Diabetes

A conversation with Bob Klein about the past, present and future of CIRM

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Bob Klein

Anyone who knows anything about CIRM knows about Bob Klein. He’s the main author and driving force behind both Proposition 71 and Proposition 14, the voter-approved ballot initiatives that first created and then refunded CIRM. It’s safe to say that without Bob there’d be no CIRM.

Recently we had the great good fortune to sit down with Bob to chat about the challenges of getting a proposition on the ballot in a time of pandemic and electoral pandemonium, what he thinks CIRM’s biggest achievements are (so far) and what his future plans are.

You can hear that conversation in the latest episode of our podcast, “Talking ’bout (re) Generation”.

Enjoy.

Stem cell therapy for diabetic foot ulcers shows promise in new study

/ Yimy Villa / 2 Comments

For individuals with diabetes, the body’s inability to properly control blood sugar levels can lead to a wide range of other problems as time passes. One major issue is a diabetic foot ulcer (DFU), an open sore or wound that is commonly located on the bottom of the foot and caused by poor blood circulation and nerve damage. It occurs in approximately 15% of individuals with diabetes and in severe cases can lead to foot or leg amputation. Unfortunately, there is usually no effective form of treatment for this condition.

However, results from several studies authorized by the Ministry of Health of Nicaragua showed that using a stem cell therapy to treat patients with DFUs was safe and could be beneficial to patients.

The first results in a pilot study after an 18-month period demonstrated safety of the therapy and complete wound healing by nine months. After the six-year mark, five of the initial 10 subjects still demonstrated persistence of clinical benefits. It should be noted that five had passed away due to cardiac and other non-study-related causes.

In another study, the team wanted to determine the safety and efficacy of the stem cell therapy to treat non-healing DFUs greater than 3 centimeters in diameter.

For this clinical trial, 63 people from 35 to 70 years old with Type 2 diabetes and chronic DFU, all of whom were amputation candidates, were treated with a mixture of various types of stem cells obtained from the patient’s own fat tissue. The stem cell therapy was injected directly into the DFU with the hopes of restoring damaged blood vessels and promoting blood circulation and healing.

Patients were seen six months post treatment to evaluate ulcer closure, with 51 patients achieving 100 percent DFU closure and eight having greater than 75 percent. Only three required early amputations and one patient died. At 12 months post treatment, 50 patients had 100 percent DFU healing, while four had greater than 85 percent healing.

In a news release, Dr. Anthony Atala, Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, expressed interest in evaluating this stem cell therapy and results further.

“This work should be reviewed as it demonstrates the possibility of a novel cell injection therapy that can alleviate pain and infection, accelerate wound healing, and possibly avoid amputation.”

The full results of the recent study were published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

A word from our Chair, several in fact

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

In 2005, the New Oxford American Dictionary named “podcast” its word of the year. At the time a podcast was something many had heard of but not that many actually tuned in to. My how times have changed. Now there are some two million podcasts to chose from, at least according to the New York Times, and who am I to question them.

Yesterday, in the same New York Times, TV writer Margaret Lyons, wrote about how the pandemic helped turn her from TV to podcasts: “Much in the way I grew to prefer an old-fashioned phone call to a video chat, podcasts, not television, became my go-to medium in quarantine. With their shorter lead times and intimate production values, they felt more immediate and more relevant than ever before.”

I mention this because an old colleague of ours at CIRM, Neil Littman, has just launched his own podcast and the first guest on it was Jonathan Thomas, Chair of the CIRM Board. Their conversation ranged from CIRM’s past to the future of the regenerative field as a whole, with a few interesting diversions along the way. It’s fun listening. And as Margaret Lyons said it might be more immediate and more relevant than ever before.

UCSF Nursing Professor Joins CIRM Board

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Elena Flowers, PhD, RN, newest member of the CIRM Board: Photo courtesy UCSF

Elena Flowers, PhD, RN, an associate professor of physiological nursing at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is joining the Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state’s Stem Cell Agency.

Dr. Flowers was appointed to the Board by State Controller Betty T. Yee who said: “Ms. Flowers’ experience and express commitment to equitable health outcomes for California’s diverse communities will bring a valued perspective to the work ahead.”

Dr. Flowers is a member of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics and the International Society of Nurses in Genetics. As a researcher her work focuses on genomics involving precision medicine and risk factors for cardiovascular health and type 2 diabetes. She is also a teacher and has lectured internationally on issues such as topics from racial disparities in Type 2 Diabetes to the implications of genomic technologies for the nursing workforce.

CIRM Board Chair, Jonathan Thomas, PhD, JD, welcomed the appointment: “Dr. Flowers brings a wealth of experience and expertise to our Board and, as a nurse, she will bring a different perspective to the work we do and help us in trying to better address the needs of underserved communities.” 

“I am honored to have the opportunity to serve the citizens of California in this capacity,” says Dr. Flowers. “CIRM has ambitious goals, seeking to improve upon common limitations of public research agencies by its commitment to delivering meaningful findings and ultimately treatments for patients as rapidly as possible. I’m particularly committed to improving inclusion and access to these treatments across the entire diverse California population.”

Dr. Flowers got her undergraduate degree at UC Davis and then served as a research assistant at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She then went on to get her MS and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at the UCSF School of Nursing.

In her spare time she has no spare time because she is the mother of two young daughters.

Inspiring new documentary about stem cell research

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Poster for the documentary “Ending Disease”

2020 has been, to say the very least, a difficult and challenging year for all of us. But while the focus of the world has, understandably, been on the coronavirus there was also some really promising advances in stem cell research. Those advances are captured in a great new documentary called Ending Disease.

The documentary is by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Joe Gantz. In it he follows ten people who are facing life-threatening or life-changing diseases and injuries and who turn to pioneering stem cell therapies for help.

It’s an inspiring documentary, one that reminds you of the real need for new treatments and the tremendous hope and promise of stem cell therapies. Here’s a look at a trailer for Ending Disease.

You can see an exclusive screening of Ending Disease on Friday, January 8th, 2021 at 5:00pm PST.

After the livestream, there will be a live Q&A session where former members of the successful Proposition 14 campaign team – which refunded CIRM with an additional $5.5 billion – will be joined by CIRM’s President and CEO Dr. Maria Millan, talking about what lies ahead for CIRM and the future of stem cell research.

To purchase a ticket, click here. It only costs $12 and 50% of the ticket sales proceeds will go to Americans for Cures to help them continue to advocate for the advancement of stem cell research, and more importantly, for the patients and families to whom stem cell research provides so much hope.

If you need any extra persuading that it’s something you should definitely put on our calendar, here’s a letter from the film maker Joe Gantz.

I am the director of the documentary Ending Disease: The Stem Cell, Anti-Cancer T-Cell, & Antibody Revolution In Medicine, a film that will help inform people about the progress that’s been made in this field and how people with their lives on the line are now able to benefit from these new regenerative therapies. 

I was granted unprecedented access to ten of the first generation of clinical trials using stem cell and regenerative medicine to treat and cure many of the most devastating diseases and conditions including: brain cancer, breast cancer, leukemia and lymphoma, HIV, repairing a broken spinal cord, retinitis pigmentosa and SCID. The results are truly inspiring.

This is personal for me.  After spending four years making this documentary, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Upon diagnosis, I immediately felt the same desperation as millions of families who are in search of a medical breakthrough. I understood, on a personal level, what the patients we followed in the film all knew: when you are diagnosed with a disease, there is a narrow window of time in which you can effectively seek a life-saving treatment or cure. If treatment becomes available outside of that window, then it is too late. However, Ending Disease shows that with continued support for regenerative medicine, we can create a near future in which one-time cures and highly mitigating therapies are available to patients for a whole host of diseases.

Best regards,

Joe

Cures, clinical trials and unmet medical needs

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

When you have a great story to tell there’s no shame in repeating it as often as you can. After all, not everyone gets to hear first time around. Or second or third time. So that’s why we wanted to give you another opportunity to tune into some of the great presentations and discussions at our recent CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Network Symposium.

It was a day of fascinating science, heart-warming, and heart-breaking, stories. A day to celebrate the progress being made and to discuss the challenges that still lie ahead.

There is a wide selection of topics from “Driving Towards a Cure” – which looks at some pioneering work being done in research targeting type 1 diabetes and HIV/AIDS – to Cancer Clinical Trials, that looks at therapies for multiple myeloma, brain cancer and leukemia.

The COVID-19 pandemic also proved the background for two detailed discussions on our funding for projects targeting the coronavirus, and for how the lessons learned from the pandemic can help us be more responsive to the needs of underserved communities.

Here’s the agenda for the day and with each topic there’s a link to the video of the presentation and conversation.

Thursday October 8, 2020

View Recording: CIRM Fellows Trainees

9:00am Welcome Mehrdad Abedi, MD, UC Davis Health, ASCC Program Director  

Catriona Jamieson, MD,  View Recording: ASCC Network Value Proposition

9:10am Session I:  Cures for Rare Diseases Innovation in Action 

Moderator: Mark Walters, MD, UCSF, ASCC Program Director 

Don Kohn, MD, UCLA – View Recording: Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) 

Mark Walters, MD, UCSF, ASCC Program Director – View Recording: Thalassemia 

Pawash Priyank, View Recording: Patient Experience – SCID

Olivia and Stacy Stahl, View Recording: Patient Experience – Thalassemia

10 minute panel discussion/Q&A 

BREAK

9:55am Session II: Addressing Unmet Medical Needs: Driving Towards a Cure 

Moderator: John Zaia, MD, City of Hope, ASCC Program Direction 

Mehrdad Abedi, MD, UC Davis Health, ASCC Program Director – View Recording: HIV

Manasi Jaiman, MD, MPH, ViaCyte, Vice President, Clinical Development – View Recording: Diabetes

Jeff Taylor, Patient Experience – HIV

10 minute panel discussion/Q&A 

BREAK

10:40am Session III: Cancer Clinical Trials: Networking for Impact 

Moderator: Catriona Jamieson, MD, UC San Diego, ASCC Program Director 

Daniela Bota, MD, PhD, UC Irvine, ASCC Program Director – View Recording:  Glioblastoma 

Michael Choi, MD, UC San Diego – View Recording: Cirmtuzimab

Matthew Spear, MD, Poseida Therapeutics, Chief Medical Officer – View Recording: Multiple Myeloma  

John Lapham, Patient Experience –  View Recording: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) 

10 minute panel discussion/Q&A 

BREAK

11:30am Session IV: Responding to COVID-19 and Engaging Communities

Two live “roundtable conversation” sessions, 1 hour each.

Roundtable 1: Moderator Maria Millan, MD, CIRM 

CIRM’s / ASCC Network’s response to COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma, Cell Therapy and Novel Vaccine Approaches

Panelists

Michael Matthay, MD, UC San Francisco: ARDS Program

Rachael Callcut, MD, MSPH, FACS, UC Davis: ARDS Program 

John Zaia, MD, City of Hope: Convalescent Plasma Program 

Daniela Bota, MD, PhD, UC Irvine: Natural Killer Cells as a Treatment Strategy 

Key questions for panelists: 

  • Describe your trial or clinical program?
  • What steps did you take to provide access to disproportionately impacted communities?
  • How is it part of the overall scientific response to COVID-19? 
  • How has the ASCC Network infrastructure accelerated this response? 

Brief Break

Roundtable 2: Moderator Ysabel Duron, The Latino Cancer Institute and Latinas Contra Cancer

View Recording: Roundtable 2

Community Engagement and Lessons Learned from the COVID Programs.  

Panelists

Marsha Treadwell, PhD, UC San Francisco: Community Engagement  

Sheila Young, MD, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science: Convalescent Plasma Program in the community

David Lo, MD, PhD,  UC Riverside: Bringing a public health perspective to clinical interventions

Key questions for panelists: 

  • What were important lessons learned from the COVID programs? 
  • How can CIRM and the ASCC Network achieve equipoise among communities and engender trust in clinical research? 
  • How can CIRM and the ASCC Network address structural barriers (e.g. job constrains, geographic access) that limit opportunities to participate in clinical trials?

Exploring tough questions, looking for answers

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

COVID-19 and social and racial injustice are two of the biggest challenges facing the US right now. This Thursday, October 8th, we are holding a conversation that explores finding answers to both.

The CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Network Symposium is going to feature presentations about advances in stem cell and regenerative research, highlighting treatments that are already in the clinic and being offered to patients.

But we’re also going to dive a little deeper into the work we support, and use it to discuss two of the most pressing issues of the day.

One of the topics being featured is research into COVID-19. To date CIRM has funded 17 different projects, including three clinical trials. We’ll talk about how these are trying to find ways to help people infected with the virus, seeing if stem cells can help restore function to organs and tissues damaged by the virus, and if we can use stem cells to help develop safe and effective vaccines.

Immediately after that we are going to use COVID-19 as a way of exploring how the people most at risk of being infected and suffering serious consequences, are also the ones most likely to be left out of the research and have most trouble accessing treatments and vaccines.

Study after study highlights how racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in clinical trials and disproportionately affected by debilitating diseases. We have a responsibility to change that, to ensure that the underserved are given the same opportunity to take part in clinical trials as other communities.

How do we do that, how do we change a system that has resisted change for so long, how do we overcome the mistrust that has built up in underserved communities following decades of abuse? We’ll be talking about with experts who are on the front lines of this movement.

It promises to be a lively meeting. We’d love to see you there. It’s virtual – of course – it’s open to everyone, and it’s free.

Here’s where you can register and find out more about the Symposium

It’s all about the patients

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments
Ronnie, born with a fatal immune disorder now leading a normal life thanks to a CIRM-funded stem cell/gene therapy: Photo courtesy of his mum Upasana

Whenever you are designing something new you always have to keep in mind who the end user is. You can make something that works perfectly fine for you, but if it doesn’t work for the end user, the people who are going to work with it day in and day out, you have been wasting your time. And their time too.

At CIRM our end users are the patients. Everything we do is about them. Starting with our mission statement: to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs. Everything we do, every decision we make, has to keep the needs of the patient in mind.

So, when we were planning our recent 2020 Grantee Meeting (with our great friends and co-hosts UC Irvine and UC San Diego) one of the things we wanted to make sure didn’t get lost in the mix was the face and the voice of the patients. Often big conferences like this are heavy on science with presentations from some of the leading researchers in the field. And we obviously wanted to make sure we had that element at the Grantee meeting. But we also wanted to make sure that the patient experience was front and center.

And we did just that. But more on that in a minute. First, let’s talk about why the voice of the patient is important.

Some years ago, Dr. David Higgins, a CIRM Board member and patient advocate for Parkinson’s Disease (PD), said that when researchers are talking about finding treatments for PD they often focus on the dyskinesia, the trembling and shaking and muscle problems. However, he said if you actually asked people with PD you’d find they were more concerned with other aspects of the disease, the insomnia, anxiety and depression among other things. The key is you have to ask.

Frances Saldana, a patient advocate for research into Huntington’s disease

So, we asked some of our patient advocates if they would be willing to be part of the Grantee Meeting. All of them, without hesitation, said yes. They included Frances Saldana, a mother who lost three of her children to Huntington’s disease; Kristin MacDonald, who lost her sight to a rare disorder but regained some vision thanks to a stem cell therapy and is hoping the same therapy will help restore some more; Pawash Priyank, whose son Ronnie was born with a fatal immune disorder but who, thanks to a stem cell/gene therapy treatment, is now healthy and leading a normal life.

Because of the pandemic everything was virtual, but it was no less compelling for that. We interviewed each of the patients or patient advocates beforehand and those videos kicked off each session. Hearing, and seeing, the patients and patient advocates tell their stories set the scene for what followed. It meant that the research the scientists talked about took on added significance. We now had faces and names to highlight the importance of the work the scientists were doing. We had human stories. And that gave a sense of urgency to the work the researchers were doing.

But that wasn’t all. After all the video presentations each session ended with a “live” panel discussion. And again, the patients and patient advocates were a key part of that. Because when scientists talk about taking their work into a clinical trial they need to know if the way they are setting up the trial is going to work for the patients they’re hoping to recruit. You can have the best scientists, the most promising therapy, but if you don’t design a clinical trial in a way that makes it easy for patients to be part of it you won’t be able to recruit or retain the people you need to test the therapy.

Patient voices count. Patient stories count.

But more than anything, hearing and seeing the people we are trying to help reminds us why we do this work. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day business of our jobs, struggling to get an experiment to work, racing to get a grant application in before the deadline. Sometimes we get so caught up in the minutiae of work we lose sight of why we are doing it. Or who we are doing it for.

At CIRM we have a saying; come to work every day as if lives depend on you, because lives depend on you. Listening to the voices of patients, seeing their faces, hearing their stories, reminds us not to waste a moment. Because lives depend on all of us.

Here’s one of the interviews that was featured at the event. I do apologize in advance for the interviewer, he’s rubbish at his job.

Charting a new course for stem cell research

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment

What are the latest advances in stem cell research targeting cancer? Can stem cells help people battling COVID-19 or even help develop a vaccine to stop the virus? What are researchers and the scientific community doing to help address the unmet medical needs of underserved communities? Those are just a few of the topics being discussed at the Annual CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Network Symposium on Thursday, October 8th from 9am to 1.30pm PDT.

Like pretty nearly everything these days the symposium is going to be a virtual event, so you can watch it from the comfort of your own home on a phone or laptop. And it’s free.

The CIRM Alpha Clinics are a network of leading medical centers here in California. They specialize in delivering stem cell and gene therapies to patients. So, while many conferences look at the promise of stem cell therapies, here we deal with the reality; what’s in the clinic, what’s working, what do we need to do to help get these therapies to patients in need?

It’s a relatively short meeting, with short presentations, but that doesn’t mean it will be short on content. Some of the best stem cell researchers in the U.S. are taking part so you’ll learn an awful lot in a short time.

We’ll hear what’s being done to find therapies for

  • Rare diseases that affect children
  • Type 1 diabetes
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Glioblastoma
  • Multiple myeloma

We’ll discuss how to create a patient navigation system that can address social and economic determinants that impact patient participation? And we’ll look at ways that the Alpha Clinic Network can partner with community care givers around California to increase patient access to the latest therapies.

It’s going to be a fascinating day. And did I mention it’s free!

All you have to do is go to this Eventbrite page to register.

And feel free to share this with your family, friends or anyone you think might be interested.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Meet the people who are changing the future

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments
Kristin MacDonald

Every so often you hear a story and your first reaction is “oh, I have to share this with someone, anyone, everyone.” That’s what happened to me the other day.

I was talking with Kristin MacDonald, an amazing woman, a fierce patient advocate and someone who took part in a CIRM-funded clinical trial to treat retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The disease had destroyed Kristin’s vision and she was hoping the therapy, pioneered by jCyte, would help her. Kristin, being a bit of a pioneer herself, was the first person to test the therapy in the U.S.

Anyway, Kristin was doing a Zoom presentation and wanted to look her best so she asked a friend to come over and do her hair and makeup. The woman she asked, was Rosie Barrero, another patient in that RP clinical trial. Not so very long ago Rosie was legally blind. Now, here she was helping do her friend’s hair and makeup. And doing it beautifully too.

That’s when you know the treatment works. At least for Rosie.

There are many other stories to be heard – from patients and patient advocates, from researchers who develop therapies to the doctors who deliver them. – at our CIRM 2020 Grantee Meeting on next Monday September 14th Tuesday & September 15th.

It’s two full days of presentations and discussions on everything from heart disease and cancer, to COVID-19, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and spina bifida. Here’s a link to the Eventbrite page where you can find out more about the event and also register to be part of it.

Like pretty much everything these days it’s a virtual event so you’ll be able to join in from the comfort of your kitchen, living room, even the backyard.

And it’s free!

You can join us for all two days or just one session on one day. The choice is yours. And feel free to tell your friends or anyone else you think might be interested.

We hope to see you there.