Dr. Jill Helms, and associate! Photo courtesy Stanford University
Jill Helms is not your average Stanford University faculty member. Yes, she is a professor in the Department of Surgery. Yes, she has published lots of scientific studies. Yes, she is a stem cell scientist (funded by CIRM). And yes, she is playing a leading role in Ankasa Regenerative Therapeutics, a company focused on tissue repair and regeneration. But she is so much more than all that.
She is a brilliant public speaker, a fashionista, and has ridden her horse to work (well, Stanford is referred to as The Farm, so why not!) and she lives on a farm of her own called “Follow Your Bliss.” The name comes from philosopher Joseph Campbell who wrote, “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of path that has been there all the while, waiting for you. And the life you ought to be living is the one you are living.”
Dr. Helms says that pretty much sums up her life. She says she feels enormously blessed.
Well, we felt enormously blessed when she agreed to sit down with us and chat about her work, her life and her love of fashion for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine podcast, Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation.
Sean Entin, stroke survivor and founder of Stroke Hacker
The word “miraculous” gets tossed around a lot in the world of medicine, mostly by people who have made an unexpected recovery from a deadly or life-threatening condition. In Sean Entin’s case calling his recovery from an almost-fatal stroke could be called miraculous, but I think you would also have to say it’s due to hard work, determination, and an attitude that never even considered giving up.
Sean had a stroke in 2011. Doctors didn’t think he’d survive. He was put into a coma and underwent surgery to create an opening in his skull to give his brain time and space to heal. When he woke he couldn’t walk or talk, couldn’t count. Doctors told him he would never walk again.
They didn’t know Sean. Fast forward to today. Sean is active, has completed two 5k races – that’s two more than me – and has created Stroke Hacker, a program designed to help others going through what he did.
Sean is a remarkable man, which is why I sat down to chat with him for the latest episode of the California Institutes for Regenerative Medicine’s podcast, ‘Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation’.
He is a fascinating man, and he makes for fascinating company. Enjoy the podcast.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has invested more than $80 million in stroke research, including one clinical trial currently underway.
Every day I field phone calls and emails from people looking for a stem cell therapy to help them cope with everything from arthritis to cancer. Often, they will mention that they saw an ad for a clinic online or in a local newspaper claiming they had stem cell therapies that could help fix anything and asking me if they are legitimate.
Even after I try to explain that the therapies these clinics are offering haven’t been tested in a clinical trial and that there’s scant evidence to show they are even safe let alone effective, I know that a good chunk of the callers are going to try them anyway.
Now a survey by the Mayo Clinic takes a deeper dive into why people are willing to put science aside and open up their wallets to go to predatory stem cell clinics for so-called “therapies”.
Dr. Zubin Master. Photo courtesy Mayo Clinic
In a news release Dr. Zubin Master, a co-author of the study, says many patients are lured in by hype and hope.
“We learned that many patients interested in stem cells had beliefs that are not supported by current medical evidence. For example, many thought stem cells were better than surgery or the standard of care.”
The survey asked 533 people, who had approached the Mayo Clinic’s Regenerative Medicine Therapeutic Suites for a consultation about arthritis or musculoskeletal problems, three questions.
Why are you interested in stem cell treatment for your condition?
How did you find out about stem cell treatment for your condition?
Have you contacted a stem cell clinic?
A whopping 46 percent of those who responded said they thought stem cell therapy would help them avoid or at least delay having to get a hip or knee replacement, or that it was a better option than surgery. Another 26 percent said they thought it would ease the pain of an arthritic joint.
The fact that there is little or no evidence to support any of these beliefs didn’t seem to matter. Most people say they got their information about these “therapies” online or by talking to friends and family.
These “therapies” aren’t cheap either. They can cost thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, and that comes out of the patient’s pocket because none of this is covered by insurance. Yet every year people turn to these bogus clinics because they don’t like the alternatives, mainly surgery.
There is a lot of promising stem cell research taking place around the US trying to find real scientific solutions to arthritic joints and other problems. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has invested almost $24 million in this research. But until those approaches have proven themselves effective and, hopefully, been approved for wider use by the Food and Drug Administration, CIRM and other agencies will have to keep repeating a message many people just don’t want to hear, that these therapies are not yet ready for prime time.
While stem cell and gene therapy research has advanced dramatically in recent years, there are still many unknowns and many questions remaining about how best to use these approaches in developing therapies. That’s why the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) today approved investing almost $25 million in 19 projects in early stage or Discovery research.
The awards are from CIRM’s DISC2 Quest program, which supports the discovery of promising new stem cell-based and gene therapy technologies that could be translated to enable broad use and ultimately, improve patient care.
“Every therapy that helps save lives or change lives begins with a researcher asking a simple question, “What if?”, says Dr. Maria T. Millan, the President and CEO of CIRM. “Our Quest awards reflect the need to keep supporting early stage research, to gain a deeper understanding of stem cells work and how we can best tap into that potential to advance the field.”
Dr. Judy Shizuru at Stanford University was awarded $1.34 million to develop a safer, less-toxic form of bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HCT). HCT is the only proven cure for many forms of blood disorders that affect people of all ages, sexes, and races worldwide. However, current methods involve the use of chemotherapy or radiation to destroy the patient’s own unhealthy blood stem cells and make room for the new, healthy ones. This approach is toxic and complex and can only be performed by specialized teams in major medical centers, making access particularly difficult for poor and underserved communities.
Dr. Shizuru proposes developing an antibody that can direct the patient’s own immune cells to kill diseased blood stem cells. This would make stem cell transplant safer and more effective for the treatment of many life-threatening blood disorders, and more accessible for people in rural or remote parts of the country.
Lili Yang UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center: Photo courtesy Reed Hutchinson PhotoGraphics
Dr. Lili Yang at UCLA was awarded $1.4 million to develop an off-the-shelf cell therapy for ovarian cancer, which causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system.
Dr. Yang is using immune system cells, called invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT) to attack cancer cells. However, these iNKT cells are only found in small numbers in the blood so current approaches involve taking those cells from the patient and, in the lab, modifying them to increase their numbers and strength before transplanting them back into the patient. This is both time consuming and expensive, and the patient’s own iNKT cells may have been damaged by the cancer, reducing the likelihood of success.
In this new study Dr. Yang will use healthy donor cord blood cells and, through genetic engineering, turn them into the specific form of iNKT cell therapy targeting ovarian cancer. This DISC2 award will support the development of these cells and do the necessary testing and studies to advance it to the translational stage.
Timothy Hoey and Tenaya Therapeutics Inc. have been awarded $1.2 million to test a gene therapy approach to replace heart cells damaged by a heart attack.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. with the highest incidence among African Americans. It’s caused by damage or death of functional heart muscle cells, usually due to heart attack. Because these heart muscle cells are unable to regenerate the damage is permanent. Dr. Hoey’s team is developing a gene therapy that can be injected into patients and turn their cardiac fibroblasts, cells that can contribute to scar tissue, into functioning heart muscle cells, replacing those damaged by the heart attack.
One of my favorite phrases is “standing room only”. I got a chance to use it last week when we held a panel discussion on whether regenerative medicine could turn back the clock on aging. The event was at the annual conference of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and more than 150 people packed into a conference room to hear the debate (so far more than 800 also watched a live stream of the event.)
It’s not surprising the place was jammed. The speakers included:
Dr. Deepak Srivastava, the President of the Gladstone Institutes, an expert on heart disease and the former President of ISSCR.
Dr. Stanley “Tom” Carmichael, Chair of the Department of Neurology at UCLA and an expert on strokes and other forms of brain injury.
Adrienne Shapiro, the mother of a daughter with sickle cell disease, a tireless patient advocate and supporter of regenerative medicine research, and the co-founder of Axis Advocacy, a family support organization for people with sickle cell.
And the topic is a timely one. It is estimated that as many as 90 percent of the people who die every day, die from diseases of aging such as heart disease, stroke, and cancer. So, what can be done to change that, to not just slow down or stop these diseases, but to turn back the clock, to repair the damage already done and replace cells and tissues already destroyed.
The conversation was enlightening, hopeful and encouraging, but also cautionary.
You can watch the whole event on our Youtube channel.
Glaucoma is the world’s leading cause of irreversible blindness. There is no cure and current treatments are only able to slow down the progression of the disease. Now research using stem cells to create a genetic blueprint of glaucoma is giving scientist a powerful new tool to combat the disease.
Glaucoma occurs when healthy retinal ganglion cells, which relay information from the eyes to the brain, are damaged and die. However, researchers were unable to really understand what was happening because the only way to look at retinal ganglion cells was through very invasive procedures.
So, researchers in Australia took skin cells from people with glaucoma and people with healthy eyes and, using the iPSC method, turned them into retinal ganglion cells. They were then able to map the genetic expression of these cells and compare the healthy cells with the diseased ones.
In an interview with Science Daily, Professor Joseph Powell, who led the team, says they were able to identify more than 300 unique genetic features which could provide clues as to what is causing the vision loss.
“The sequencing identifies which genes are turned on in a cell, their level of activation and where they are turned on and off —— like a road network with traffic lights. This research gives us a genetic roadmap of glaucoma and identifies 312 sites in the genome where these lights are blinking. Understanding which of these traffic lights should be turned off or on will be the next step in developing new therapies to prevent glaucoma.”
Powell says by identifying underlying causes for glaucoma researchers may be able to develop new, more effective therapies.
It is estimated that as many as 90 percent of people in industrialized countries who die every day, die from diseases of aging such as heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Of those still alive the numbers aren’t much more reassuring. More than 80 percent of people over the age of 65 have a chronic medical condition, while 68 percent have two or more.
Current medications can help keep some of those conditions, such as high blood pressure, under control but regenerative medicine wants to do a lot more than that. We want to turn back the clock and restore function to damaged organs and tissues and limbs. That research is already underway and we are inviting you to a public event to hear all about that work and the promise it holds.
On June 16th from 3p – 4.30p PST we are holding a panel discussion exploring the impact of regenerative medicine on aging. We’ll hear from experts on heart disease and stroke; we will look at other ground breaking research into aging; and we’ll discuss the vital role patients and patient advocates play in helping advance this work.
The discussion is taking place in San Francisco at the annual conference of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. But you can watch it from the comfort of your own home. That’s because we are going to live stream the event.
Dr. Diljeet Gill, photo courtesy Babraham Institute, Cambridge UK
Sometimes when I am giving public presentations people ask if stem cells are good for the face. I always say that if stem cells could help improve people’s faces would I look like this. It’s a line that gets a laugh but it’s also true. The ads you see touting stem cells as being beneficial for skin are all using plant stem cells. But now some new research has managed to turn back the clock for skin cells, and it might do a lot more than just help skin look younger.
Back in 2007 Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka discovered a way to turn ordinary skin cells back into an embryonic-like state, meaning those cells could then be turned into any other cell in the body. He called these cells induced pluripotent stem cells or iPSCs. Dr. Yamanaka was later awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for this work.
Using this work as their starting point, a team at Cambridge University in the UK, have developed a technique that can rewind the clock on skin cells but stop it less than a third of the way through, so they have made the cells younger but didn’t erase their identity as skin cells.
The study, published in the journal ELifeSciences, showed the researchers were able to make older skin cells 30 years younger. This wasn’t about restoring a sense of youthful beauty to the skin, instead it was about something far more important, restoring youthful function to the skin.
In a news release, Dr Diljeet Gill, a lead author on the study, said: “Our understanding of ageing on a molecular level has progressed over the last decade, giving rise to techniques that allow researchers to measure age-related biological changes in human cells. We were able to apply this to our experiment to determine the extent of reprogramming our new method achieved.”
The team proved the potential for their work using fibroblasts, the most common kind of cell found in connective tissues such as skin. Fibroblasts are important because they produce collagen which helps provide support and structure to tissues and also helps in healing wounds. When the researchers examined the rejuvenated skin cells they found they were producing more collagen than cells that had not been rejuvenated. They also saw signs that these rejuvenated cells could help heal wounds better than the old cells.
The researchers also noted that this approach had an effect on other genes linked to age-related conditions, such Alzheimer’s disease and the development of cataracts.
The researchers acknowledge that this is all very early on, but the fact that they were able to make the cells behave and act like younger cells, without losing their identity as skin cells, holds tremendous promise not just for conditions affecting the skin, but for regenerative medicine as a whole.
Dr. Diljeet concluded: “Our results represent a big step forward in our understanding of cell reprogramming. We have proved that cells can be rejuvenated without losing their function and that rejuvenation looks to restore some function to old cells. The fact that we also saw a reverse of ageing indicators in genes associated with diseases is particularly promising for the future of this work.”
As we start the New Year with a fervent hope that it’s better than the last two, many people are making a resolution to get more exercise. A new study suggests that might not just benefit the body, it could also help the brain. At least if you are a mouse.
Researchers at the University of Queensland Brain Institute found that 35 days of exercise could improve brain function and memory.
In an interview in Futurity, Dan Blackmore, one of the lead researchers on the study, says they not only showed the benefits of exercise, but also an explanation for why it helps.
“We tested the cognitive ability of elderly mice following defined periods of exercise and found an optimal period or ‘sweet spot’ that greatly improved their spatial learning. We found that growth hormone (GH) levels peaked during this time, and we’ve been able to demonstrate that artificially raising GH in sedentary mice also was also effective in improving their cognitive skills. We discovered GH stimulates the production of new neurons in the hippocampus—the region of the brain critically important to learning and memory.
Obviously, this is great for mice, but they hope that future research could show similar benefits for people. But don’t wait for that study to come out, there’s already plenty of evidence that exercising has terrific benefits for the body. Here’s just seven ways it can give you a boost.
Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have used a stem cell-based bio-implant to repair cartilage and delay joint degeneration in a large animal model. This paves the way to potentially treat humans with cartilage injuries and osteoarthritis, which occurs when the protective cartilage at the ends of the bones wears down over time. The disorder affects millions worldwide.
The researchers are using this technology to manufacture the first 64 implants to be tested on humans with support from a $6 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).
Researchers Dr. Denis Evseenko, and Dr. Frank Petrigliano led the development of the therapeutic bio-implant, called Plurocart. It’s composed of a scaffold membrane seeded with stem cell-derived chondrocytes, the cells responsible for producing and maintaining healthy articular cartilage tissue.
In the study, the researchers implanted the Plurocart membrane into a pig model of osteoarthritis, resulting in the long-term repair of articular cartilage defects. Evseenko said the findings are significant because the implant fully integrated in the damaged articular cartilage tissue and survived for up to six months. “Previous studies have not been able to show survival of an implant for such a long time,” Evseenko added.
The researchers also found that the cartilage tissue generated was strong enough to withstand compression and elastic enough to accommodate movement without breaking.
Osteoarthritis, an often-painful disorder, can affect any joint, but most commonly affects those in our knees, hips, hands and spine. The USC researchers hope their implant will help prevent the development of arthritis and alleviate the need for invasive joint replacement surgeries.
“Many of the current options for cartilage injury are expensive, involve complex logistical planning, and often result in incomplete regeneration,” said Petrigliano. “Plurocart represents a practical, inexpensive, one-stage therapy that may be more effective in restoring damaged cartilage and improve the outcome of such procedures.”
Read the full study here and learn more about the CIRM grant here.
The Stem Cellar 