UC Santa Cruz professors Camilla Forsberg and Lindsay Hinck are not only pushing boundaries in their field as the female-led program directors of the Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells (IBSC), they’ve also been looking for ways to enhance the environment within the academic research infrastructure.
“We really wanted to make an effort to elevate everyone’s capacity for doing more research,” explains Forsberg. It was this drive that led the researchers to focus on bringing in grants to support students at different stages of their education to participate in research training programs.
So far, Fosberg and Hinck’s efforts have provided nearly $12 million in extramural funding for predoctoral and undergraduate training programs. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which provides graduate and postdoctoral funding, is one of the five funding institutions that have supported IBSC. This funding will shape the future of the IBSC, which brings together more than 30 laboratories across the Engineering and Physical and Biological Sciences divisions, as well as the Science & Justice Research Center.
“We didn’t set out to have five training programs, but then there were more opportunities, so we kept pitching our basic mentoring philosophies to different funders,” Forsberg said. “Now we have five different programs. I guess we found a secret sauce that made our funders excited.”
Forsberg and Hinck’s secret sauce is perhaps in part due to their devotion to forming strong peer connections amongst a group of talented graduate and postdoctoral researchers. The programs aim to connect cohorts of trainees who can interact and network through the IBSC in order to form a peer support ecosystem.
Additionally, IBSC strives to build cohorts that welcome and foster diverse perspectives as they will host an upcoming pilot program that aims to demystify the lengthy path from academia to a research career.
With their lastest $1 million training grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Forsberg and Hinck hope to provide support for postdoctoral scholars interested in the biotech industry. So far, biotech companies Jasper Therapeutics and Roche have joined the collaborative effort with IBSC to create shadowing opportunities for trainees to learn outside of the academic environment.
Furthermore, pre and postdoctoral trainees supported by these training grants can be hosted by several labs in the IBSC and beyond.
“The key thing about all these training programs is that they implement new ideas about structured graduate and postdoctoral training,” Hinck said. “While getting a training grant position is competitive, we try to make the structured training provided by the grants widely available so that all graduate students and postdoctoral scholars at UCSC can increase their skill sets. The environment that’s built around these training programs elevates opportunities for everyone.”
There is no benefit in helping create a miraculous new therapy that can cure people and save lives if no one except the super-rich can afford it. That’s why the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has made creating a roadmap to help make new treatments both available and affordable for all Californians a central pillar of its new 5-year Strategic Plan.
New treatments based on novel new technologies often seem to come with a gob-smacking price tag. When Kymriah, a CAR-T cell cancer therapy, was approved it cost $475,000 for one treatment course. When the FDA approved Zolgensma to treat spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that causes muscle wasting and weakness, the cost was $2.1 million for one dose.
Part of the pricing is due to high manufacturing cost and the specialized resources needed to deliver the treatments. The treatments themselves are showing that they can be one-and-done options for patients, meaning just one treatment may be all they need to be cured. But even with all that innovation and promise the high price may impact access to patients in need.
At CIRM we believe that if California taxpayer money has helped researchers develop a new therapy, Californians should be able to get that therapy. To try and ensure they can we have created the Accessibility and Affordability Working Group (AAWG). The groups mission is to find a way to overcome the hurdles that stand between a patient and the treatment they need.
The AAWG will work with politicians and policy makers, researchers and regulators, insurance companies and patient advocate organizations to gather the data and information needed to make these therapies available and affordable. Dr. Le Ondra Clark Harvey, a CIRM Board member and mental health advocate, says the barriers we have to confront are not just financial, they are racial and ethnic too.
We have already created a unique model for delivering stem cell therapies to patients through our Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Network. We are now setting out to build on that with our commitment to creating Community Care Centers of Excellence. But having world-class clinics capable of delivering life-saving therapies is not enough. We also need to make sure that Californians who need these treatments can get them regardless of who they are or their ability to pay.
If Kindergarten kids can learn to share why can’t scientists?
When I was a kid, we were always told to share our toys. It was a good way of teaching children the importance of playing nice with the other kids and avoiding conflicts.
Those same virtues apply to science. Sharing data, knowledge and ideas doesn’t just create a sense of community. It also helps increase the odds that scientists can build on the knowledge gained by others to advance their own work, and the field as a whole.
That’s why advancing world class science through data sharing is one of the big goals in CIRM’s new Strategic Plan. There’s a very practical reason why this is needed. Although most scientists today fully appreciate and acknowledge the importance of data sharing, many still resist the idea. This is partly for competitive reasons: the researchers want to publish their findings first and take the credit.
But being first isn’t just about ego. It is also crucial in getting promotions, being invited to prestigious meetings, winning awards, and in some cases, getting the attention of biopharma. So, there are built-in incentives to avoiding data sharing.
That’s unfortunate because scientific progress is often dependent on collaboration and building upon the work of other researchers.
CIRM’s goal is to break down those barriers and make it easier to share data. We will do that by building what are called “knowledge networks.” These networks will streamline data sharing from CIRM-funded projects and combine that with research data from other organizations, publishers and California academic institutions. We want to create incentives for scientists to share their data, rather than keep it private.
We are going to start by creating a knowledge network for research targeting the brain and spinal cord. We hope this will have an impact on studying everything from stroke and Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s and psychiatric disorders. The network will eventually cover all aspects of research—from the most basic science to clinical trials—because knowledge gained in one area can help influence research done in another.
To kick start this network, CIRM will partner with other funding agencies, disease foundations and research institutions to enable scientists to have access to this data such that data from one platform can be used to analyze data from another platform. This will amplify the power of data analysis and allow researchers to build upon the work of others rather than repeat already existing research.
As one of our Board members, Dr. Keith Yamamoto said in our Strategic Plan, “Making such data sharing and analysis across CIRM projects operational and widely accessible would leverage CIRM investments, serving the biomedical research enterprise broadly.”
It’s good for science, but ultimately and more importantly, it’s good for all of us because it will speed up the development of new approaches and new therapies for a wide range of diseases and disorders.
Visit this page to learn more about CIRM’s new 5-year Strategic Plan and stay tuned as we share updates on our 5-year goals here on The Stem Cellar.
If you want to know if a new drug or therapy is going to work in the people it affects the most you need to test the drug or therapy in the people most affected by the disease. That would seem blindingly obvious, wouldn’t it? Apparently not.
Case in point. A new asthma medication, one that seemingly shows real promise in reducing attacks in children, was tested on an almost entirely white patient population, even though Black and Puerto Rican children are far more likely to suffer from asthma.
The study enrolled more than 400 children, between the ages of 6 and 11, with moderate to serious uncontrolled asthma and treated them with a medication called Dupixent. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were impressive. Children given Dupixent had an average drop in severe asthma attacks of 65 percent compared to children given a placebo.
The only problem is 90 percent of the children in the study were white. Why is that a problem? Because, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, only 9.5 percent of white children have asthma, compared to 24 percent of Puerto Rican children and 18 percent of Black children. So, the groups most likely to suffer from the disease were disproportionately excluded from a study about a treatment for the disease.
Some people might think, “So what! If the medication works for one kid it will work for another, what does race have to do with it?” Quite a lot actually.
A study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology concluded that: “Race/ethnicity modified the association between total IgE (an antibody in the blood that is a marker for asthma) and asthma exacerbations. Elevated IgE level was associated with worse asthma outcomes in Puerto Ricans… Our findings suggest that eligibility for asthma biologic therapies differs across pediatric racial/ethnic populations.”
The article concluded by calling for “more studies in diverse populations for equitable treatment of minority patients with asthma.” Something that clearly didn’t happen in the Dupixent study.
While that’s more than disappointing, it’s not surprising. A recent study of vaccine clinical trials in JAMA Network Open found that:
Overall, white individuals made up almost 80 percent of people enrolled.
Black individuals were represented only 10.6 percent of the time.
Latino participants were represented just 11.6 percent of the time.
Additionally, in pediatric trials, Black participants were represented just over 10 percent of the time and Latino participants were represented 22.5 percent of the time. The study concluded by saying that “diversity enrollment targets are needed for vaccine trials in the US.”
I would expand on that, saying they are needed for all clinical trials. That’s one of the many reasons why we at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) are making Diversity, Equity and Inclusion an important part of everything we do, such as requiring all applicants to have a written DEI plan if they want funding from us. Dr. Maria Millan, our President and CEO, recently co-authored an article in Nature Cell Biology, driving home the need for greater diversity in basic science and research in general.
DEI has become an important part of the conversation this past year. But the Dupixent trial shows that if we are truly serious about making it part of what we do, we have to stop talking and start acting.
The global pandemic has highlighted many of the inequities in our health care system, with the virus hitting communities of color the hardest. That has led to calls for greater diversity, equity and inclusion at every level of scientific research and, ultimately, of medical care. A recently released article in the journal Nature Cell Biology, calls for “new models for basic and disease research that reflect diverse ancestral backgrounds and sex and ensure that diverse populations are included among donors and research participants.”
The authors of the article are Dr. Maria T. Millan, CIRM’s President & CEO; Rick Horwitz Senior Advisor and Executive Director, Emeritus, Allen Institute for Cell Science; Dr. Ekemini Riley, President, Coalition for Aligning Science; and Dr. Ruwanthi N. Gunawardane, Executive Director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science.
Dr. Maria Millan, CIRM’s President & CEO, says we need to make these issues a part of everything we do. “At CIRM we have incorporated the principles of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in our research funding programs, education programs and future programs. We believe this is essential to ensure that the therapies our support helps advance will reach all patients in need and in particular communities that are disproportionately affected and/or under-served.”
The article highlights how, in addition to cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic factors, genetic factors also appear to play a role in the way disease affects different people. For example, 50 percent of people in South Asia have genetic traits that increases their risk for severe COVID-19, in contrast only 16 percent of Europeans have those traits.
But while some studies have shown how African American men are at greater risk for prostate cancer than white men, most of the research in this and other areas has been done on white populations of European ancestry. Efforts are already underway to change these disparities. For example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has sponsored the All of Us Research Program, which is inviting one million people across the U.S. to help build one of the most diverse health databases in history.
The article in Nature Cell Biology stresses the need to account for diversity at the individual molecular, cellular and tissue level. The authors make the point that diversity in those taking part in clinical trials is essential, but equally essential is that diverse biology is accounted for in the scientific work that leads to the development of potential therapies in order to increase the likelihood of success.
That’s why the authors of the article say: “If we are to truly understand human biology, address health disparities, and personalize our treatments, we need to go beyond our important, ongoing efforts in addressing diversity and inclusion in the workforce and the delivery of healthcare. We need to improve the data we generate by including diverse populations among donors and research participants. This will require new models and tools for basic and disease research that more closely reflect the diversity of human tissues, across diverse donor backgrounds.”
“Greater diversity in biological studies is not only the right thing to do, it is crucial to helping researchers make new discoveries that benefit everyone,” said Ru Gunawardane, Executive Director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science.
To do this they propose creating “a suite” of research cells, such as human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines from a diverse group of individuals to reflect the racial, ethnic and gender composition of the population. Human iPSCs are cells taken from any tissue (usually skin or blood) from a child or adult that have been genetically modified to behave like an embryonic stem cell. As the name implies, these cells are pluripotent, which means that they can become any type of adult cell.
CIRM has already created one version of what this suite would look like, through its iPSC Repository, a collection of more than 2,600 hiPSCs from individuals of diverse ancestries, including African, Hispanic, Native American, East and South Asian, and European. The Allen Institute for Cell Science also has a collection that could serve as a model for this kind of repository. Its collection of over 50 hiPSC
lines have been thoroughly analyzed on both a genomic and biological level and could also be broken down to include diversity in donor ethnicity and sex.
Currently researchers use cells from different lines and often follow very different procedures in using them, making it hard to compare results from one study to another. Having a diverse and well defined collection of research cells and cell models that are created by standardized procedures, could make it easier to compare results from different studies and share knowledge within the scientific community. By incorporating diversity in the very early stages of scientific research, the scientists and therapy developers gain a more complete picture of the biology disease and potential treatments.
When the voters of California approved Proposition 14 last November (thanks folks) they gave us $5.5 billion to continue the work we started way back in 2014. It’s a great honor, and a great responsibility.
It’s also a great opportunity to look at what we do and how we do it and try to come up with even better ways of funding groundbreaking research and helping create a new generation of researchers.
In addition to improving on what we already do, Prop 14 introduced some new elements, some new goals for us to add to the mix, and we are in the process of fleshing out how we can best do that.
Because of all these changes we decided it would be a good idea to hold a “Town Hall” meeting and let everyone know what these changes are and how they may impact applications for funding.
The Town Hall, on Tuesday June 29, was a great success with almost 200 participants. But we know that not everyone who wanted to attend could, so here’s the video of the event, and below that are the questions that were posed by people during the meeting, and the answers to those questions.
Having seen the video we would be eternally grateful if you could respond to a short online survey, to help us get a better idea of your research and education needs and to be better able to serve you and identify potential areas of opportunity for CIRM. Here’s a link to that survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VQMYPDL
We know that there may be issues or questions that are not answered here, so feel free to send those to us at info@cirm.ca.gov and we will make sure you get an answer.
Are there any DISC funding opportunities specific to early-stage investigators?
DISC funding opportunities are open to all investigators. There aren’t any that are specific to junior investigators.
Are DISC funding opportunities available for early-mid career researchers based out of USA such as Australia?
Sorry, you have to be in California for us to fund your work.
Does tumor immunology/ cancer immunotherapy fall within the scope of the CIRM discovery grants?
Hi, when will reviews for DISC 2: CIRM Quest – Discovery Stage Research Projects (deadline March 2021) be available? Thanks!
Review summaries for the March 2021 Discovery submitted applications will be available by mid-August, with final board funding decisions at the August 24th Application Review Subcommittee Meeting
Has CIRM project made it to Phase III or product launch with FDA approval? What is CIRM strategy for start-up biotech companies?
CIRM funding supports non-profit academic grantees as well as companies of all sizes.
I am studying stem cells using mouse. Is my research eligible for the CIRM grants?
Yes it is.
Your programs more specifically into stem cell research would be willing to take patients that are not from California?
Yes, we have treated patients who are not in California. Some have come to California for treatment and others have been treated in other states in the US by companies that are based here in California.
Can you elaborate how the preview of the proposals works? Who reviews them and what are the criteria for full review?
The same GWG panel both previews and conducts the full review. The panel first looks through all the applications to identify what each reviewer believes represents the most likely to be impactful and meet the goals of the CIRM Discovery program. Those that are selected by any reviewer moves forward to the next full review step.
If you meet your milestones-How likely is it that a DISC recipient gets a TRAN award?
The milestones are geared toward preparation of the TRAN stage. However, this is a different application and review that is not guaranteed to result in funding.
Regarding Manufacturing Public Private partnerships – What specific activities is CIRM thinking about enabling these partnerships? For example, are out of state for profit commercial entities able to conduct manufacturing at CA based manufacturing centers even though the clinical program may be primarily based out of CA? If so, what percent of the total program budget must be expended in CA? How will CIRM enable GMP manufacturing centers interact with commercial entities?
We are in the early stages of developing this concept with continued input from various stakeholders. The preliminary vision is to build a network of academic GMP manufacturing centers and industry partners to support the manufacturing needs of CIRM-funded projects in California.
We are in the process of widely distributing a summary of the manufacturing workshop. Here’s a link to it:
If a center is interested in being a sharing lab or competency hub with CIRM, how would they go about it?
CIRM will be soliciting applications for Shared Labs/Competency hubs in potential future RFAs. The survey asks several questions asking for feedback on these concepts so it would really help us if you could complete the survey.
Would preclinical development of stem cell secretome-derived protein therapies for rare neuromuscular diseases and ultimately, age-related muscle wasting be eligible for CIRM TRAN1 funding? The goal is to complete IND-enabling studies for a protein-based therapy that enhances tissue regeneration to treat a rare degenerative disease. the screening to identify the stem-cell secreted proteins to develop as therapeutics is done by in vitro screening with aged/diseased primary human progenitor cells to identify candidates that enhance their differentiation . In vivo the protein therapeutic signals to several cell types , including precursor cells to improve tissue homeostasis.
I would suggest reaching out to our Translation team to discuss the details as it will depend on several factors. You can email the team at translational@cirm.ca.gov
Over the last year there has been increasing awareness of the inequalities in the American healthcare system. At every level there is evidence of bias, discrimination and unequal access to the best care. Sometimes unequal access to any care. That is, hopefully, changing but only if the new awareness is matched with action.
At the recent World Stem Cell Summit CIRM helped pull together a panel of physicians and patient advocates who have been leading the charge for change for years. The panel was called ‘Addressing Disparities, Promoting Equity and Inclusion in Clinical Research.’
The panelists include:
Ysabel Duron – Founder of The Latino Cancer Institute & CIRM Board member
Adrienne Shapiro – sickle cell disease patient advocate, Founder of Axis Advocacy – Sickle Cell Disease support and advocacy group
Dr. Leah Ke‘ala‘aumoe Dowsett – Clinical geneticist, serves on hospital DEI committee, Board member Association of Native Hawaiian Physicians
Dr. Nathan Chomilo – Co-Founder, Minnesota Doctors for Health Equity and head of the Minnesota COVID Vaccine Equity Program
The conversation they had was informative, illuminating and fascinating. But it didn’t sugar coat where we are, and the hard work ahead of us to get to where we need to be.
Enjoy the event, with apologies for the inept cameo appearance by me at the beginning of the video. Technology clearly isn’t my forte.
You can’t fix a global problem at the local level. That’s the gist of a new perspective piece in the journal Stem Cell Reports that calls for a global approach to rogue stem cell clinics that offer bogus therapies.
The authors of the article are calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) to set up an advisory committee to draw up rules and regulations to help guide countries trying to shut these clinics down.
In a news release, senior author Mohamed Abou-el-Enein, the executive director of the joint University of Southern California/Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles Cell Therapy Program, says these clinics are trying to cash in on the promise of regenerative medicine.
“Starting in the early 2000s… unregulated stem cell clinics offering untested and poorly characterized treatments with insufficient information on their safety and efficacy began emerging all over the world, taking advantage of the media hype around stem cells and patients’ hope and desperation.”
Dr. Larry Goldstein
The authors include Lawrence Goldstein, PhD, a CIRM Board member and a Science Policy Fellows for the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR).
Zubin Master, an associate professor of biomedical ethics at the Mayo Clinic, says the clinics prey on vulnerable people who have serious medical conditions and who have often tried conventional medical approaches without success.
“We should aim to develop pathways to provide patients with evidenced-based experimental regenerative intervention as possible options where there is oversight, especially in circumstances where there is no suitable alternative left.”
The report says: “The unproven SCI (stem cell intervention) industry threatens the advancement of regenerative medicine. Reports of adverse events from unproven SCIs has the potential to affect funding and clinical trial recruitment, as well as increasing burdens among regulatory agencies to oversee the industry.
Permitting unregulated SCIs to flourish demonstrates a lack of concern over patient welfare and undermines the need for scientific evidence for medicinal product R&D. While some regulatory agencies have limited oversight or enforcement powers, or choose not to use them, unproven SCI clinics still serve to undermine authority given to regulatory agencies and may reduce public trust impacting the development of safe and effective therapies. Addressing the continued proliferation of clinics offering unproven SCIs is a problem worth addressing now.”
The authors say the WHO is uniquely positioned to help create a framework for the field that can help address these issues. They recommend setting up an advisory committee to develop global standards for regulations governing these clinics that could be applied in all countries. They also say we need more educational materials to let physicians as well as patients understand the health risks posed by bogus clinics.
This article comes out in the same week that reports by the Pew Charitable Trust and the FDA also called for greater regulation of these predatory clinics (we blogged about that here). Clearly there is growing recognition both in the US and worldwide that these clinics pose a threat not just to the health and safety of patients, but also to the reputation of the field of regenerative medicine as a whole.
“I believe that the global spread of unproven stem cell therapies reflects critical gaps in the international system for responding to health crises, which could put the life of thousands of patients in danger,” Abou-el-Enein says. “Urgent measures are needed to enhance the global regulatory capacity to detect and respond to this eminent crisis rapidly.”
The product is authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is overseen by an IRB or ethics board,
The treatment is delivered by qualified doctors, nurses, and technicians,
Treatment occurs at a clinical treatment center with expertise in regenerative medicine, and
There is ongoing monitoring and follow-up of patients.
On April 21 of 2021, Dr. Peter Marks, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, indicated the FDA’s intent to ensure new regenerative medicine products are FDA-authorized. Specifically, the FDA will require product developers to obtain an Investigational New Drug or IND authorization. In his news release Dr. Marks says the agency is willing to exercise more enforcement of these rules should clinics or therapy producers fail to follow these guidelines.
“These regenerative medicine products are not without risk and are often marketed by clinics as being safe and effective for the treatment of a wide range of diseases or conditions, even though they haven’t been adequately studied in clinical trials. We’ve said previously and want to reiterate here – there is no room for manufacturers, clinics, or health care practitioners to place patients at risk through products that violate the law, including by not having an IND in effect or an approved biologics license. We will continue to take action regarding unlawfully marketed products.”
IND authorization is particularly important as the agency pays close attention to how the product is produced and whether there is a scientific rationale and potential clinical evidence that it may be effective against the specific disease condition. All CIRM-funded clinical trials and all trials conducted in the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinics Network must have IND authorization.
Regenerative medicine products are generally created from human cells or tissues. These products are frequently referred to as “living medicines.” The “living” nature of these products is what contributes to their remarkable potential to relieve, stop or reverse disease in a durable or sustainable manner.
The risk with unregulated products is that there is no assurance that they have been produced in a quality controlled process or manner where all components of the injected material have been well characterized and studied for safety and efficacy for a given disease as well as a specific site in the body. In addition, there is no way to ensure that unregulated products meet standards or quality specifications such as ensuring that they have the active and beneficial component while making sure that they do not include harmful contaminants.. There have been documented examples of patients being severely injured by unregulated and inadequately characterized products. For example, in 2017 three Florida women were blinded by an unauthorized product. Dr. George Daley, a stem cell expert and the Dean of Harvard Medical School, described the clinic operators as “charlatans peddling the modern equivalent of snake oil.”
To receive FDA authorization, detailed scientific data and well controlled clinical data are required to ensure safety and a demonstration that the product is safe has the potential to improve or resolve the patient’s disease condition.
While it seems both important and self-evident that stem cell products be safe and effective and supported by evidence they can impact the patient’s disease condition, that doesn’t always happen. Unfortunately, too many patients have experienced unnecessary medical risks and financial harm from unauthorized treatments. CIRM applauds the FDA for taking additional steps to advance regenerative medicine products where the clinical benefits of such therapies outweigh any potential harms.
A search on Google using the term “stem cell blogs” quickly produces a host of sites offering treatments for everything from ankle, hip and knee problems, to Parkinson’s disease and asthma. Amazingly the therapies for those very different conditions all use the same kind of cells produced in the same way. It’s like magic. Sadly, it’s magic that is less hocus pocus and more bogus bogus.
The good news is there are blogs out there (besides us, of course) that do offer good, accurate, reliable information about stem cells. The people behind them are not in this to make a quick buck selling snake oil. They are in this to educate, inform, engage and enlighten people about what stem cells can, and cannot do.
This blog has just undergone a face lift and is now as colorful and easy to read as it is informative. It bills itself as the longest running stem cell blog around. It’s run by UC Davis stem cell biologist Dr. Paul Knoepfler – full disclosure, we have funded some of Paul’s work – and it’s a constant source of amazement to me how Paul manages to run a busy research lab and post regular updates on his blog.
The power of The Niche is that it’s easy for non-science folk – like me – to read and understand without having to do a deep dive into Google search or Wikipedia. It’s well written, informative and often very witty. If you are looking for a good website to check whether some news about stem cells is real or suspect, this is a great place to start.
This site is run by another old friend of CIRM’s, Don Reed. Don has written extensively about stem cell research in general, and CIRM in particular. His motivation to do this work is clear. Don says he’s not a doctor or scientist, he’s something much simpler:
“No. I am just a father fighting for his paralyzed son, and the only way to fix him is to advance cures for everyone. Also, my mother died of breast cancer, my sister from leukemia, and I myself am a prostate cancer survivor. So, I have some very personal reasons to support the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and to want state funding for stem cell and other regenerative medicine research to continue in California!”
The power of Don’s writing is that he always tells human stories, real tales about real people. He makes everything he does accessible, memorable and often very funny. If I’m looking for ways to explain something complex and translate it into everyday English, I’ll often look at Don’s work, he knows how to talk to people about the science without having their eyes cloud over.
This is published by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), the leading professional organization for stem cell scientists. You might expect a blog from such a science-focused organization to be heavy going for the ordinary person, but you’d be wrong.
A Closer Look at Stem Cells is specifically designed for people who want to learn more about stem cells but don’t have the time to get a PhD. They have sections explaining what stem cells are, what they can and can’t do, even a glossary explaining different terms used in the field (I used to think the Islets of Langerhans were small islands off the coast of Germany till I went to this site).
One of the best, and most important, parts of the site is the section on clinical trials, helping people understand what’s involved in these trials and the kinds of things you need to consider before signing up for one.
Of course, the US doesn’t have a monopoly on stem cell research and that’s reflected in the next two choices. One is the Signals Blog from our friends to the north in Canada. This is an easy-to-read site that describes itself as the “Insiders perspective on the world of stem cells and regenerative medicine.” The ‘Categories ‘dropdown menu allows you to choose what you want to read, and it gives you lots of options from the latest news to a special section for patients, even a section on ethical and legal issues.
As you may have guessed from the title this is by our chums across the pond in Europe. They lay out their mission on page one saying they want to help people make sense of stem cells:
“As a network of scientists and academics, we provide independent, expert-reviewed information and road-tested educational resources on stem cells and their impact on society. We also work with people affected by conditions, educators, regulators, media, healthcare professionals and policymakers to foster engagement and develop material that meets their needs.”
True to their word they have great information on the latest research, broken down by different types of disease, different types of stem cell etc. And like CIRM they also have some great educational resources for teachers to use in the classroom.
The Stem Cellar 