.0, our new approval process to accelerate the development of therapies for patients with unmet medical needs. People battling glioblastoma cannot afford to wait years for us to agree to fund a treatment when their survival can often be measured in just months. We wanted a process that was more responsive to the needs of patients, and that could help companies like ImmunoCellular get their potentially life-saving therapies into clinical trials as quickly as possible.”

The science
The proposed treatment involves some rather cool science. Glioblastoma stem cells can evade standard treatments like chemotherapy and cause the recurrence and growth of the tumors. The ImmunoCellular therapy addresses this issue and targets six cell surface proteins that are found on glioblastoma cancer stem cells.

The researchers take immune cells from the patient’s own immune system and expose them to fragments of these cancer stem cell surface proteins in the lab. By re-engineering the immune cells in this way they are then able to recognize the cancer stem cells.

My colleague Todd Dubnicoff likened it to letting a bloodhound sniff a piece of clothing from a burglar so it’s able to recognize the scent and hunt the burglar down.  When the newly trained immune system cells are returned to the patient’s body, they can now help “sniff out” and hopefully kill the cancer stem cells responsible for the tumor’s recurrence and growth.

Like a bloodhound picking up the scent of a burglar, ImmunoCellular’s therapy helps the immune system track down brain cancer stem cells (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Results from both ImmunoCellular’s Phase 1 and 2 trials using this approach were encouraging, showing that patients given the therapy lived longer than those who got standard treatment and experienced only minimal side effects.

Turning the corner against glioblastoma
There’s a moment immediately after the Board votes “yes” to fund a project like this. It’s almost like a buzz, where you feel that you have just witnessed something momentous, a moment where you may have turned the corner against a deadly disease.

We have a saying at the stem cell agency: “Come to work every day as if lives depend on it, because lives depend on it.” On days like this, you feel that we’ve done something that could ultimately help save some of those lives.