Month: January 2017

A ‘Call to Action’ for change at the FDA

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

hd

It’s bad enough to have to battle a debilitating and ultimately deadly disease like Huntington’s disease (HD). But it becomes doubly difficult and frustrating when you feel that the best efforts to develop a therapy for HD are running into a brick wall.

That’s how patients and patient advocates working on HD feel as they see the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) throw up what they feel are unnecessary obstacles in the way of promising research.

So the group Help 4HD International has decided to push back, launching an online campaign to get its supporters to pressure the FDA into taking action. Any action.

Posing the question “Does the FDA understand that time is something we simply don’t have?” Help 4HD is urging people to write to the FDA:

“We have heard the FDA say they feel like our loved ones have quality of life at the end stages of HD. We have heard them say people with HD get to live for 20 years after diagnosis. It seems like the FDA doesn’t understand what we are having to live with generation after generation. We have seen HD research die because the researcher couldn’t get an IND (Investigational New Drug, or approval to put a new drug into clinical trials) from the FDA. We have seen trials that should be happening here in the USA move to other countries because of this. We have seen the FDA continue to put up delays and roadblocks. We are lucky to have amazing research going on for HD/JHD (juvenile HD) right now, but what is that research worth if the FDA doesn’t let it go into clinical trials? Drug development is a business and costs millions of dollars. If the FDA continues to refuse INDs, the fear is that companies will stop investing in HD research. This is a fate that we can’t let happen! We need to write to the FDA and let them know our frustrations and also help them understand our disease better.”

The group has drafted a sample letter for people to use or adapt as they see fit. They’ve even provided them with the address to mail the letter to. In short, they are making it as easy as possible to get as many people as possible to write to the FDA and ask for help.

The HD community is certainly not the only one frustrated at the FDA’s  glacial pace of approval of for clinical trials. That frustration is one of many reasons why Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act late last year. That’s also the reason why we started our Stem Cell Champions campaign, to get the FDA to create a more efficient, but no less safe, approval process.

Several of our most active Stem Cell Champions – like Frances Saldana, Judy Roberson and Katie Jackson – are members of the HD Community. Last May several members of the CIRM Team attended the HD-Care Conference, held to raise awareness about the unmet medical needs of this community. We blogged about it here.

While this call to action comes from the HD community it may serve as a template for other organizations and communities. Many have the same frustrations at the slow pace of approval of therapies for clinical trials.

We are hoping the 21st Century Cures Act will lead to the desired changes at the FDA. But until we see proof that’s the case we understand and support the sense of urgency that the HD community has. They don’t have the luxury of time.

 

 

Stem Cells Profiles in Courage: Frank’s final gift

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

frank-st-clair

Not every story has a happy ending. But they do all have something to teach us. In the case of Frank St. Clair the lesson was simple: live life fully and freely, love those around you, and never give up.

We were fortunate enough to get to know Frank as one of the people we profiled in our 2016 Annual Report. Frank was a patient in a clinical trial we are funding to test a new kind of bioengineered vein needed by people undergoing hemodialysis, the most common form of dialysis.

It was an all too brief friendship. Frank passed away on December 17th due to complications from heart disease. But in that time he touched us with his warmth, his kindness, his sense of humor and his generosity. Frank never gave up. He kept fighting to the end. His courage, and compassion for others is a reminder to us that we need to work as hard as we can, to bring treatments to those who need them most.

This is Frank’s story, in his own words:

“I have kidney disease. Had it about four years. When I first started dialysis I had a shunt in my chest.  I had to be careful with the shunt, especially at night, in case I pulled it out. It kept clogging up on me and I’d have to go in and get it reopened and that was a terrible thing.

One time when they were opening up the shunt in my chest I ran into the doctor and I got talking to him. He knew how miserable I was and he asked if I wanted to take part in this clinical trial. I said I did and they arranged for me to get this, the device. I just lucked out and was in the right place at the right time. Best move I ever made. Didn’t know anything about stem cells then, sure didn’t, I just knew I was miserable and if there was any way to make life better I just wanted to do it or try it.

And then I did this and it was like day and night.

Since I’ve done this my life has improved 100%. I can do a lot now that I couldn’t do before. My wife and I are so grateful that we can have this. Now we can go out to dinner and do anything we want. We could go out before but we had to always be careful because of the thing in my chest. But now I don’t even think about it. It’s like getting my life back.

I don’t notice it all. I don’t feel it at all. I hate to say it, but I can’t believe I’m on dialysis. I would like to have a kidney but I’ll be honest with you this is the next best thing.

When I go to the clinic there’s a lot of old people there and I just try to make them laugh, tell them jokes, I just can’t believe how good I feel and I want to make others feel good too.

I take the time to talk to them, and give them gum and that cheers them up. My wife has to keep me supplied with gum.

I’ve been married 45 years. We met in high school chorus. I didn’t care too much about singing but I went to chorus because I wanted to meet girls. That’s where I met Paula. Best move I ever made.

I sure don’t feel old. My wife and I are two people that love each other very dearly, that’s my blessing, with her help I couldn’t get old.

I’m a workaholic but until I got the Humacyte device I couldn’t work. I had to sell my business.

I used to be a private detective. It had its moments. My wife used to get mad because I got up at 2 or 3 in the morning to get someone who was in hiding. I had one guy, he was about 6’ 7”, big guy. I knocked at the door and said the name of the guy I was looking for, and asked if he was there. He asked why, so I told him why I was there and he said “It’s me,” and ran right over me and knocked me on the ground and ran away. But I managed to talk him into coming back.

We served a lot of papers on foreclosures and I hated that, and I would always try and help those people if I could.

One time I ran into an old lady, she was a nice woman, and her husband handled all the bills but he died and they had stock in Bernie Madoff’s company and when he went under it left her broke.  They had $1.7 million in a company that went bankrupt. She lost it all. She didn’t know what to do. When I went to serve her papers she hadn’t eaten in two days,  so I went and bought her and brought some groceries and made sure the electric bill got paid and then called her son and made sure she was taken care of.

My wife said we were going broke helping so many people, but I felt that if you help people it comes back to you and it has.

I volunteer at the VA, help out there when I can. Just trying to give back. Always have. I think if you can help someone you need to do it.

I feel damn lucky, really lucky, more ways than one. You have to understand I have lived 50 years longer than I should have; I could have died in Vietnam, so I would just say do not give up. Don’t give up. My wife wouldn’t let me give up, and things happen. If they are meant to be, of course. Something will happen and I’m telling you. The key is making people around you feel like they want to be around you.”

We are forever grateful to Frank for being willing to be part of a clinical trial that will, hopefully, improve the quality of life for many others. That is his legacy. Our thoughts and wishes go out to his wife Paula

Stories that caught our eye: new target for killing leukemia cancer stem cells and stem cell vesicles halt glaucoma

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

New stem cell target for acute myeloid leukemia (Karen Ring).  A new treatment for acute myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer that turns bone marrow stem cells cancerous, could be in the works in the form of a cancer stem cell destroying antibody.

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Acute Myeloid Leukemia (Credit: Medscape)

Scientists from the NYU Langone Medical Center and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center identified a protein called CD99 that appears more abundantly on the surface of abnormal blood cancer stem cells compared to healthy blood stem cells. They developed an antibody that specifically recognizes and kills the CD99 wielding cancer stem cells while leaving the healthy blood stem cells unharmed.

The CD99 antibody was effective at killing human AML stem cells in a dish and in mice that were transplanted with the same type of cancer stem cells. Further studies revealed that the CD99 antibody when attached to the surface of cancer stem cells, sets off a cascade of enzyme activity that causes these cells to die. These findings suggest that cancer stem cells express more CD99 as a protective mechanism against cell death.

In an interview with Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, Chris Park, senior author on the Science Translational Medicine study, explained the importance of their work:

“Our findings not only identify a new molecule expressed on stem cells that drive these human malignancies, but we also show that antibodies against this target can directly kill human AML stem cells. While we still have important details to work out, CD99 is likely to be an exploitable therapeutic target for most AML and MDS patients, and we are working urgently to finalize a therapy for human testing.”

While this work is still in the early stages, Dr. Park stressed that his team is actively working to translate their CD99 antibody therapy into clinical trials.

“With the appropriate support, we believe we can rapidly determine the best antibodies for use in patients, produce them at the quality needed to verify our results, and apply for permission to begin clinical trials.”

 

Peculiar stem cell function may help treat blindness (Todd Dubnicoff). Scientists at the National Eye Institute (NEI) have uncovered a novel function that stem cells use to carry out their healing powers and it may lead to therapies for glaucoma, the leading cause of blindness in United States. Reporting this week in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, the researchers show that stem cells send out regenerative signals by shedding tiny vesicles called exosomes. Once thought to be merely a garbage disposal system, exosomes are now recognized as an important means of communication between cells. As they bud off from the cells, the exosomes carry proteins and genetic material that can be absorbed by other cells.

Microscopy image shows exosomes (green) surrounding retinal ganglion cells (orange and yellow). Credit: Ben Mead

Microscopy image shows exosomes (green) surrounding retinal ganglion cells (orange and yellow). Credit: Ben Mead

The researchers at NEI isolated exosomes from bone marrow stem cells and injected them into the eyes of rats with glaucoma symptoms. Without treatment, these animals lose about 90 percent of their retinal ganglion cells, the cells responsible for forming the optic nerve and for sending visual information to the brain. With the exosome treatment, the rats only lost a third of the retinal ganglion cells. The team determined that microRNAs – small genetic molecules that can inhibit gene activity – inside the exosome were responsible for the effect.

Exosomes have some big advantages over stem cells when comes to developing and manufacturing therapies which lead author Ben Mead explains in a press release picked up by Eureka Alert:

“Exosomes can be purified, stored and precisely dosed in ways that stem cells cannot.”

We’ll definitely keep our eyes on this development. If these glaucoma studies continue to look promising it stands to reason that there would be exosome applications in many other diseases.

Growing a rat pancreas in a mouse with stem cells & CRISPR: a solution for the organ shortage crisis?

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

Right now, about 120,000 Americans are on a waiting list for an organ transplant and 22 will die today before any organs become available. The plain truth is there aren’t enough organ donors to meet the demand. And according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the number of available organ donors has remained static over the past decade. How can we overcome this crisis?

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The need for organ transplants is growing but the number of donors is stagnant. Image: U.S. Dept. Human Health Services

One answer may be stem cells. These “blank slate” cells can specialize into virtually any cell type in the body which has many scientists pursuing the holy grail of stem cell research: creating an unlimited supply of human organs. Today, a team of Salk Institute scientists report in Cell that they’ve taken an early but important step toward that goal by showing it’s possible to grow rat organs within a mouse. The results bode well for not only organ transplants but also for the study of human development and disease.

Chimera – monster or medical marvel?
Our regular Stem Cellar readers will be familiar with several fascinating studies using stem cell-based 3D bioprinters or bioscaffolds which aim to one day enable the manufacturing of human tissues and organs. Instead of taking this engineering approach, the Salk team seeks a strategy in which chimeric animals are bred to grow human organs. The term “chimeric” is borrowed from Greek mythology that told tales of the chimera, a monster with a lion’s heads, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail.

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The chimera of Greek Mythology: part lion, goat and snake. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The team’s first set of experiments explored the feasibility of this method by first focusing on rat-mouse chimeras. Reprogramming skin cells collected from rat tails, the scientists generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) – cells with the embryonic stem cell-like ability to become any cell type – and injected them into very early stage mouse embryos. The embryos were then implanted into surrogate female mice and successfully carried to term. Examination of the resulting mouse pups showed that their tissues and organs contained a patchwork of both rat and mouse cells.

And for my next trick, I will make a rat pancreas in a mouse
Now, if the ultimate goal is to grow organs that are 100% human in a host animal, an organ that merely has a random patchwork human cells would miss the mark. To show there’s a way around this problem, the Salk team used the CRISPR gene-editing technique to generate mouse embryos that lacked a gene that’s critical for the development of the pancreas. Without the gene, no pancreas forms and the mice died shortly after birth. But when the rat iPSCs were integrated into the gene edited mice embryos, the rat cells picked up the slack as the embryo developed, resulting in chimeric mice with rat pancreases.

Using the same CRISPR gene editing strategy, the researchers also grew rat hearts, and if you can believe it, rat eyes in the chimeric mice. On top of that, the mice in these experiments were healthy with most reaching adulthood and one living two years, an elderly age for mice.

A first step toward growing patient-specific human organs in large animals
One small, actually big, problem is that mice are much too little to serve as chimeric hosts for human organs. So the team repeated these mixed species experiments in pigs which are much better matched to humans. In this case, they added human iPSCs to the pig embryos, implanted them into female pigs and let the embryos develop for four weeks. Although it wasn’t as efficient as the rat-mouse chimeras, the researchers did indeed observe human cells that had incorporated into the chimera and were showing the early signs of specializing in different cell types within the implanted pig embryos.

This work is the first time human iPSCs have been incorporated into large animal species (they also got it to work with cattle) and many years of lab work remain before this approach can help solves the organ shortage crisis. But the potential applications are spellbinding. Imagine a patient in need of an organ transplant: a small skin biopsy is collected to make iPSCs and, using this chimeric animal approach, a patient-derived organ could be grown.

Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, the study’s team leader, talked about this possibility and more in a press release:

“Of course, the ultimate goal of chimeric research is to learn whether we can use stem-cell and gene-editing technologies to generate genetically-matched human tissues and organs, and we are very optimistic that continued work will lead to eventual success. But in the process we are gaining a better understanding of species evolution as well as human embryogenesis and disease that is difficult to get in other ways.”

Ethical concerns
Now, if the idea of breeding pigs or cows with human organs make you a little uneasy, you aren’t alone.  In fact, the National Institutes of Health announced in 2015 that they had halted funding research that introduces human stem cells into other animals. They want more time “to evaluate the state of the science in this area, the ethical issues that should be considered, and the relevant animal welfare concerns associated with these types of studies.”  To read more discussion on this topic, read this MIT Technology Review article from a year ago.

 

Good news from Asterias’ CIRM-funded spinal cord injury trial

/ Karen Ring / 5 Comments

This week in the stem cell field, all eyes are on Asterias Biotherapeutics, a California-based company that’s testing a stem cell based-therapy in a CIRM-funded clinical trial for spinal cord injury patients. The company launched its Phase 1/2a clinical trial back in 2014 with the goal of determining the safety of the therapy and the optimal dose of AST-OPC1 cells to transplant into patients.

astopc1AST-OPC1 cells are oligodendrocyte progenitor cells derived from embryonic stem cells. These are cells located in the brain and spinal cord that develop into support cells that help nerve cells function and communicate with each other.

Asterias is transplanting AST-OPC1 cells into patients that have recently suffered from severe spinal cord injuries in their neck. This type of injury leaves patients paralyzed without any feeling from their neck down. By transplanting cells that can help the nerve cells at the injury site reform their connections, Asterias hopes that their treatment will allow patients to regain some form of movement and feeling.

And it seems that their hope is turning into reality. Yesterday, Asterias reported in a news release that five patients who received a dose of 10 million cells showed improvements in their ability to move after six months after their treatment. All five patients improved one level on the motor function scale, while one patient improved by two levels. A total of six patients received the 10 million cell dose, but so far only five of them have completed the six-month follow-up study, three of which have completed the nine-month follow-up study.

We’ve profiled two of these six patients previously on the Stem Cellar. Kris Boesen was the first patient treated with 10 million cells and has experienced the most improvement. He has regained the use of his hands and arms and can now feed himself and lift weights. Local high school student, Jake Javier, was the fifth patient in this part of the trial, and you can read about his story here.

Kris Boesen, CIRM spinal cord injury clinical trial patient.

Kris Boesen, CIRM spinal cord injury clinical trial patient.

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Jake Javier and his Mom

The lead investigator on this trial, Dr. Richard Fessler, explained the remarkable progress that these patients have made since their treatment:

“With these patients, we are seeing what we believe are meaningful improvements in their ability to use their arms, hands and fingers at six months and nine months following AST-OPC1 administration. Recovery of upper extremity motor function is critically important to patients with complete cervical spinal cord injuries, since this can dramatically improve quality of life and their ability to live independently.”

Asterias will continue to monitor these patients for changes or improvements in movement and will give an update when these patients have passed the 12-month mark since their transplant. However, these encouraging preliminary results have prompted the company to look ahead towards advancing their treatment down the regulatory approval pathway, out of clinical trials and into patients.

Asterias CEO, Steve Cartt, commented,

Steve Cartt, CEO of Asterias Biotherapeutics

Steve Cartt, CEO of Asterias Biotherapeutics

“These results to date are quite encouraging, and we look forward to initiating discussions with the FDA in mid-2017 to begin to determine the most appropriate clinical and regulatory path forward for this innovative therapy.”

 

Talking with the US FDA will likely mean that Asterias will need to show further proof that their stem cell-based therapy actually improves movement in patients, rather than the patients spontaneously regaining movement (which has been observed in patients before). FierceBiotech made this point in a piece they published yesterday on this trial.

“Those discussions with FDA could lead to a more rigorous examination of the effect of AST-OPC1. Some patients with spinal injury experience spontaneous recovery. Asterias has put together matched historical data it claims show “a meaningful difference in the motor function recovery seen to date in patients treated with the 10 million cell dose of AST-OPC1.” But the jury will remain out until Asterias pushes ahead with plans to run a randomized controlled trial.”

In the meantime, Asterias is testing a higher dose of 20 million AST-OPC1 cells in a separate group of spinal cord injury patients. They believe this number is the optimal dose of cells for achieving the highest motor improvement in patients.

2017 will bring more results and hopefully more good news about Asterias’ clinical trial for spinal cord injury. And as always, we’ll keep you informed with any updates on our Stem Cellar Blog.

Life after SPARK: CIRM high school intern gets prestigious scholarship to Stanford

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

As part of our CIRM scholar blog series, we’re featuring the research and career accomplishments of CIRM funded students.

Ranya Odeh

Ranya Odeh

Meet Ranya Odeh. She is a senior at Sheldon high school in Elk Grove, California, and a 2016 CIRM SPARK intern. The SPARK program provides stem cell research internships to underprivileged high school students at leading research institutes in California.

This past summer, Ranya worked in Dr. Jan Nolta’s lab at UC Davis improving methods that turn mesenchymal stem cells into bone and fat cells. During her internship, Ranya did an excellent job of documenting her journey in the lab on Instagram and received a social media prize for her efforts.

Ranya is now a senior in high school and was recently accepted into Stanford University through the prestigious QuestBridge scholarship program. She credits the CIRM SPARK internship as one of the main reasons why she was awarded this scholarship, which will pay for all four years of her college.

I reached out to Ranya after I heard about her exciting news and asked her to share her story so that other high school students could learn from her experience and be inspired by her efforts.

How did you learn about the CIRM SPARK program?

At my high school, one of our assignments is to build a website for the Teen Biotech Challenge (TBC) program at UC Davis. I was a sophomore my first year in the program, and I didn’t feel passionate about my project and website. The year after, I saw that some of my friends had done the CIRM SPARK internship after they participated in the TBC program. They posted pictures about their internship on Instagram, and it looked like a really fun and interesting thing to do. So I decided to build another website (one that I was more excited about) in my junior year on synthetic biology. Then I entered my website in the TBC and got first prize in the Nanobiotechnology field. Because I was one of the winners, I got the SPARK internship.

What did you enjoy most about your SPARK experience?

For me, it was seeing that researchers aren’t just scientists in white lab coats. The Nolta lab (where I did my SPARK internship) had a lot of personality that I wasn’t really expecting. Working with stem cells was so cool but it was also nice to see at the same time that people in the lab would joke around and pull pranks on each other. It made me feel that if I wanted to have a future in research, which I do, it wouldn’t be doing all work all the time.

What was it like to do research for the first time?

Ranya taking care of her stem cells!

Ranya taking care of her stem cells!

The SPARK internship was my first introduction to research. During my first experiment, I remember I was changing media and I thought that I was throwing my cells away by mistake. So I freaked out, but then my mentor told me that I hadn’t and everything was ok. That was still a big deal and I learned a lesson to ask more questions and pay more attention to what I was doing.

Did the SPARK program help you when you applied to college?

Yes, I definitely feel like it did. I came into the internship wanting to be a pharmacist. But my research experience working with stem cells made me want to change my career path. Now I’m looking into a bioengineering degree, which has a research aspect to it and I’m excited for that. Having the SPARK internship on my college application definitely helped me out. I also got to have a letter of recommendation from Dr. Nolta, which I think played a big part as well.

Tell us about the scholarship you received!

I got the QuestBridge scholarship, which is a college match scholarship for low income, high achieving students. I found out about this program because my career counselor gave me a brochure. It’s actually a two-part scholarship. The first part was during my junior year of high school and that one didn’t involve a college acceptance. It was an award that included essay coaching and a conference that told you about the next step of the scholarship.

The second part during my senior year was called the national college match scholarship. It’s an application on its own that is basically like a college application. I submitted it and got selected as a finalist. After I was selected, they have partner colleges that offer full scholarships. You rank your choice of colleges and apply to them separately with a common application. If any of those colleges want to match you and agree to pay for all four years of your college, then you will get matched to your top choice. There’s a possibility that more than one college would want to match you, but you will only get matched with the one that you rank the highest. That was Stanford for me, and I am very happy about that.

Why did you pick Stanford as your top choice?

It’s the closest university to where I grew up that is very prestigious. It was also one of the only colleges I’ve visited. When I was walking around on campus, I felt I could see myself there as a student and with the Stanford community. Also, it will be really nice to be close to my family.

What do you do in your free time?

I don’t have a lot of free time because I’m in Academic Decathalon and I spend most of my time doing that. When I do have free time, I like to watch Netflix, blogs on YouTube, and I try to go to the gym [laughs].

Did you enjoy posting about your SPARK internship on Instagram?

I had a lot of fun posting pictures of me in the lab on Instagram. It was also nice during the summer to see other SPARK students in different programs talk about the same things. We shared jokes about micropipettes and culturing stem cells. It was really cool to see that you’re not the only one posting nerdy science pictures. I also felt a part of a larger community outside of the SPARK program. Even people at my school were seeing and commenting on what I was doing.

UC Davis CIRM SPARK program 2016

UC Davis CIRM SPARK program 2016

I also liked that I got feedback about what I was doing in the lab from other SPARK students. When I posted pictures during my internship, I talked about working with mesenchymal stem cells. Because we all post to the same #CIRMSPARKlab hashtag, I saw students from CalTech commenting that they worked with those stem cells too. That motivated me to work harder and accomplish more in my project. Instagram also helped me with my college application process. I saw that there were other students in the same position as me that were feeling stressed out. We also gave each other feedback on college essays and having advice about what I was doing really helped me out.

Do you think it’s important for students to be on social media?

Yes, I think it’s important with boundaries of course. There are probably some people who are on social media too often, and you should have a balance. But it’s nice to see what other students are doing to prepare for college and to let loose and catch up with your friends.

What advice would you give to younger high school students about pursuing science?

I feel like students can’t expect things to be brought to them. If they are interested in science, they need to take the initiative to find something that they are going to want to do. The CIRM internship was brought to my attention. But I have friends that were interested in medicine and they found their own internships and ways to learn more about what they wanted to do. So my advice is to take initiative and not be scared of rejection, because if you’re scared of rejection you’re not going to do anything.

To hear more about Ranya’s SPARK internship experience, read her blog “Here’s what you missed this summer on the show coats.” You can also follow her on Instagram and Twitter. For more information about the CIRM SPARK internship program, please visit the CIRM website.

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Stem Cell Profiles in Courage: Karl’s Fight with Cancer

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Karl Trede

Karl Trede

When I think of a pioneer I have an image in my head of people heading west across the Americans plains in the 18th century, riding in a covered wagon pulled by weary oxen.

Karl Trede doesn’t fit that image at all. He is a trim, elegant man who has a ready smile and a fondness for Hawaiian shirts. But he is no less a pioneer for all that. That’s why we profiled him in our 2016 Annual Report.

In 2006 Karl was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. He underwent surgery to remove his vocal chords and thought he had beaten the cancer. A few years later, it came back. That was when Karl became the first person ever treated in a CIRM-funded clinical trial testing a new anti-tumor therapy targeting cancer stem cells that so far has helped hold the disease at bay.

Here is Karl’s story, in his own words:

“I had some follow-up tests and those showed spots in my lungs. Over the course of several years, they saw those spots grow, and we knew the cancer had spread to my lungs. I went to Stanford and was told there was no effective treatment for it, fortunately it was slow growing.

Then one day they said we have a new clinical trial we’re going to start would you be interested in being part of it.

I don’t believe I knew at the time that I was going to be the first one in the trial [now that’s what I call a pioneer] but I thought I’d give it a whirl and I said ‘Sure’. I wasn’t real concerned about being the first in a trial never tested in people before. I figured I was going to have to go someday so I guess if I was the first person and something really went wrong then they’d definitely learn something; so, to me, that was kind of worth my time.

Fortunately, I lasted 13 months, 72 treatments with absolutely no side effects. I consider myself really lucky to have been a part of it.

It was an experience for me, it was eye opening. I got an IV infusion, and the whole process was 4 hours once a week.

Dr. Sikic (the Stanford doctor who oversees the clinical trial) made it a practice of staying in the room with me when I was getting my treatments because they’d never tried it in people, they’d tested it in mice, but hadn’t tested it in people and wanted to make sure they were safe and nothing bad happened.

The main goals of the trial were to define what the side effects were and what the right dose is and they got both of those. So I feel privileged to have been a part of this.

My wife and I (Vita) have four boys. They’re spread out now – two in the San Francisco Bay Area, one in Oregon and one in Nevada. But we like to get together a few times a year. They’re all good cooks, so when we have a family get together there’s a lot of cooking involved.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, in 2015, the boys decided they wanted to have a rib cook-off for up to around 30 people and I can proudly say that I kicked their ass on the rib cook-off. I have an electric cooker and I just cook ‘em slow and long. I do a cranberry sauce, just some home made bbq sauces

I’m a beef guy, I love a good steak, a good ribeye or prime rib, I make a pretty mean Oso bucco, I make a good spaghetti sauce, baked chicken with an asparagus mousse that is pretty good.

I just consider myself a lucky guy.”

Karl Trede with CIRM President Randy Mills at the 2016 December Board meeting.

Karl Trede with CIRM President Randy Mills at the 2016 December Board meeting.

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Stories that caught our eye: $20.5 million in new CIRM discovery awards, sickle cell disease cell bank, iPSC insights

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

CIRM Board launches a new voyage of Discovery (Kevin McCormack).
Basic or early stage research is the Rodney Dangerfield of science; it rarely gets the respect it deserves. Yesterday, the CIRM governing Board showed that it not only respects this research, but also values its role in laying the foundation for everything that follows.

The CIRM Board approved 11 projects, investing more than $20.5 million in our Discovery Quest, early stage research program. Those include programs using gene editing techniques to develop a cure for a rare but fatal childhood disease, finding a new approach to slowing down the progress of Parkinson’s disease, and developing a treatment for the Zika virus.

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Electron micrograph of Zika virus (red circles). Image: CDC/Cynthia Goldsmith

The goal of the Discovery Quest program is to identify and explore promising new stem cell therapies or technologies to improve patient care.

In a news release Randy Mills, CIRM’s President & CEO, said we hope this program will create a pipeline of projects that will ultimately lead to clinical trials:

“At CIRM we never underestimate the importance of early stage scientific research; it is the birth place of groundbreaking discoveries. We hope these Quest awards will not only help these incredibly creative researchers deepen our understanding of several different diseases, but also lead to new approaches on how best to use stem cells to develop treatments.”

Creating the world’s largest stem cell bank for sickle cell disease (Karen Ring).
People typically visit the bank to deposit or take out cash, but with advancements in scientific research, people could soon be visiting banks to receive life-saving stem cell treatments. One of these banks is already in the works. Scientists at the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) at Boston Medical Center are attempting to generate the world’s largest stem cell bank focused specifically on sickle cell disease (SCD), a rare genetic blood disorder that causes red blood cells to take on an abnormal shape and can cause intense pain and severe organ damage in patients.

To set up their bank, the team is collecting blood samples from SCD patients with diverse ethnic backgrounds and making induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from these samples. These patient stem cell lines will be used to unravel new clues into why this disease occurs and to develop new potential treatments for SCD. More details about this new SCD iPSC bank can be found in the latest edition of the journal Stem Cell Reports.

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Gustavo Mostoslavsky, M.D., PH.D., Martin Steinberg, M.D., George Murphy PH.D.
Photo: Boston Medical Center

In a news release, CReM co-founder and Professor, Gustavo Mostoslavsky, touched on the future importance of their new stem cell bank:

“In addition to the library, we’ve designed and are using gene editing tools to correct the sickle hemoglobin mutation using the stem cell lines. When coupled with corrected sickle cell disease specific iPSCs, these tools could one day provide a functional cure for the disorder.”

For researchers interested in using these new stem cell lines, CReM is making them available to researchers around the world as part of the NIH’s NextGen Consortium study.

DNA deep dive reveals ways to increase iPSC efficiency (Todd Dubnicoff)
Though the induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technique was first described ten years ago, many researchers continue to poke, prod and tinker with the method which reprograms an adult cell, often from skin, into an embryonic stem cell-like state which can specialize into any cell type in the body. Though this breakthrough in stem cell research is helping scientists better understand human disease and develop patient-specific therapies, the technique is hampered by its low efficiency and consistency.

This week, a CIRM-funded study from UCLA reports new insights into the molecular changes that occur during reprogramming that may help pave the way toward better iPS cell methods. The study, published in Cell, examined the changes in DNA during the reprogramming process.

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Senior authors Kathrin Plath and Jason Ernst and first authors Petko Fiziev and Constantinos Chronis.
Photo: UCLA

In a skin cell, the genes necessary for embryonic stem cell-like, or pluripotent, characteristics are all turned off. One way this shut down in gene activity occurs is through tight coiling of the DNA where the pluripotent genes are located. This physically blocks proteins called transcriptions factors from binding the DNA and activating those pluripotent genes within skin cells. On the other hand, regions of DNA carrying skin-related genes are loosely coiled, so that transcription factors can access the DNA and turn on those genes.

The iPS cell technique works by artificially adding four pluripotent transcriptions factors into skin cells which leads to changes in DNA coiling such that skin-specific genes are turned off and pluripotent genes are turned on. The UCLA team carefully mapped the areas where the transcription factors are binding to DNA during the reprogramming process. They found that the shut down of the skin genes and activation of the pluripotent genes occurs at the same time. The team also found that three of the four iPS cell factors must physically interact with each other to locate and activate the areas of DNA that are responsible for reprogramming.

Using the findings from those experiments, the team was able to identify a fifth transcription factor that helps shut down the skin-specific gene more effectively and, in turn, saw a hundred-fold increase in reprogramming efficiency. These results promise to help the researchers fine-tune the iPS cell technique and make its clinical use more practical.

Stem Cell Profiles in Courage: Brenden Whittaker

/ Kevin McCormack / 3 Comments
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Brenden Whittaker: Photo Colin McGuire

It’s not often you meet someone who says one of their favorite things in the world is mowing the lawn. But then, there aren’t many people in the world like Brenden Whittaker. In fact, as of this writing, he may be unique.

Brenden was born with severe chronic granulomatous disease (x-CGD), a rare genetic disorder that left him with an impaired immune system that was vulnerable to repeated bacterial and fungal infections. Over 22 years Brenden was in and out of the hospital hundreds of times, he almost died a couple of times, and lost parts of his lungs and liver.

Then he became the first person to take part in a clinical trial to treat x-CGD. UCLA researcher Don Kohn had developed a technique that removed Brenden’s blood stem cells, genetically re-engineered them to correct the mutation that caused the disease, and then returned those stem cells to Brenden. Over time they created a new blood system, and restored Brenden’s immune system.

He was cured.

We profiled Brenden for our 2016 Annual Report. Here’s an extended version of the interview we did with him, talking about his life before and after he was cured.

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Brenden with a CIRM Game Ball – signed by everyone at CIRM

Brenden’s story:

I still think about it, my disease, every few days or so and it’s weird because in the past I was sick so often; before this year, I was sick consistently for about 5 years and going to doctor’s appointments 2 or 3 times a week and being in the hospital. So, it’s weird having a cough and not having to be rushed to the ER, not having to call someone every time the smallest thing pops up, and not having to worry about what it means.

It’s been good but it’s been weird to not have to do that.  It’s a nice problem to have.

What are you doing now that you didn’t do before?

Cutting the grass is something I couldn’t do before, that I’ve taken up now. Most people look at me as if I’m crazy when I say it, but I love cutting grass, and I wasn’t able to do it for 22 years of my life.

People will complain about having to pick up after their dog goes to the bathroom and now I can follow my dog outside and can pick up after her. It really is just the little things that people don’t think of. I find enjoyment in the small things, things I couldn’t do before but now I can and not have to worry about them.

The future

I was in the boy scouts growing up so I love camping, building fires, just being outdoors. I hiked on the Appalachian Trail. Now I’ll be able to do more of that.

I have a part time job at a golf course and I’m actually getting ready to go back to school full time in January. I want to get into pre-med, go to medical school and become a doctor. All the experience I’ve had has just made me more interested in being a doctor, I just want to be in a position where I can help people going through similar things, and going through all this just made me more interested in it.

Before the last few months I couldn’t schedule my work more than a week in advance because I didn’t know if I was going to be in the hospital or what was going on. Now my boss jokes that I’m giving him plans for the next month or two. It’s amazing how far ahead you can plan when you aren’t worried about being sick or having to go to the hospital.

I’d love to do some traveling. Right now most of my traveling consists of going to and from Boston (for medical check-ups), but I would love to go to Europe, go through France and Italy. That would be a real cool trip. I don’t need to see everything in the world but just going to other countries, seeing cities like London, Paris and Rome, seeing how people live in other cultures, that would be great.

Advice for others

I do think about the fact that when I was born one in a million kids were diagnosed with this disease and there weren’t any treatments. Many people only lived a few years. But to be diagnosed now you can have a normal life. That’s something all on its own. It’s almost impossible for me to fathom it’s happening, after all the years and doctor’s appointments and illnesses.

So, for people going through anything like this, I’d say just don’t give up. There are new advances being made every day and you have to keep fighting and keep getting through it, and some day it will all work out.

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Avalanches of exciting new stem cell research at the Keystone Symposia near Lake Tahoe

/ Samantha Yammine / Leave a comment

From January 8th to 13th, nearly 300 scientists and trainees from around the world ascended the mountains near Lake Tahoe to attend the joint Keystone Symposia on Neurogenesis and Stem Cells at the Resort at Squaw Creek. With record-high snowfall in the area (almost five feet!), attendees had to stay inside to stay warm and dry, and even when we lost power on the third day on the mountain there was no shortage of great science to keep us entertained.

Boy did it snow at the Keystone Conference in Tahoe!

Boy did it snow at the Keystone Conference in Tahoe!

One of the great sessions at the meeting was a workshop chaired by CIRM’s Senior Science Officer, Dr. Kent Fitzgerald, called, “Bridging and Understanding of Basic Science to Enable/Predict Clinical Outcome.” This workshop featured updates from the scientists in charge of three labs currently conducting clinical trials funded and supported by CIRM.

Regenerating injured connections in the spinal cord with neural stem cells

Mark Tuszynski, UCSD

Mark Tuszynski, UCSD

The first was a stunning talk by Dr. Mark from UCSD who is investigating how neural stem cells can help outcomes for those with spinal cord injury. The spinal cord contains nerves that connect your brain to the rest of your body so you can sense and move around in your environment, but in cases of severe injury, these connections are cut and the signal is lost. The most severe of these injuries is a complete transection, which is when all connections have been cut at a given spot, meaning no signal can pass through, just like how no cars could get through if a section of the Golden Gate Bridge was missing. His lab works in animal models of complete spinal cord transections since it is the most challenging to repair.

As Dr. Tuszynski put it, “the adult central nervous system does not spontaneously regenerate [after injury], which is surprising given that it does have its own set of stem cells present throughout.” Their approach to tackle this problem is to put in new stem cells with special growth factors and supportive components to let this process occur.

Just as most patients wouldn’t be able to come in for treatment right away after injury, they don’t start their tests until two weeks after the injury. After that, they inject neural stem cells from either the mouse, rat, or human spinal cord at the injury site and then wait a bit to see if any new connections form. Their group has shown very dramatic increases in both the number of new connections that regenerate from the injury site and extend much further than previous efforts have shown. These connections conduct electrochemical messages as normal neurons do, and over a year later they see no functional decline or tumors forming, which is often a concern when transplanting stem cells that normally like to divide a lot.

While very exciting, he cautions, “this research shows a major opportunity in neural repair that deserves proper study and the best clinical chance to succeed”. He says it requires thorough testing in multiple animal models before going into humans to avoid a case where “a clinical trial fails, not because the biology is wrong, but because the methods need tweaking.”

Everyone needs support – even dying cells

The second great talk was by Dr. Clive Svendsen of Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute on how stem cells might help provide healthy support cells to rescue dying neurons in the brains of patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s. Some ALS cases are hereditary and would be candidates for a treatment using gene editing techniques. However, around 90 percent of ALS cases are “sporadic” meaning there is no known genetic cause. Dr. Svendsen explained how in these cases, a stem cell-based approach to at least fix the cellular cause of the disease, would be the best option.

While neurons often capture all the attention in the brain, since they are the cells that actually send messages that underlie our thoughts and behaviors, the Svendsen lab spends a great deal of time thinking about another type of cell that they think will be a powerhouse in the clinic: astrocytes. Astrocytes are often labeled as the support cells of the brain as they are crucial for maintaining a balance of chemicals to keep neurons healthy and functioning. So Dr. Svendsen reasoned that perhaps astrocytes might unlock a new route to treating neurodegenerative diseases where neurons are unhealthy and losing function.

ALS is a devastating disease that starts with early muscle twitches and leads to complete paralysis and death usually within four years, due to the rapid degeneration of motor neurons that are important for movement all over the body. Svendsen’s team found that by getting astrocytes to secrete a special growth factor, called “GDNF”, they could improve the survival of the neurons that normally die in their model of ALS by five to six times.

After testing this out in several animal models, the first FDA-approved trial to test whether astrocytes from fetal tissue can slow spinal motor neuron loss will begin next month! They will be injecting the precursor cells that can make these GDNF-releasing astrocytes into one leg of ALS patients. That way they can compare leg function and track whether the cells and GDNF are enough to slow the disease progression.

Dr. Svendsen shared with us how long it takes to create and test a treatment that is committed to safety and success for its patients. He says,

Clive Svendsen has been on a 15-year quest to develop an ALS therapy

Clive Svendsen 

“We filed in March 2016, submitted the improvements Oct 2016, and we’re starting our first patient in Feb 2017. [One document is over] 4500 pages… to go to the clinic is a lot of work. Without CIRM’s funding and support we wouldn’t have been able to do this. This isn’t easy. But it is doable!”

 

Improving outcomes in long-term stroke patients in unknown ways

Gary Steinberg

Gary Steinberg

The last speaker for the workshop, Dr. Gary Steinberg, a neurosurgeon at Stanford who is looking to change the lives of patients with severe limitations after having a stroke. The deficits seen after a stroke are thought to be caused by the death of neurons around the area where the stroke occurred, such that whatever functions they were involved with is now impaired. Outcomes can vary for stroke patients depending on how long it takes for them to get to the emergency department, and some people think that there might be a sweet spot for when to start rehabilitative treatments — too late and you might never see dramatic recovery.

But Dr. Steinberg has some evidence that might make those people change their mind. He thinks, “these circuits are not irreversibly damaged. We thought they were but they aren’t… we just need to continue figuring out how to resurrect them.”

He showed stunning videos from his Phase 1/2a clinical trial of several patients who had suffered from a stroke years before walking into his clinic. He tested patients before treatment and showed us videos of their difficulty to perform very basic movements like touching their nose or raising their legs. After carefully injecting into the brain some stem cells taken from donors and then modified to boost their ability to repair damage, he saw a dramatic recovery in some patients as quickly as one day later. A patient who couldn’t lift her leg was holding it up for five whole seconds. She could also touch her arm to her nose, whereas before all she could do was wiggle her thumb. One year later she is even walking, albeit slowly.

He shared another case of a 39 year-old patient who suffered a stroke didn’t want to get married because she felt she’d be embarrassed walking down the aisle, not to mention she couldn’t move her arm. After Dr. Steinberg’s trial, she was able to raise her arm above her head and walk more smoothly, and now, four years later, she is married and recently gave birth to a boy.

But while these studies are incredibly promising, especially for any stroke victims, Dr. Steinberg himself still is not sure exactly how this stem cell treatment works, and the dramatic improvements are not always consistent. He will be continuing his clinical trial to try to better understand what is going on in the injured and recovering brain so he can deliver better care to more patients in the future.

The road to safe and effective therapies using stem cells is long but promising

These were just three of many excellent presentations at the conference, and while these talks involved moving science into human patients for clinical trials, the work described truly stands on the shoulders of all the other research shared at conferences, both present and past. In fact, the reason why scientists gather at conferences is to give one another feedback and to learn from each other to better their own work.

Some of the other exciting talks that are surely laying down the framework for future clinical trials involved research on modeling mini-brains in a dish (so-called cerebral organoids). Researchers like Jürgen Knoblich at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Austria talked about the new ways we can engineer these mini-brains to be more consistent and representative of the real brain. We also heard from really fundamental biology studies trying to understand how one type of cell becomes one vs. another type using the model organism C. elegans (a microscopic, transparent worm) by Dr. Oliver Hobert of Columbia University. Dr. Austin Smith, from the University of Cambridge in the UK, shared the latest about the biology of pluripotent cells that can make any cell type, and Stanford’s Dr. Marius Wernig, one of the meeting’s organizers, told us more of what he’s learned about the road to reprogramming an ordinary skin cell directly into a neuron.

Stay up to date with the latest research on stem cells by continuing to follow this blog and if you’re reading this because you’re considering a stem cell treatment, make sure you find out what’s possible and learn about what to ask by checking out closerlookatstemcells.org.

Samantha Yammine

Samantha Yammine

Samantha Yammine is a science communicator and a PhD candidate in Dr. Derek van der Kooy’s lab at the University of Toronto. You can learn more about Sam and her research on her website.