During this third week of the Month of CIRM, we are focusing on CIRM’s Infrastructure programs which are all focused on helping to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.

Time is money. It’s a cliché but still very true, especially in running a business. The longer it takes to get things done, the more costs you’ll most likely face. But in the business of developing new medical therapies, time is also people’s lives.

Currently, it takes about eight years to move a promising stem cell treatment from the lab into clinical trials. For patients with fatal, incurable diseases, that is eight years too long. And even when promising therapies reach clinical trials, only about 1 out of 10 get approved, according to a comprehensive 2014 study in Nature Biotechnology. These sobering stats slow the process of getting treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.

While a lack of therapy effectiveness or safety play into the low success rate, other factors can have a significant impact on the delay or suspension of a trial. An article, “Why Do Clinical Trials Fail?” in Clinical Trials Arena from a couple years back outlined a few. Here’s a snippet from that article:

• “Poor study design: Selecting the wrong patients, the wrong dosing and the wrong endpoint, as well as bad data and bad site management cause severe problems.”
• “Complex protocol: Simple is better. A complex protocol, which refers to trying to answer too many questions in one single trial, can produce faulty data and contradictory results.”
• “Poor management: A project manager who does not have enough experience in costing and conducting clinical trials will lead to weak planning, with no clear and real timelines, and to ultimate failure.”

CIRM recognized that these clinical trial planning and execution setbacks can stem from the fact that, although lab researchers are experts at transforming an idea into a candidate therapy, they may not be masters in navigating the complex regulatory requirements of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Many simply don’t have the experience to get those therapies off the ground by themselves.

Lab researchers are experts at transforming an idea into a candidate therapy but most are inexperienced at navigating the complex regulatory requirements of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

So, to help make this piece of the therapy development process more efficient and faster, the CIRM governing Board last year approved the launch of the Translating Center and Accelerating Center: two novel infrastructure programs which CIRM grantees can tap into as they carry their promising candidate therapies from lab experiments in cells to preclinical studies in animals to clinical trials in people. Both centers were awarded to QuintilesIMS which collectively dubbed them The Stem Cell Center.

The Stem Cell Center acts as a one-stop-shop, stem cell therapy development support system for current and prospective CIRM grantees, giving them advanced priority for QuintilesIMS services. So how does it work? When a scientist’s initial idea for a cell therapy gains traction and, through a lot of effort in the lab, matures into a bona fide therapy candidate to treat a particular disease, the next big step is to prepare the therapy for testing in people. But that’s easier said than done. To ensure safety, the Food and Drug Administration requires a rigorous set of tests and documentation that make up an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, which must be submitted before any testing in people take can place in the U.S.

That’s where the Translation Center comes into the picture. It carries out the necessary research activities to show, as much as is possible in animals, that the therapy is safe. The Translating Center also helps at this stage with manufacturing the cell therapy product so that it’s of a consistent quality for both the preclinical and future clinical trial studies. If all goes as planned, the grantee will have the necessary pieces to file an IND. At this stage, the Translating Center coordinates with the Accelerating Center which focuses on supporting the many facets of a clinical study including the IND filing, clinical trial design, monitoring of patient safety, and project management.

Because the work of Translating and Accelerating Centers is focused on these regulatory activities day in and day out, they have the know-how to pave a clearer path, with fewer pitfalls, for the grantee to navigate the complex maze we call cell therapy development. It’s not just helpful for the researchers seeking approval from the FDA, but it helps the FDA too. Because cell therapies are still so new, creating a standardized, uniform approach to stem cell-based clinical trial projects will help the FDA streamline their evaluation of the projects.

Ultimately, and most importantly, all of those gears running smoothly in sync will help leave a lasting legacy for California and the world: an acceleration in the development of stem cell treatment for patients with unmet medical needs.