Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday: Progress towards a cure for HIV/AIDS

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Welcome to our “Throwback Thursday” series on the Stem Cellar. Over the years, we’ve accumulated an arsenal of exciting stem cell stories about advances towards stem cell-based cures for serious diseases. Today we’re featuring stories about the progress of CIRM-funded research and clinical trials that are aimed at developing stem cell-based treatments for HIV/AIDS.

 Tomorrow, December 1st, is World AIDS Day. In honor of the 34 million people worldwide who are currently living with HIV, we’re dedicating our latest #ThrowbackThursday blog to the stem cell research and clinical trials our Agency is funding for HIV/AIDS.

world_logo3To jog your memory, HIV is a virus that hijacks your immune cells. If left untreated, HIV can lead to AIDS – a condition where your immune system is compromised and cannot defend your body against infection and diseases like cancer. If you want to read more background about HIV/AIDs, check out our disease fact sheet.

Stem Cell Advancements in HIV/AIDS
While patients can now manage HIV/AIDS by taking antiretroviral therapies (called HAART), these treatments only slow the progression of the disease. There is no effective cure for HIV/AIDS, making it a significant unmet medical need in the patient community.

CIRM is funding early stage research and clinical stage research projects that are developing cell based therapies to treat and hopefully one day cure people of HIV. So far, our Agency has awarded 17 grants totalling $72.9 million in funding to HIV/AIDS research. Below is a brief description of four of these exciting projects:

Discovery Stage Research
Dr. David Baltimore at the California Institute of Technology is developing an innovative stem cell-based immunotherapy that would prevent HIV infection in specific patient populations. He recently received a CIRM Quest award, (a funding initiative in our Discovery Stage Research Program) to pursue this research.

CIRM science officer, Dr. Ross Okamura, oversees Baltimore’s CIRM grant. He explained how the Baltimore team is genetically modifying the blood stem cells of patients so that they develop into immune cells (called T cells) that specifically recognize and target the HIV virus.

Ross_IDCard

Ross Okamura, PhD

“The approach Dr. Baltimore is taking in his CIRM Discovery Quest award is to engineer human immune stem cells to suppress HIV infection.  He is providing his engineered cells with T cell protein receptors that specifically target HIV and then exploring if he can reduce the viral load of HIV (the amount of virus in a specific volume) in an animal model of the human immune system. If successful, the approach could provide life-long protection from HIV infection.”

While Baltimore’s team is currently testing this strategy in mice, if all goes well, their goal is to translate this strategy into a preventative HIV therapy for people.

Clinical Trials
CIRM is currently funding three clinical trials focused on HIV/AIDS led by teams at Calimmune, City of Hope/Sangamo Biosciences and UC Davis. Rather than spelling out the details of each trial, I’ll refer you to our new Clinical Trial Dashboard (a screenshot of the dashboard is below) and to our new Blood & Immune Disorders clinical trial infographic we released in October.

dashboardblooddisorders

MonthofCIRM_BloodDisordersJustHIV.png

As you can see from these projects, CIRM is committed to funding cutting edge research in HIV/AIDS. We hope that in the next few years, some of these projects will bear fruit and help advance stem cell-based therapies to patients suffering from this disease.

I’ll leave you with a few links to other #WorldAIDSDay relevant blogs from our Stem Cellar archive and our videos that are worth checking out.

 

Progress to a Cure for Bubble Baby Disease

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Welcome back to our “Throwback Thursday” series on the Stem Cellar. Over the years, we’ve accumulated an arsenal of exciting stem cell stories about advances towards stem cell-based cures for serious diseases. Today we’re featuring stories about the progress of CIRM-funded clinical trials for the treatment of a devastating, usually fatal, primary immune disease that strikes newborn babies.

evangelina in a bubble

Evie, a former “bubble baby” enjoying life by playing inside a giant plastic bubble

‘Bubble baby disease’ will one day be a thing of the past. That’s a bold statement, but I say it with confidence because of the recent advancements in stem cell gene therapies that are curing infants of this life-threatening immune disease.

The scientific name for ‘bubble baby disease’ is severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). It prevents the proper development of important immune cells called B and T cells, leaving newborns without a functioning immune system. Because of this, SCID babies are highly susceptible to deadly infections, and without treatment, most of these babies do not live past their first year. Even a simple cold virus can be fatal.

Scientists are working hard to develop stem cell-based gene therapies that will cure SCID babies in their first months of life before they succumb to infections. The technology involves taking blood stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow and genetically correcting the SCID mutation in the DNA of these cells. The corrected stem cells are then transplanted back into the patient where they can grow and regenerate a healthy immune system. Early-stage clinical trials testing these stem cell gene therapies are showing very encouraging results. We’ll share a few of these stories with you below.

CIRM-funded trials for SCID

CIRM is funding three clinical trials, one from UCLA, one at Stanford and one from UCSF & St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, that are treating different forms of SCID using stem cell gene therapies.

Adenosine Deaminase-Deficient SCID

The first trial is targeting a form of the disease called adenosine deaminase-deficient SCID or ADA-SCID. Patients with ADA-SCID are unable to make an enzyme that is essential for the function of infection-fighting immune cells called lymphocytes. Without working lymphocytes, infants eventually are diagnosed with SCID at 6 months. ADA-SCID occurs in approximately 1 in 200,000 newborns and makes up 15% of SCID cases.

CIRM is funding a Phase 2 trial for ADA-SCID that is testing a stem cell gene therapy called OTL-101 developed by Dr. Don Kohn and his team at UCLA and a company called Orchard Therapeutics. 10 patients were treated in the trial, and amazingly, nine of these patients were cured of their disease. The 10th patient was a teenager who received the treatment knowing that it might not work as it does in infants. You can read more about this trial in our blog from earlier this year.

In a recent news release, Orchard Therapeutics announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has awarded Rare Pediatric Disease Designation to OTL-101, meaning that the company will qualify for priority review for drug approval by the FDA. You can read more about what this designation means in this blog.

X-linked SCID

The second SCID trial CIRM is funding is treating patients with X-linked SCID. These patients have a genetic mutation on a gene located on the X-chromosome that causes the disease. Because of this, the disease usually affects boys who have inherited the mutation from their mothers. X-linked SCID is the most common form of SCID and appears in 1 in 60,000 infants.

UCSF and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital are conducting a Phase 1/2 trial for X-linked SCID. The trial, led by Dr. Brian Sorrentino, is transplanting a patient’s own genetically modified blood stem cells back into their body to give them a healthy new immune system. Patients do receive chemotherapy to remove their diseased bone marrow, but doctors at UCSF are optimizing low doses of chemotherapy for each patient to minimize any long-term effects. According to a UCSF news release, the trial is planning to treat 15 children over the next five years. Some of these patients have already been treated and we will likely get updates on their progress next year.

CIRM is also funding a third clinical trial out of Stanford University that is hoping to make bone marrow transplants safer for X-linked SCID patients. The team, led by Dr. Judy Shizuru, is developing a therapy that will remove unhealthy blood stem cells from SCID patients to improve the survival and engraftment of healthy bone marrow transplants. You can read more about this trial on our clinical trials page.

SCID Patients Cured by Stem Cells

These clinical trial results are definitely exciting, but what is more exciting are the patient stories that we have to share. We’ve spoken with a few of the families whose children participated in the UCLA and UCSF/St. Jude trials, and we asked them to share their stories so that other families can know that there is hope. They are truly inspiring stories of heartbreak and joyful celebration.

Evie is a now six-year-old girl who was diagnosed with ADA-SCID when she was just a few months old. She is now cured thanks to Don Kohn and the UCLA trial. Her mom gave a very moving presentation about Evie’s journey at the CIRM Bridges Trainee Annual Meeting this past July.  You can watch the 20-minute talk below:

Ronnie’s story

Ronnie SCID kid

Ronnie: Photo courtesy Pawash Priyank

Ronnie, who is still less than a year old, was diagnosed with X-linked SCID just days after he was born. Luckily doctors told his parents about the UCSF/St. Jude trial and Ronnie was given the life-saving stem cell gene therapy before he was six months old. Now Ronnie is building a healthy immune system and is doing well back at home with his family. Ronnie’s dad Pawash shared his families moving story at our September Board meeting and you can watch it here.

Our mission at CIRM is to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs. We hope that by funding promising clinical trials like the ones mentioned in this blog, that one day soon there will be approved stem cell therapies for patients with SCID and other life-threatening diseases.

Throwback Thursday: Progress to a Cure for Diseases of Blindness

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Welcome back to our “Throwback Thursday” series on the Stem Cellar. Over the years, we’ve accumulated an arsenal of exciting stem cell stories about advances towards stem cell-based cures for serious diseases. This month we’re featuring stories about CIRM-funded clinical trials for blindness.

2017 has been an exciting year for two CIRM-funded clinical trials that are testing stem cell-based therapies for diseases of blindness. A company called Regenerative Patch Technologies (RPT) is transplanting a sheet of embryonic stem cell-derived retinal support cells into patients with the dry form of age-related macular degeneration, a disease that degrades the eye’s macula, the center of the retina that controls central vision. The other trial, sponsored by a company called jCyte, is using human retinal progenitor cells to treat retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease that destroys the light-sensing cells in the retina, causing tunnel vision and eventually blindness.

 

Both trials are in the early stages, testing the safety of their respective stem cell therapies. But the teams are hopeful that these treatments will stop the progression of or even restore some form of vision in patients. In the past few months, both RPT and jCyte have shared exciting news about the progress of these trials which are detailed below.

Macular Degeneration Trial Gets a New Investor

In April, RPT announced that they have a new funding partner to further develop their stem cell therapy for age-related macular degeneration (AMD). They are partnering with Japan’s Santen Pharmaceutical Company, which specializes in developing ophthalmology or eye therapies.

AMD is the leading cause of blindness in elderly people and is projected to affect almost 200 million people worldwide by 2020. There is no cure or treatment that can restore vision in AMD patients, but stem cell transplants offer a potential therapeutic option.

RPT believes that their newfound partnership with Santen will accelerate the development of their stem cell therapy and ultimately fulfill an unmet medical need. RPT’s co-founder, Dr. Dennis Clegg, commented in a CIRM news release, “the ability to partner with a global leader in ophthalmology like Santen is very exciting. Such a strong partnership will greatly accelerate RPT’s ability to develop our product safely and effectively.”

This promising relationship highlights CIRM’s efforts to partner our clinical programs with outside investors to boost their chance of success. It also shows confidence in the future success of RPT’s stem cell-based therapy for AMD.

Retinitis Pigmentosa Trial Advances to Phase 2 and Receives RMAT Status

In May, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved jCyte’s RP trial for Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) status, which could pave the way for accelerated approval of this stem cell therapy for patients with RP.

RMAT is a new status established under the 21st Century Cures Act – a law enacted by Congress in December of 2016 to address the need for a more efficient regulatory approval process for stem cell therapies that can treat serious or life-threatening diseases. Trial sponsors of RMAT designated therapies can meet with the FDA earlier in the trial process and are eligible for priority review and accelerated approval.

jCyte’s RMAT status is well deserved. Their Phase 1 trial was successful, proving the treatment was safe and well-tolerated in patients. More importantly, some of the patients revealed that their sight has improved following their stem cell transplant. We’ve shared the inspiring stories of two patients, Rosie Barrero and Kristin Macdonald, previously on the Stem Cellar.

Rosie Barrero

Kristin MacDonald

Both Rosie and Kristin were enrolled in the Phase 1 trial and received an injection of retinal progenitor cells in a single eye. Rosie said that she went from complete darkness to being able to see shapes, colors, and the faces of her family and friends. Kristin was the first patient treated in jCyte’s trial, and she said she is now more sensitive to light and can see shapes well enough to put on her own makeup.

Encouraged by these positive results, jCyte launched its Phase 2 trial in April with funding from CIRM. They will test the same stem cell therapy in a larger group of 70 patients and monitor their progress over the next year.

Progress to a Cure for Blindness

We know very well that scientific progress takes time, and unfortunately we don’t know when there will be a cure for blindness. However, with the advances that these two CIRM-funded trials have made in the past year, our confidence that these stem cell treatments will one day benefit patients with RP and AMD is growing.

I’ll leave you with an inspiring video of Rosie Barrero about her experience with RP and how participating in jCytes trial has changed her life. Her story is an important reminder of why CIRM exists and why supporting stem cell research in particular, and research in general, is vital for the future health of patients.

Related Links:

Throwback Thursday: Progress to a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Welcome back to our “Throwback Thursday” series on the Stem Cellar. Over the years, we’ve accumulated an arsenal of valuable stem cell stories on our blog. Some of these stories represent crucial advances towards stem cell-based cures for serious diseases and deserve a second look.

novemberawarenessmonthThis week in honor of Diabetes Awareness Month, we are featuring type 1 diabetes (T1D), a chronic disease that destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in your pancreas. Without these important cells, patients cannot maintain the proper levels of glucose, a fancy name for sugar, in their blood and are at risk for many complications including heart disease, blindness, and even death.

Cell replacement therapy is evolving into an attractive option for patients with T1D. Replacing lost beta cells in the pancreas is a more permanent and less burdensome solution than the daily insulin shots (or insulin pumps) that many T1D patients currently take.

So let’s take a look at the past year’s advances in stem cell research for diabetes.

Making Insulin-Producing Cells from Stem Cells and Skin

This year, there were a lot of exciting studies that improved upon previous methods for generating pancreatic beta cells in a dish. Here’s a brief recap of a few of the studies we covered on our blog:

  • Make pancreatic cells from stem cells. Scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute developed a method that makes beta cells from T1D patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that behave very similarly to true beta cells both in a dish and when transplanted into diabetic mice. Their discovery has the potential to offer personalized stem cell treatments for patients with T1D in the near future and the authors of the study predicted that their technology could be ready to test in humans in the next three to five years.
  • Making functional pancreatic cells from skin. Scientists from the Gladstone Institutes used a technique called direct reprogramming to turn human skin cells directly into pancreatic beta cells without having to go all the way back to a pluripotent stem cell state. The pancreatic cells looked and acted like the real thing in a dish (they were able to secrete insulin when exposed to glucose), and they functioned normally when transplanted into diabetic mice. This study is exciting because it offers a new and more efficient method to make functioning human beta cells in mass quantities.

    Functioning human pancreatic cells after they’ve been transplanted into a mouse. (Image: Saiyong Zhu, Gladstone)

    Functioning human pancreatic cells after they’ve been transplanted into a mouse. (Image: Saiyong Zhu, Gladstone)

  • Challenges of stem cell-derived diabetes treatments. At this year’s Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell Award ceremony Douglas Melton, a well-renowned diabetes researcher from Harvard, spoke about the main challenges for developing stem cell-derived diabetes treatments. The first is the need for better control over the methods that make beta cells from stem cells. The second was finding ways to make large quantities of beta cells for human transplantation. The last was finding ways to prevent a patient’s immune system from rejecting transplanted beta cells. Melton and other scientists are already working on improving techniques to make more beta cells from stem cells. As for preventing transplanted beta cells from being attacked by the patient’s immune system, Melton described two possibilities: using an encapsulation device or biological protection to mask the transplanted cells from an attack.

Progress to a Cure: Clinical Trials for Type 1 Diabetes

Speaking of encapsulation devices, CIRM is funding a Phase I clinical trial sponsored by a San Diego-based company called ViaCyte that’s hoping to develop a stem cell-based cure for patients with T1D. The treatment involves placing a small encapsulated device containing stem cell-derived pancreatic precursor cells under the skin of T1D patients. Once implanted, these precursor cells should develop into pancreatic beta cells that can secrete insulin into the patient’s blood stream. The goal of this trial is first to make sure the treatment is safe for patients and second to see if it’s effective in improving a patient’s ability to regulate their blood sugar levels.

To learn more about this exciting clinical trial, watch this fun video made by Youreka Science.

ViaCyte is still waiting on results for their Phase 1 clinical trial, but in the meantime, they are developing a modified version of their original device for T1D called PEC-Direct. This device also contains pancreatic precursor cells but it’s been designed in a way that allows the patient’s blood vessels to make direct connections to the cells inside the device. This vascularization process hopefully will improve the survival and function of the insulin producing beta cells inside the device. This study, which is in the last stage of research before clinical trials, is also being funded by CIRM, and we are excited to hear news about its progress next year.

ViaCyte's PEC-Direct device allows a patient's blood vessels to integrate and make contact with the transplanted beta cells.

ViaCyte’s PEC-Direct device allows a patient’s blood vessels to integrate and make contact with the transplanted beta cells.

Related Links:

Throwback Thursday: Progress to a Cure for ALS

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Welcome to our new “Throwback Thursday” (TBT) series. CIRM’s Stem Cellar blog has a rich archive of stem cell content that is too valuable to let dust bunnies take over.  So we decided to brush off some of our older, juicy stories and see what advancements in stem cell research science have been made since!

ALS is also called Lou Gehrig's disease, named after the famous American baseball player.

ALS is also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after the famous American baseball player.

This week, we’ll discuss an aggressive neurodegenerative disease called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS. You’re probably more familiar with its other name, Lou Gehrig’s disease. Gehrig was a famous American Major League baseball player who took the New York Yankees to six world championships. He had a gloriously successful career that was sadly cut short by ALS. Post diagnosis, Gehrig’s physical performance quickly deteriorated, and he had to retire from a sport for which he was considered an American hero. He passed away only a year later, at the young age of 37, after he succumbed to complications caused by ALS.

A year ago, we published an interesting blog on this topic. Let’s turn back the clock and take a look at what happened in ALS research in 2014.

TBT: Disease in a Dish – Using Human Stem Cells to Find ALS Treatments

This blog featured the first of our scintillating “Stem Cells in Your face” video series called “Treating ALS with a Disease in a Dish.” Here is an excerpt:

Our latest video Disease in a Dish: That’s a Mouthful takes a lighthearted approach to help clear up any head scratching over this phrase. Although it’s injected with humor, the video focuses on a dreadful disease: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, it’s a disorder in which nerve cells that control muscle movement die. There are no effective treatments and it’s always fatal, usually within 3 to 5 years after diagnosis.

To explain disease in a dish, the video summarizes a Science Translation Medicine publication of CIRM-funded research reported by the laboratory of Robert Baloh, M.D., Ph.D., director of Cedars-Sinai’s multidisciplinary ALS Program. In the study, skin cells from patients with an inherited form of ALS were used to create nerve cells in a petri dish that exhibit the same genetic defects found in the neurons of ALS patients. With this disease in a dish, the team identified a possible cause of the disease: the cells overproduce molecules causing a toxic buildup that affects neuron function. The researchers devised a way to block the toxic buildup, which may point to a new therapeutic strategy.

New Stem Cell Discoveries in ALS Make Progress to Finding a Cure

So what’s happened in the field of ALS research in the past year? I’m happy to report that a lot has been accomplished to better understand this disease and to develop potential cures! Here are a few highlights that we felt were worth mentioning:

  • The Ice Bucket Challenge launched by the ALS Association is raising awareness and funds for ALS research.

    The Ice Bucket Challenge launched by the ALS Association is raising awareness and funds for ALS research.

    Ice Bucket Challenge. The ALS Association launched the “world’s largest global social media phenomenon” by encouraging brave individuals to dump ice-cold water on their heads to raise awareness and funds for research into treatments and cures for ALS. This August, the ALS Association re-launched the Ice Bucket Challenge campaign in efforts to raise additional funds and to make this an annual event.

  • ALS Gene Mapping. In a story released yesterday, the global biotech company Biogen is partnering with Columbia University Medical Center to map ALS disease genes. An article from Bloomberg Business describes how using Ice Bucket Money to create “a genetic map of the disease may help reveal the secrets of a disorder that’s not well understood, including how much a person’s genes contribute to the likelihood of developing ALS.” Biogen is also launching a clinical trial for a new ALS drug candidate by the end of the year.
  • New Drug target for ALS. Our next door neighbors at the Gladstone Institutes here in San Francisco published an exciting new finding in the journal PNAS in June. In collaboration with scientists at the University of Michigan, they discovered a new therapeutic target for ALS. They found that a protein called hUPF1 was able to protect brain cells from ALS-induced death by preventing the accumulation of toxic proteins in these cells. In a Gladstone press release, senior author Steve Finkbeiner said, “This is the first time we’ve been able to link this natural monitoring system to neurodegenerative disease. Leveraging this system could be a strategic therapeutic target for diseases like ALS and frontotemporal dementia.”
  • Stem cells, ALS, and clinical trials. Clive Svendsen at Cedars-Sinai is using gene therapy and stem cells to develop a cure for ALS. His team is currently working in mice to determine the safety and effectiveness of the treatment, but they hope to move into clinical trials with humans by the end of the year. For more details, check out our blog Genes + Cells: Stem Cells deliver genes as drugs and hope for ALS.

These are only a few of the exciting and promising stories that have come out in the past year. It’s encouraging and comforting to see, however, that progress towards a cure for ALS is definitely moving forward.