Obstetrics/Gynecology

Stem Cell Agency Board Invests in 19 Discovery Research Programs Targeting Cancers, Heart Disease and Other Disorders

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Dr. Judy Shizuru, Stanford University

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.

The full list of DISC2 Quest awards is:

APPLICATION NUMBERTITLE OF PROGRAMPRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORAMOUNT
  DISC2-13400  Targeted Immunotherapy-Based Blood Stem Cell Transplantation    Judy Shizuru, Stanford Universtiy  $1,341,910    
  DISC2-13505  Combating Ovarian Cancer Using Stem Cell-Engineered Off-The-Shelf CAR-iNKT Cells    Lili Yang, UCLA  $1,404,000
  DISC2-13515  A treatment for Rett syndrome using glial-restricted
neural progenitor cells  		  Alysson Muotri, UC San Diego  $1,402,240    
  DISC2-13454  Targeting pancreatic cancer stem cells with DDR1 antibodies.    Michael Karin, UC San Diego  $1,425,600  
  DISC2-13483  Enabling non-genetic activity-driven maturation of iPSC-derived neurons    Alex Savtchenko, Nanotools Bioscience  $675,000
  DISC2-13405  Hematopoietic Stem Cell Gene Therapy for Alpha
Thalassemia  		  Don Kohn, UCLA    $1,323,007  
    DISC2-13507  CAR T cells targeting abnormal N-glycans for the
treatment of refractory/metastatic solid cancers  		  Michael Demetriou, UC Irvine  $1,414,800  
  DISC2-13463  Drug Development of Inhibitors of Inflammation Using
Human iPSC-Derived Microglia (hiMG)  		  Stuart Lipton, Scripps Research Inst.  $1,658,123  
  DISC2-13390  Cardiac Reprogramming Gene Therapy for Post-Myocardial Infarction Heart Failure    Timothy Hoey, Tenaya Therapeutics  $1,215,000  
  DISC2-13417  AAV-dCas9 Epigenetic Editing for CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder    Kyle Fink, UC Davis  $1,429,378  
  DISC2-13415  Defining the Optimal Gene Therapy Approach of
Human Hematopoietic Stem Cells for the Treatment of
Dedicator of Cytokinesis 8 (DOCK8) Deficiency  		  Caroline Kuo, UCLA  $1,386,232  
  DISC2-13498  Bioengineering human stem cell-derived beta cell
organoids to monitor cell health in real time and improve therapeutic outcomes in patients  		  Katy Digovich, Minutia, Inc.  $1,198,550  
  DISC2-13469  Novel antisense therapy to treat genetic forms of
neurodevelopmental disease.  		  Joseph Gleeson, UC San Diego  $1,180,654  
  DISC2-13428  Therapeutics to overcome the differentiation roadblock in Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS)    Michael Bollong, Scripps Research Inst.  $1,244,160  
  DISC2-13456  Novel methods to eliminate cancer stem cells    Dinesh Rao, UCLA  $1,384,347  
  DISC2-13441  A new precision medicine based iPSC-derived model to study personalized intestinal fibrosis treatments in
pediatric patients with Crohn’s diseas  		  Robert Barrett Cedars-Sinai  $776,340
  DISC2-13512  Modified RNA-Based Gene Therapy for Cardiac
Regeneration Through Cardiomyocyte Proliferation		  Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes  $1,565,784
  DISC2-13510  An hematopoietic stem-cell-based approach to treat HIV employing CAR-T cells and anti-HIV broadly
neutralizing antibodies  		  Brian Lawson, The Scintillon Institute  $1,143,600  
  DISC2-13475  Developing gene therapy for dominant optic atrophy using human pluripotent stem cell-derived retinal organoid disease model    Xian-Jie Yang, UCLA  $1,345,691  

Promoting stem cell therapies, racial justice and fish breeding

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Jan Nolta, PhD, in her lab at UC Davis; Photo courtesy UC Davis

Working at CIRM you get to meet many remarkable people and Dr. Jan Nolta certainly falls into that category. Jan is the Director of the Stem Cell Program at UC Davis School of Medicine. She also directs the Institute for Regenerative Cures and is scientific director of both the Good Manufacturing Practice clean room facility at UC Davis and the California Umbilical Cord Blood Collection Program.

As if that wasn’t enough Jan is part of the team helping guide UC Davis’ efforts to expand its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion using a variety of methods including telemedicine, to reach out into rural and remote communities.

She is on the Board of several enterprises, is the editor of the journal Stem Cells and, in her copious spare time, has dozens of aquariums and is helping save endangered species.

So, it’s no wonder we wanted to chat to her about her work and find out what makes her tick. Oh, and what rock bands she really likes. You might be surprised!

That’s why Jan is the guest on the latest edition of our podcast ‘Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation’.

I hope you enjoy it.

Perseverance: from theory to therapy. Our story over the last year – and a half

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Some of the stars of our Annual Report

It’s been a long time coming. Eighteen months to be precise. Which is a peculiarly long time for an Annual Report. The world is certainly a very different place today than when we started, and yet our core mission hasn’t changed at all, except to spring into action to make our own contribution to fighting the coronavirus.

This latest CIRM Annual Reportcovers 2019 through June 30, 2020. Why? Well, as you probably know we are running out of money and could be funding our last new awards by the end of this year. So, we wanted to produce as complete a picture of our achievements as we could – keeping in mind that we might not be around to produce a report next year.

Dr. Catriona Jamieson, UC San Diego physician and researcher

It’s a pretty jam-packed report. It covers everything from the 14 new clinical trials we have funded this year, including three specifically focused on COVID-19. It looks at the extraordinary researchers that we fund and the progress they have made, and the billions of additional dollars our funding has helped leverage for California. But at the heart of it, and at the heart of everything we do, are the patients. They’re the reason we are here. They are the reason we do what we do.

Byron Jenkins, former Naval fighter pilot who battled back from his own fight with multiple myeloma

There are stories of people like Byron Jenkins who almost died from multiple myeloma but is now back leading a full, active life with his family thanks to a CIRM-funded therapy with Poseida. There is Jordan Janz, a young man who once depended on taking 56 pills a day to keep his rare disease, cystinosis, under control but is now hoping a stem cell therapy developed by Dr. Stephanie Cherqui and her team at UC San Diego will make that something of the past.

Jordan Janz and Dr. Stephanie Cherqui

These individuals are remarkable on so many levels, not the least because they were willing to be among the first people ever to try these therapies. They are pioneers in every sense of the word.

Sneha Santosh, former CIRM Bridges student and now a researcher with Novo Nordisk

There is a lot of information in the report, charting the work we have done over the last 18 months. But it’s also a celebration of everyone who made it possible, and our way of saying thank you to the people of California who gave us this incredible honor and opportunity to do this work.

We hope you enjoy it.

Testing a drug is safe before you give it to a pregnant woman

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Pregnant woman holding medicine.

When a doctor gives you a medication you like to think that it’s safe, that it has been tested to make sure it will do you some good or, at the very least, won’t do you any harm. That’s particularly true when the patient is a pregnant woman. You hope the medication won’t harm her or her unborn child. Now scientists in Switzerland have found a new way to do that that is faster and easier than previous methods, and it uses cell cultures instead of animals.

Right now, drugs that are intended for use in pregnant women have to undergo some pretty rigorous testing before they are approved. This involves lots of tests in the lab, and then in animals such as rats and rabbits. It’s time consuming, costly, and not always accurate because animals never quite mimic what happens in people.

In the past researchers tested new medications in the lab on so-called “embryoid bodies”. These are three-dimensional clumps of cells developed from embryonic stem cells from mice. The problem is that even when tested in this way the cells don’t always reflect what happens to a medication as it passes through the body. For example, some medications can seem fine on the surface but after they pass through the liver can take on toxic qualities. 

So, scientists at ETH Zurich in Basel, Switzerland, developed a better way to test for toxicity.

They took a cell-culture chip and created several compartments on it, in some they placed the embryoid bodies and in others they put microtissue samples from human livers.  The different compartments were connected so that fluid flowed freely from the embryoid bodies to the liver and vice versa.

In a news release, Julia Boos, a lead author of the study, says this better reflects what happens to a medication exposed to a human metabolism.

“We’re the first to directly combine liver and embryonic cells in a body-on-a-chip approach. Metabolites created by the liver cells – including metabolites that are stable for just a few minutes – can thus act directly on the embryonic cells. In contrast to tests on mice, in our test, the substances are metabolised by human liver cells – in other words, just as they would be in the human body when the medication is administered.”

To see if this worked in practice the researchers tested their approach on the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide, which is turned into a toxic substance after passing through the liver.

They compared results from testing cyclophosphamide with the new liver/embryoid body method to the older method. They found the new approach was far more sensitive and determined that a 400 percent lower concentration of cyclophosphamide was enough to pose a toxic threat.

The team now hope to refine the test even further so it can one day, hopefully, be applied to drug development on a large scale.

Their findings are published in the journal Advanced Science

Stem cell roundup: summer scientists, fat-blocking cells & recent human evolution

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Stem cell photo of the week: high schooler becoming a stem cell pro this summer

InstagramAnnaJSPARK

High school student Anna Guzman learning important lab skills at UC Davis

This summer’s CIRM SPARK Programs, stem cell research internships for high school students, are in full swing. Along with research assignments in top-notch stem cell labs, we’ve asked the students to chronicle their internship experiences through Instagram. And today’s stem cell photo of the week is one of those student-submitted posts. The smiling intern in this photo set is Anna Guzman, a rising junior from Sheldon High School who is in the UC Davis SPARK Program. In her post, she describes the lab procedure she is doing:

“The last step in our process to harvest stem cells from a sample of umbilical cord blood! We used a magnet to isolate the CD34 marked stem cells [blood stem cells] from the rest of the solution.”

Only a few days in and Anna already looks like a pro! It’s important lab skills like this one that could land Anna a future job in the stem cell field. Check out #cirmsparklab on Instagram to view the ever-growing number of posts.

Swiss team identifies a cell type that block formation of fat cells

Jun21_2018_EPFL_TwoDifferentAspectsOfFat1871459512

(Left) Mature human fat cells grown in a Petri dish (green, lipid droplets). (Right) A section of mouse fat tissue showing, in the middle, a blood vessel (red circle) surrounded by fat cell blocking cells called Aregs (arrows). [Bart Deplancke/EPFL]

Liposuction surgery helps slim and reshape areas of a person’s body through the removal of excess fat tissue. While the patient is certainly happy to get rid of those extra pounds, that waste product is sought after by researchers because it’s a rich source of regenerative cells including fat stem cells.

The exact populations of cells in this liposuction tissue has been unclear, so a collaboration of Swiss researchers – at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) – used a cutting-edge technique allowing them to examine the gene activity within single cells.

The analysis was successful in identifying several newly defined subpopulations of cells in the fat tissue. To their surprise, one of those cell types did not specialize into fat cells but instead did the opposite: they inhibited other fat stem cells from giving rise to fat cells. The initial experiments were carried out in mice, but the team went on to show similar fat-blocking cells in human tissue. Further experiments will explore the tantalizing prospect of applying these cells to control obesity and the many diseases, like diabetes, that result from it.

The study was published June 20st in Nature.

Connection identified between recent human evolution & risk for premature birth
Evidence of recent evolution in a human gene that’s critical for maintaining pregnancy may help explain why some populations have a higher risk for giving birth prematurely than others. That’s according to a recent report by researchers at the University of Stanford School of Medicine.

The study, funded in part by CIRM’s Genomics Initiative, compared DNA from people with East Asian, European and African ancestry. They specifically examined the gene encoding the progesterone hormone receptor which helps keep a pregnant woman from going into labor too soon. The gene is also associated with preterm births, the leading cause of infant death in the U.S.

The team was very surprise to find that people with East Asian ancestry had an evolutionarily new version of the gene while the European and African populations had mixtures of new and ancient versions. These differences may explain why the risk for premature birth among East Asian populations is lower than among pregnant women of European and African descent, though environment clearly plays a role as well.

Pediatrics professor Gary Shaw, PhD, one of the team leaders, put the results in perspective:

“Preterm birth has probably been with us since the origin of the human species,” said Shaw in a press release, “and being able to track its evolutionary history in a way that sheds new light on current discoveries about prematurity is really exciting.”

The study was published June 21st in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Stem cell stories that caught our eye: menstrual cycle on a chip, iPS cells from urine, Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Symposium videos

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Say hello to EVATAR, a mini female reproductive system on a 3D chip. (Karen Ring)
I was listening to the radio this week in my car and caught snippets of a conversation that mentioned the word “Evatar”. Having tuned in halfway through the story, naturally I thought that the reporters were talking about James Cameron’s sequel to Avatar, and was slightly puzzled about the early press since the sequel isn’t expected to come out until 2020.

I was wrong in my assumption, but not that far off. It turns out that they were actually talking about a cutting edge new technology that generates artificial organs on 3D microfluidic chips. In the case of EVATAR, scientists have developed a functioning mini female reproductive system with all the essential components to recreate the female menstrual cycle. This sounds like science fiction, but it’s real. If you don’t believe me, you can read the publication in the journal Nature Communications.

EVATAR is a 3D organ-on-a-chip representing the female reproductive system. (Photo credit: Woodruff Lab, Northwestern University.)

 The chip consists of small boxes that each house an essential component of the reproductive system including the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, cervix, and vagina. These tissues are generated from human stem cells except for the ovaries which were derived from mouse stem cells. The mini organs are connected to each other by tiny tubes and pumps that simulate blood flow and create a complete reproductive system. By adding specific hormones to this chip, the scientists stimulated the ovaries to produce the hormones estrogen and progesterone and even release an egg.

With EVATAR up and running, scientists are planning to use these personalized devices for various medical purposes including understanding reproductive diseases like endometriosis and testing how drugs affect specific people. The team is also developing a male version of this 3D reproductive chip called ADATAR and plans to study the two models side by side to understand differences in drug metabolism between men and women.

EVATAR is part of a larger project spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health to develop a “body-on-a-chip”. The lead author on the study, Teresa Woodruff from Northwestern University, explained in a news release how scaling down a human body to the size of a small chip that fits in your hand scales up the impact that the technology can have on developing personalized medicine for patients with various diseases.

“If I had your stem cells and created a heart, liver, lung and an ovary, I could test 10 different drugs at 10 different doses on you and say, ‘Here’s the drug that will help your Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or diabetes. It’s the ultimate personalized medicine, a model of your body for testing drugs.”

EVATAR has been popular in the press and was picked up by news outlets like NPR, STAT news and Tech Times. You can learn more about this technology by watching the video below provided by Northwestern Medicine.

Abracadabra: Researchers make stem cells from urine (Todd Dubnicoff)
I think one of the reasons the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technique became a Nobel Prize winning breakthrough, is due to its simplicity. All it takes is a slightly invasive skin biopsy and the addition of a few key factors to reprogram the skin cells into an embryonic stem cell-like state. The method is a game-changer for studying brain development disorders like Down Syndrome. Brain cells from affected individuals are not accessible so deriving these cells from iPSCs is critical in examining the differences between a healthy and Down Syndrome brain.

But skin biopsies are not “slightly invasive” when working with adults or children with an intellectual disability like Down Syndrome. The oversight committees that evaluate the ethics of a proposed human research study often denied such procedures. And even when they are approved, patients or caregivers have often dropped out of studies due to the biopsy method. This sensitive situation has hampered the progress of iPSC-based studies of Down Syndrome.

This week, a research team at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reported in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine that they’ve overcome this obstacle with a truly non-invasive procedure: collect cells via urine samples. But wait there’s more. It turns out that iPSCs derived from urine are more stable than their skin biopsy counterparts. The team believes it’s because skin cells, unlike cells found in urine, are exposed to the sunlight’s DNA-damaging UV radiation.

So far the team has banked iPSC lines from ten individuals with Down Syndrome which they will share with other researchers. Team lead Alberto Costa described the importance of these cell lines in a press release:

“Our methods represent a significant improvement in iPSC technology, and should be an important step toward the development of human cell-based platforms that can be used to test new medications designed to improve the quality of life of people with Down syndrome.”

ICYMI the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Symposium Talks are Now on YouTube!
Last week, City of Hope hosted a fantastic meeting featuring the efforts of our CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinics. It was the second annual symposium and it featured talks from scientists, doctors, patients and advocates about the advancements in stem cell-based clinical trials and the impacts those trials have had on the lives of patients.

We wrote about the symposium earlier this week, but we couldn’t capture all the amazing talks and stories that were shared throughout the day. Luckily, the City of Hope filmed all the talks and they are now available on YouTube. Below are a few that we selected, but be sure to check out the rest on the City of Hope YouTube page.


CIRM President and CEO Randy Mills highlights the goals of the CIRM Alpha Clinics Network and what’s been achieved since its inception in 2014. 


CIRM’s Geoffrey Lomax talks about how the vision of the Alpha Clinics has turned into a reality for patients.

CIRM-funded UC Irvine Scientist, Henry Klassen, talks about his promising stem cell clinical trial for patients with a blinding disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa.

Embryos with abnormal chromosomes can repair themselves

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CVS

In a chorionic villus sampling (CVS) test, cells from the fetal side of the placenta are collected and tests for genetic defects.
Image credit: ADAM Health Solutions

Like an increasing number of women, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz waited later in life to have kids and was pregnant at 44 with her second child. Because older moms have an increased risk of giving birth to children with genetic disorders, Zernicka-Goetz opted to have an early genetic screening test about 12 weeks into her pregnancy. The test, which looks for irregular amounts of chromosomes in the cells taken from the placenta, showed that a quarter of the cells in the developing fetus had genetic abnormalities.

Expectant mothers and tough choices

If she carried the child to term, would the baby have a birth defect? Zernicka-Goetz learned from geneticists that this question was difficult to answer due to a lack of data about what happens to abnormal cells in the developing fetus. Fortunately, her baby was born happy and healthy. But the experience motivated her to seek out a better understanding for the sake of other women who would be faced with similar difficult decisions based on screening tests.

As a professor of developmental biology at Cambridge University, Zernicka-Geotz had the expertise to follow through on this challenge. And in a Nature Communications journal article published yesterday, she and her team report a fascinating result: the very early embryo has the ability to essentially repair itself by getting rid of abnormal cells.

Aneuploidy: You Have the Wrong Number

aneuploidy

Aneuploidy in the developing fetus can lead to genetic disorders. Image credit: Deluca Lab Colorado State University

To reach this finding, the team first had to recreate chromosomal abnormalities in mouse embryos. If you remember your high school or college biology, you’ll recall that before a cell divides, it duplicates each chromosome and then each resulting “daughter” cell grabs one chromosome copy using a retracting spindle fiber structure. The scientists took advantage of the fact that treating dividing cells with the drug reversine destabilizes the spindle fibers and in turn causes an unequal divvying up of the chromosomes between the daughter cells. In scientific jargon the condition is called aneuploidy.

Rescuing the embryo by cellular suicide

Blog embryo repair fig 3

Generating early mouse embryos with an equal mix of normal cells and cells with abnormal chromosome numbers (induced via reversine treatment). Image credit: Bolton et al. Nat Commun. 2016 Mar 29;7:11165

The researchers created mosaic embryos at the eight cell stage in which half the cells had a normal set of chromosomes while the other half we’re the reversine-treated cells with abnormal numbers of chromosomes. With these genetically mosaic embryos, the team tagged the cells with fluorescent dye and used time-lapsed imaging to track the fate of each cell for 48 hours. They found a decrease specifically in the portion of cells that stemmed from the abnormal cells.

A follow up experiment examined cell death as a way to help explain the reduced number of abnormal cells. The researchers found that compared to the normal set of cells in the embryo, the abnormal cells had a significantly higher evidence of apoptosis, or programmed cell death, a natural process that occurs to eliminate harmful or damaged cells. According to Zernicka-Geota and the team, this is the first study to directly show the elimination of abnormal cells in the growing embryo.

Screen Shot 2016-03-30 at 11.25.43 AM.png

Time lapse images showing an abnormal cell (green cell indicated by arrow) being eliminated by apoptosis (programmed cell death) and then engulfed by normal (red) cells (engulfment indicated by star).
Image credit: Bolton et al. Nat Commun. 2016 Mar 29;7:11165

To look at their fate beyond the very early stages of development, the mosaic mouse embryos were implanted into foster mothers and allowed to develop to full term. Thirteen of the twenty-six embryos transferred to foster mothers gave rise to live pups which were all healthy after four months of age.

As Zermicka-Geota stated in a university press release picked up by Medical Express, if these findings reflect what goes on in human development, then decisions based on genetic screening results may not be clear cut:

“We found that even when half of the cells in the early stage embryo are abnormal, the embryo can fully repair itself. It will mean that even when early indications suggest a child might have a birth defect because there are some, but importantly not all abnormal cells in its embryonic body, this isn’t necessarily the case.”

Implications for genetic testing on days-old IVF embryos

These new results don’t suggest that current genetic testing is obsolete. For instance, the amniocentesis test, which collects fetal tissue from the mother’s amniotic fluid between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, can detect genetic disorders with 98-99% accuracy. But this study may have important implications for testing done much earlier. When couples conceive via in vitro fertilization, a so-called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) test can be performed on embryos that are only a few days old. In the test, a single cell is removed – without damaging the embryo – and the cell is tested for chromosomal defects. Based on this study, a positive PGD test may be misleading if that abnormal cell was destined to be eliminated from the embryo.

Stem cell stories that caught our eye: correcting cystic fibrosis gene, improving IVF outcome, growing bone and Dolly

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Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun.

Cystic Fibrosis gene corrected in stem cells. A team at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston corrected the defective gene that causes cystic fibrosis in stem cells made from the skin of cystic fibrosis patients. In the long term the advance could make it possible to grow new lungs for patients with genes that match their own—with one life-saving exception—and therefore avoid immune rejection. But, the short-term outcome will be a model for the disease that provides tools for evaluating potential new drug therapies.

“We’ve created stem cells corrected for the cystic fibrosis mutation that potentially could be utilized therapeutically for patients,” said Brian Davis the study’s senior author in a university press release. “While much work remains, it is possible that these cells could one day be used as a form of cell therapy.”

The researchers made the genetic correction in the stem cells using the molecular scissors known as zing finger nucleases. Essentially they cut out the bad gene and pasted in the correct version.

Stem cell researchers boost IVF. Given all the ethical issues raised in the early years of embryonic stem cell research it is nice to be able to report on work in the field that can boost the chances of creating a new life through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Building on earlier work at Stanford a CIRM-funded team there has developed a way to detect chromosome abnormalities in the embryo within 30 hours of fertilization.

Chromosomal abnormalities account for a high percent of the 60 to 70 percent of implanted embryos that end up in miscarriage. But traditional methods can’t detect those chromosomal errors until day five or six and clinicians have found that embryos implant best three to four days post fertilization. This new technique should allow doctors to implant only the embryos most likely to survive.

“A failed IVF attempt takes an emotional toll on a woman who is anticipating a pregnancy as well as a financial toll on families, with a single IVF treatment costing thousands and thousands of dollars per cycle. Our findings also bring hope to couples who are struggling to start a family and wish to avoid the selection and transfer of embryos with unknown or poor potential for implantation,” explained Shawn Chavez who led the team and has since moved to Oregon Health Sciences University.

The study, which used recent advanced technology in non-invasive imaging, was described in a press release from Oregon.

Fun TED-Ed video shows how to grow bone. Medical Daily published a story this week about a team that had released a TED-Ed video earlier this month on how to grow a replacement bone on the lab. The embedded video provides a great primer on how we normally grow and repair bone in our bodies and how that knowledge can inform efforts to grow bone in the lab.

In particular, the story walks through a scenario of a patient with a bone defect too large for our normal repair mechanisms to patch up. It describes how scientist can take stem cells from fat, use 3D printers to mold a scaffold the exact shape of the defect, and culture the stem cells on the scaffold in the lab to create the needed bone.

The video and story reflect the work of New York-based company EpiBone and its tissue engineer CEO Nina Tandon.

Happy birthday Dolly (the sheep). July 5 marked the 19th anniversary of the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep in Scotland. For fans of the history of science, MotherBoard gives a good brief history of the resulting kerfuffle and a reminder that Dolly was not very healthy and the procedure was not and is not ready to produce cloned human.

Dolly's taxidermied remains are in a museum in Scotland. She died after only six years, about half the normal life expectancy.

Dolly’s taxidermied remains are in a museum in Scotland. She died after only six years, about half the normal life expectancy.

Stem cell stories that caught our eye: a new type of stem cell, stomach cancer and babies—stem cell assisted and gene altered

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Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun.

New type of stem cell easier to grow, more versatile. Both the professional scientific media and the lay science media devoted considerable ink and electrons this week to the announcement of a new type of stem cell—and not just any stem cell, a pluripotent one, so it is capable of making all our tissues. On first blush it appears to be easier to grow in the lab, possibly safer to use clinically, and potentially able to generate whole replacement organs.

The newly found stem cells (shown in green) integrating into a mouse embryo.

The newly found stem cells (shown in green) integrating into a mouse embryo.

How a team at the Salk Institute made the discovery was perhaps best described in the institute’s press release picked up by HealthCanal. They sought to isolate stem cells from a developing embryo after the embryo had started to organize itself spatially into compartments that would later become different parts of the body. By doing this they found a type of stem cell that was on the cusp of maturing into specific tissue, but was still pluripotent. Using various genetic markers they verified that these new cells are indeed different from embryonic stem cells isolated at a particular time in development.

The Scientist did the best job of explaining why these cells might be better for research and why they might be safer clinically. They used outside experts, including Harvard stem cell guru George Daly and CIRM-grantee from the University of California, Davis, Paul Knoepfler, to explain why. Paul described the cells this way:

“[They] fit nicely into a broader concept that there are going to be ‘intermediate state’ stem cells that don’t fit so easily into binary, black-and-white ways of classifying [pluripotent cells].”

The Verge did the best job of describing the most far-reaching potential of the new cells. Unlike earlier types of human pluripotent cells, these human stem cells, when transplanted into a mouse embryo could differentiate into all three layers of tissue that give rise to the developing embryo. This ability to perform the full pluripotent repertoire in another species—creating so called chimeras—raises the possibility of growing full human replacement organs in animals, such as pigs. The publication quotes CIRM science officer Uta Grieshammer explaining the history of the work in the field that lead up to this latest finding.

Stem cells boost success in in vitro fertilization.  Veteran stem cell reporter and book author Alice Park wrote about a breakthrough in Time this week that could make it much easier for older women to become pregnant using in vitro fertilization. The new technique uses the premise that one reason older women’s eggs seem less likely to produce a viable embryo is they are tired—the mitochondria, the tiny organs that provide power to cells, just don’t have it in them to get the job done.

The first baby was born with the assistance of the new procedure in Canada last month. The process takes a small sample of the mother-to-be’s ovarian tissue, isolates egg stem cells from it, extracts the mitochondria from those immature cells and then injects them into the woman’s mature, but tired eggs. Park reports that eight women are currently pregnant using the technique. She quotes the president of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine on the potential of the procedure:

“We could be on the cusp of something incredibly important. Something that is really going to pan out to be revolutionary.”

But being the good reporter that she is, Park also quotes experts that note no one has done comparison studies to see if the process really is more successful than other techniques.

Why bug linked to ulcers may cause cancer. The discovery of the link between the bacteria H. pylori and stomach ulcers is one of my favorite tales of the scientific process. When Australian scientists Barry Marshall and Robin Warren first proposed the link in the early 1980s no one believed them. It took Marshall intentionally swallowing a batch of the bacteria, getting ulcers, treating the infection, and the ulcers resolving, before the skeptics let up. They went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1995 and an entire subsequent generation of surgeons no longer learned a standard procedure used for decades to repair stomach ulcers.

In the decades since, research has produced hints that undiagnosed H. pylori infection may also be linked to stomach cancer, but no one knew why. Now, a team at Stanford has fingered a likely path from bacteria to cancer. It turns out the bacteria interacts directly with stomach stem cells, causing them to divide more rapidly than normal.

They found this latest link through another interesting turn of scientific process. They did not feel like they could ethically take samples from healthy individuals’ stomachs, so they used tissue discarded after gastric bypass surgeries performed to treat obesity. In those samples they found that H. pylori clustered at the bottom of tiny glands where stomach stem cells reside. In samples positive for the bacteria, the stem cells were activated and dividing abnormally. HealthCanal picked up the university’s press release on the work.

Rational balanced discussion on gene-edited babies.   Wired produced the most thoughtful piece I have read on the controversy over creating gene-edited babies since the ruckus erupted April 18 when a group of Chinese scientists published a report that they had edited the genes of human eggs. Nick Stockton wrote about the diversity of opinion in the scientific community, but most importantly, about the fact this is not imminent. A lot of lab work lies between now and the ability to create designer babies. Here is one particular well-written caveat:

“Figuring out the efficacy and safety of embryonic gene editing means years and years of research. Boring research. Lab-coated shoulders hunched over petri dishes full of zebrafish DNA. Graduate students staring at chromatographs until their eyes ache.”

He discusses the fears of genetic errors and the opportunity to layer today’s existing inequality with a topping of genetic elitism. But he also discusses the potential to cure horrible genetic diseases and the possibility that all those strained graduate student eyes might bring down the cost to where the genetic fixes might be available to everyone, not just the well heeled.

The piece is worth the read. As he says in his closing paragraph, “be afraid, be hopeful, and above all be educated.”

What everybody needs to know about CIRM: where has the money gone

/ Kevin McCormack / 3 Comments

It’s been almost ten years since the voters of California created the Stem Cell Agency when they overwhelmingly approved Proposition 71, providing us $3 billion to help fund stem cell research.

In the last ten years we have made great progress – we will have ten projects that we are funding in or approved to begin clinical trials by the end of this year, a really quite remarkable achievement – but clearly we still have a long way to go. However, it’s appropriate as we approach our tenth anniversary to take a look at how we have spent the money, and how much we have left.

Of the $3 billion Prop 71 generates around $2.75 billion was set aside to be awarded to research, build laboratories etc. The rest was earmarked for things such as staff and administration to help oversee the funding and awards.

Of the research pool here’s how the numbers break down so far:

  • $1.9B awarded
  • $1.4B spent
  • $873M not awarded

So what’s the difference between awarded and spent? Well, unlike some funding agencies when we make an award we don’t hand the researcher all the cash at once and say “let us know what you find.” Instead we set a series of targets or milestones that they have to reach and they only get the next installment of the award as they meet each milestone. The idea is to fund research that is on track to meet its goals. If it stops meetings its goals, we stop funding it.

Right now our Board has awarded $1.9B to different institutions, companies and researchers but only $1.4B of that has gone out. And of the remainder we estimate that we will get around $100M back either from cost savings as the projects progress or from programs that are cancelled because they failed to meet their goals.

So we have approximately $1B for our Board to award to new research, which means at our current rate of spending we’ll have enough money to be able to continue funding new projects until around 2020. Because these are multi-year projects we will continue funding them till around 2023 when those projects end and, theoretically at least, we run out of money.

But we are already working hard to try and ensure that the well doesn’t run dry, and that we are able to develop other sources of funding so we can continue to support this work. Without us many of these projects are at risk of dying. Having worked so hard to get these projects to the point where they are ready to move out of the laboratory and into clinical trials in people we don’t want to see them fall by the wayside for lack of support.

Of the $1.9B we have awarded, that has gone to 668 awards spread out over five different categories:

CIRM spending Oct 2014

Increasingly our focus is on moving projects out of the lab and into people, and in those categories – called ‘translational’ and ‘clinical’ – we have awarded almost $630M in funding for more than 80 active programs.

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Under our new CIRM 2.0 plan we hope to speed up the number of projects moving into clinical trials. You can read more about how we plan on doing there in this blog.

It took Jonas Salk almost 15 years to develop a vaccine for polio but those years of hard work ended up saving millions of lives. We are working hard to try and achieve similar results on dozens of different fronts, with dozens of different diseases. That’s why, in the words of our President & CEO Randy Mills, we come to work every day as if lives depend on us, because lives depend on us.