This past Thursday the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) were presented with an update on CIRM’s clinical portfolio, which to date includes 60 clinical trials in various areas including kidney failure, cancer, and other rare diseases.  The full President’s Report gives an update on 15 of these trials, in addition to our landmark Cure Sickle Cell Initiative with the NIH and our various educational programs.

Although we won’t be diving into extensive detail for all of these trials, we wanted to highlight several key updates made in this presentation to demonstrate how our clinical portfolio is maturing, with many of these trials moving towards registration. Classically, registration trials are large Phase 3 trials. Notably, some of the highlighted CIRM trials are small Phase 2 or earlier trials that seek to gain enough safety and efficacy data to support final FDA marketing approval. This is a trend with regenerative medicine programs where trial sizes are often small due to the fact that the affected populations are so small with some of these rare diseases. Despite this, the approaches could allow a so called “large effect size,” meaning the signal of clinical benefit per patient is strong enough to give a read of whether the therapy is working or not. CIRM programs often address rare unmet needs and utilize this approach.

For example, Orchard Therapeutics, which is conducting a phase 2 clinical trial for ADA Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (ADA-SCID), a rare immune disorder caused by a genetic mutation, has shown a long-term recovery of the immune system in 20 patients two years post treatment.  Orchard plans to submit a Biologics License Application (BLA) sometime in 2020, which is the key step necessary to obtain final approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a therapy.

“We are thrilled to see encouraging results for this genetically modified cell therapy approach and a path forward for FDA approval,” says Maria T. Millan, MD, President and CEO of CIRM. “CIRM is proud of the role it has played in this program.  We funded the program while it was at UCLA and it is now in partnership with Orchard Therapeutics as it takes the program through this final phase toward FDA marketing approval.  Success in this program is a game changer for patients with ADA-SCID who had no other options and who had no bone marrow transplant donors. It also opens up possibilities for future approaches for this dieaseas as well as the other 6,000 genetic diseases that currently have no treatment.”    

The trial uses a gene therapy approach that takes the patient’s own blood stem cells, introduces a functional version of the ADA gene, and reintroduces these corrected blood stem cells back into the patient. From blood tests, one can readily detect whether the approach is successful from the presence of ADA and from the presence of immune cells that were not previously present. To date, it has been awarded approximately $19 million in CIRM funding.  Additionally, it has received FDA Breakthrough Therapy as well as Orphan Drug Designations, both of which are designed to accelerate  the development of the treatment.

Another trial that was highlighted is Rocket Pharmaceutical’s clinical trial for Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-1 (LAD-1), a rare and fatal pediatric disease that affects the body’s ability to combat infections. They have just released initial results from their first patient. This is also a gene therapy approach using the patient’s own blood stem cells. The notable aspect of this trial is that the investigators designed this small phase 1 trial of nine patients to be “registration enabling.”  This means that, if they find compelling data, they intend to bring the experience and data from this trial to the FDA to seek agreement on what would be required to get final marketing approval in order to get this treatment to patients with severe unmet medical needs in the most timely way possible.     

Preliminary results demonstrate early evidence of safety and potential efficacy.  There were visible improvements in multiple disease-related skin lesions after receiving the therapy. They are collecting more data on more patients.  To date, it has received $6.6 million in CIRM funding.

As a unique immuno-oncology approach (using the body’s immune system to battle cancer), CIRM is funding Forty Seven Inc. to conduct a clinical trial for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), both of which are forms of cancer.  They have received Fast Track and Orphan Drug designation from the FDA.

The trial is using an antibody blocking CD47, a “don’t eat me” signal, which allows the body’s own immune cells to seek and destroy cancerous stem cells.  This is combined with chemotherapy to render the cancer stem cells more susceptible to immune destruction.  This trial has received $5 million in CIRM funding thus far.

Other registration phase trials in the CIRM portfolio include the following Phase 3 trials:

Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics, for a fatal debilitating neurodegenerative disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease).  That company has completed enrollment and expects top line results in the final quarter of 2020.

Humacyte, which is testing bioengineered de-cellularized vessels that are implanted to create vascular access that is repopulated by the patients own stem cells to make it more like native vessel.  The company is conducting two Phase 3 trials to compare this bioengineered vessel to synthetic grafts and to the patients’ own vessels for use in hemodialysis, a “life line” for patients with end stage renal disease. Humacyte was the first US FDA Cell Therapy program to receive the Regenerative Medicine Advanced Technologies (RMAT) in March 2017. To date, these trials have been awarded $24 million in CIRM funding.

Medeor Therapeutics has received $11.2M in CIRM funding to conduct a Phase 3 trial in combined blood stem cell and kidney transplantation to induce immunologic tolerance so that the blood stem cells teach the patient’s immune system to recognize the transplanted kidney as its own.  The goal is to remove the need for chronic immunosuppressive medications, that have its own complications. If successful, transplant recipients would not need to “trade one chronic condition for another.”