Informed consent

4 things to know about stem cell clinical trials [Video]

/ Todd Dubnicoff / 3 Comments

Every day, we receive phone calls and emails from people who are desperately seeking our help. Sometimes they reach out on their own behalf, though often it’s for a family member or close friend. In every case, someone is suffering or dying from a disorder that has no available cure or effective treatment and they look to stem cell treatments as their only hope.

It’s heartbreaking to hear these personal stories that are unfolding in real time. Though they contact us from a wide range of places about a wide range of disorders, their initial set of questions are often similar and go something like this:

  • “Where can I find stem cell clinical trial for my condition?”
  • “What are my chances of being cured?”
  • “How much does it cost to be in a clinical trial?”
  • “How can I be sure it’s safe?”

We think anyone thinking about taking part in a clinical trial should consider these important questions. So, in addition to providing answers as we receive them through phone calls and emails, we wanted to find a way to reach out to as many people as possible. The result? The four-minute animation video you can watch below:

As mentioned in the video, the answers to these questions are only the tip of the iceberg for finding out if a particular clinical trial is right for you. The website, A Closer Look at Stem Cells, produced by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), is an excellent source for more advice on what things you should know before participating in a stem cell clinical trial or any experimental stem cell treatment.

And visit the Patient Resources section of our website for even more practical information including our growing list of CIRM-funded clinical trials as well as trials supported by our Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Network.

Cured by Stem Cells

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment

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To get anywhere you need a good map, and you need to check it constantly to make sure you are still on the right path and haven’t strayed off course. A year ago the CIRM Board gave us a map, a Strategic Plan, that laid out our course for the next five years. Our Annual Report for 2016, now online, is our way of checking that we are still on the right path.

I think, without wishing to boast, that it’s safe to say not only are we on target, but we might even be a little bit ahead of schedule.

The Annual Report is chock full of facts and figures but at the heart of it are the stories of the people who are the focus of all that we do, the patients. We profile six patients and one patient advocate, each of whom has an extraordinary story to tell, and each of whom exemplifies the importance of the work we support.

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Brenden Whittaker: Cured

Two stand out for one simple reason, they were both cured of life-threatening conditions. Now, cured is not a word we use lightly. The stem cell field has been rife with hyperbole over the years so we are always very cautious in the way we talk about the impact of treatments. But in these two cases there is no need to hold back: Evangelina Padilla Vaccaro and Brenden Whittaker have been cured.

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Evangelina: Cured

 

In the coming weeks we’ll feature our conversations with all those profiled in the Annual Report, giving you a better idea of the impact the stem cell treatments have had on their lives and the lives of their family. But today we just wanted to give a broad overview of the Annual Report.

The Strategic Plan was very specific in the goals it laid out for us. As an agency we had six big goals, but each Team within the agency, and each individual within those teams had their own goals. They were our own mini-maps if you like, to help us keep track of where we were individually, knowing that every time an individual met a goal they helped the Team get closer to meeting its goals.

As you read through the report you’ll see we did a pretty good job of meeting our targets. In fact, we missed only one and we’re hoping to make up for that early in 2017.

But good as 2016 was, we know that to truly fulfill our mission of accelerating treatments to patients with unmet medical needs we are going to have do equally well, if not even better, in 2017.

That work starts today.

 

Stem Cell Experts Discuss the Ethical Implications of Translating iPSCs to the Clinic

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Part of The Stem Cellar blog series on 10 years of iPSCs.

This year, scientists are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Shinya Yamanaka’s Nobel Prize winning discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These are cells that are very similar biologically to embryonic stem cells and can develop into any cell in the body. iPSCs are very useful in scientific research for disease modeling, drug screening, and for potential cell therapy applications.

However, with any therapy that involves testing in human patients, there are ethical questions that scientists, companies, and policy makers must consider. Yesterday, a panel of stem cell and bioethics experts at the Cell Symposium 10 Years of iPSCs conference in Berkeley discussed the ethical issues surrounding the translation of iPSC research from the lab bench to clinical trials in patients.

The panel included Shinya Yamanaka (Gladstone Institutes), George Daley (Harvard University), Christine Mummery (Leiden University Medical Centre), Lorenz Studer (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), Deepak Srivastava (Gladstone Institutes), and Bioethicist Hank Greely (Stanford University).

iPSC Ethics Panel

iPSC Ethics Panel at the 10 Years of iPSCs Conference

Below is a summary of what these experts had to say about questions ranging from the ethics of patient and donor consent, genetic modification of iPSCs, designer organs, and whether patients should pay to participate in clinical trials.

How should we address patient or donor consent regarding iPSC banking?

Multiple institutes including CIRM are developing iPSC banks that store thousands of patient-derived iPSC lines, which scientists can use to study disease and develop new therapies. These important cell lines wouldn’t exist without patients who consent to donate their cells or tissue. The first question posed to the panel was how to regulate the consent process.

Christine Mummery began by emphasizing that it’s essential that companies are able to license patient-derived iPSC lines so they don’t have to go back to the patient and inconvenience them by asking for additional samples to make new cell lines.

George Daley and Hank Greely discussed different options for improving the informed consent process. Daley mentioned that the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) recently updated their informed consent guidelines and now provide adaptable informed consent templates that can be used for obtaining many type of materials for human stem cell research.  Daley also mentioned the move towards standardizing the informed consent process through a single video shared by multiple institutions.

Greely agreed that video could be a powerful way to connect with patients by using talented “explainers” to educate patients. But both Daley and Greely cautioned that it’s essential to make sure that patients understand what they are getting involved in when they donate their tissue.

Greely rounded up the conversation by reminding the audience that patients are giving the research field invaluable information so we should consider giving back in return. While we can’t and shouldn’t promise a cure, we can give back in other ways like recognizing the contributions of specific patients or disease communities.

Greely mentioned the resolution with Henrietta Lack’s family as a good example. For more than 60 years, scientists have used a cancer cell line called HeLa cells that were derived from the cervical cancer cells of a woman named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta never gave consent for her cells to be used and her family had no clue that pieces of Henrietta were being studied around the world until years later.

In 2013, the NIH finally rectified this issue by requiring that researchers ask for permission to access Henrietta’s genomic data and to include the Lacks family in their publication acknowledgements.

Hank Greely, Stanford University

Hank Greely, Stanford University

“The Lacks family are quite proud and pleased that their mother, grandmother and great grandmother is being remembered, that they are consulted on various things,” said Hank Greely. “They aren’t making any direct money out of it but they are taking a great deal of pride in the recognition that their family is getting. I think that returning something to patients is a nice thing, and a human thing.”

What are the ethical issues surrounding genome editing of iPSCs?

The conversation quickly focused on the ongoing CRISPR patent battle between the Broad Institute, MIT and UC Berkeley. For those unfamiliar with the technique, CRISPR is a gene editing technology that allows you to cut and paste DNA at precise locations in the genome. CRISPR has many uses in research, but in the context of iPSCs, scientists are using CRISPR to remove disease-causing mutations in patient iPSCs.

George Daley expressed his worry about a potential fallout if the CRISPR battle goes a certain way. He commented, “It’s deeply concerning when such a fundamentally enabling platform technology could be restricted for future gene editing applications.”

The CRISPR patent battle began in 2012 and millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent since then. Hank Greely said that he can’t understand why the Institutes haven’t settled this case already as the costs will only continue to rise, but that it might not matter how the case turns out in the end:

“My guess is that this isn’t ultimately going to be important because people will quickly figure out ways to invent around the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. People have already done it around the Cas9 part and there will probably be ways to do the same thing for the CRISPR part.”

 Christine Mummery finished off with a final point about the potential risk of trying to correct disease causing mutations in patient iPSCs using CRISPR technology. She noted that it’s possible the correction may not lead to an improvement because of other disease-causing genetic mutations in the cells that the patient and their family are unaware of.

 Should patients or donors be paid for their cells and tissue?

Lorenz Studer said he would support patients being paid for donating samples as long as the payment is reasonable, the consent form is clear, and patients aren’t trying to make money off of the process.

Hank Greely said the big issue is with inducement and whether you are paying enough money to convince people to do something they shouldn’t or wouldn’t want to do. He said this issue comes up mainly around reproductive egg donation but not with obtaining simpler tissue samples like skin biopsies. Egg donors are given money because it’s an invasive procedure, but also because a political decision was made to compensate egg donors. Greely predicts the same thing is unlikely to happen with other cell and tissue types.

Christine Mummery’s opinion was that if a patient’s iPSCs are used by a drug company to produce new successful drugs, the patient should receive some form of compensation. But she said it’s hard to know how much to pay patients, and this question was left unanswered by the panel.

Should patients pay to participate in clinical trials?

George Daley said it’s hard to justify charging patients to participate in a Phase 1 clinical trial where the focus is on testing the safety of a therapy without any guarantee that there will be beneficial outcome to the patient. In this case, charging a patient money could raise their expectations and mislead them into thinking they will benefit from the treatment. It would also be unfair because only patients who can afford to pay would have access to trials. Ultimately, he concluded that making patients pay for an early stage trial would corrupt the informed consent process. However, he did say that there are certain, rare contexts that would be highly regulated where patients could pay to participate in trials in an ethical way.

Lorenz Studer said the issue is very challenging. He knows of patients who want to pay to be in trials for treatments they hope will work, but he also doesn’t think that patients should have to pay to be in early stage trials where their participation helps the progress of the therapy. He said the focus should be on enrolling the right patient groups in clinical trials and making sure patients are properly educated about the trial they are participating.

Thoughts on the ethics behind making designer organs from iPSCs?

Deepak Srivastava said that he thinks about this question all the time in reference to the heart:

Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes

Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes

“The heart is basically a pump. When we traditionally thought about whether we could make a human heart, we asked if we could make the same thing with the same shape and design. But in fact, that’s not necessarily the best design – it’s what evolution gave us. What we really need is a pump that’s electrically active. I think going forward, we should remove the constraint of the current design and just think about what would be the best functional structure to do it. But it is definitely messing with nature and what evolution has given us.”

Deepak also said that because every organ is different, different strategies should be used. In the case of the heart, it might be beneficial to convert existing heart tissue into beating heart cells using drugs rather than transplant iPSC-derived heart cells or tissue. For other organs like the pancreas, it is beneficial to transplant stem cell-derived cells. For diabetes, scientists have shown that injecting insulin secreting cells in multiple areas of the body is beneficial to Diabetes patients.

Hank Greely concluded that the big ethical issue of creating stem cell-derived organs is safety. “Biology isn’t the same as design,” Greely said. “It’s really, really complicated. When you put something into a biological organism, the chances that something odd will happen are extremely high. We have to be very careful to avoid making matters worse.”

For more on the 10 years of iPSCs conference, check out the #CSStemCell16 hashtag on twitter.

Making a deposit in the Bank: using stem cells from children with rare diseases to find new treatments

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

Part of The Stem Cellar series on ten years of iPS cells

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For Chris Waters, the motivation behind her move from big pharmaceutical companies and biotech to starting a non-profit organization focused on rare diseases in children is simple: “What’s most important is empowering patient families and helping them accelerate research to the clinical solutions they so urgently need for their child ,” she says.

Chris is the founder of Rare Science. Their mission statement – Accelerating Cures for RARE Kids – bears a striking resemblance to ours here at CIRM, so creating a partnership between us just seemed to make sense. At least it did to Chris. And one thing you need to know about Chris, is that when she has an idea you should just get out of the way, because she is going to make it happen.

“The biggest gap in drug development is that we are not addressing the specific needs of children, especially those with rare diseases.  We need to focus on kids. They are our future. If it takes 14 years and $2 billion to get FDA approval for a new drug, how is that going to help the 35% of the 200 million children across the world that are dying before 5 years of age because they have a rare disease? That’s why we created Rare Science. How do we help kids right now, how do we help the families? How do we make change?”

Banking on CIRM for help

One of the changes she wanted to make was to add the blood and tissue samples from one of the rare disease patient communities she works with to the CIRM Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Bank. This program is collecting samples from up to 3,000 Californians – some of them healthy, some suffering from diseases such as autism, Alzheimer’s, heart, lung and liver disease and blindness. The samples will be turned into iPS cells – pluripotent stem cells that have the ability to be turned into any other type of cell in the body – enabling researchers to study how the diseases progress, and hopefully leading to the development of new therapies.

 

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Lilly Grossman: photo courtesy LA Times

Chris says many kids with rare diseases can struggle for years to get an accurate diagnosis and even when they do get one there is often nothing available to help them. She says one San Diego teenager, Lilly Grossman, was originally diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and it took years to identify that the real cause of her problems was a mutation in a gene called ADCY5, leading to abnormal involuntary movement. At first Lily’s family felt they were the only ones facing this problem. They have since started a patient family organization (ADCY5.org) that supports others with this condition.

“Even though we know that the affected individuals have the gene mutation, we have no idea how the gene causes the observable traits that are widely variable across the individuals we know.  We need research tools to help us understand the biology of ADCY5 and other rare disease – it is not enough to just know the gene mutation. We always wanted to do a stem cell line that would help us get at these biological questions.”

Getting creative

But with little money to spend Chris faced what, for an ordinary person, might have been a series of daunting obstacles. She needed consent forms so that everyone donating tissue, particularly the children, knew exactly what was involved in giving samples and how those samples would be used in research.  She also needed materials to collect the samples. In addition she needed to find doctors and sites around the world where the families were located to help with the sample collection.  All of this was going to cost money, which for any non-profit is always in short supply.

So she went to work herself, creating a Research Participant’s Bill of Rights – a list of the rights that anyone taking part in medical research has. She developed forms explaining to children, teenagers and parents what happens if they give skin or blood samples as part of medical research, telling them how an individual’s personal medical health history may be used in research studies. And then she turned to medical supply companies and got them to donate the tubes and other materials that would be needed to collect and preserve the tissue and blood samples.

Even though ADCY5 is a very rare condition, Chris has collected samples from 42 individuals representing 13 different families, some affected with the condition as well as their unaffected siblings and parents. These samples come from families all around the world, from the US and Europe, to Canada and Australia.

“With CIRM we can build stem cell lines. We can lower the barrier of access for researchers who want to utilize these valuable stem cell lines that they may not have the resources to generate themselves.  The cell lines, in the hands of researchers, can potentially accelerate understanding of the biology. They can help us identify targets to focus on for therapies. They can help us screen currently approved medications or drugs, so we have something now that could help these kids now, not 14 years from now.”

The samples Chris collects will be made available to researchers not just here in the US, but around the world. Chris hopes this program will serve as a model for other rare diseases, creating stem cell lines from them to help close the gap between discovery research and clinical impact.

Rare bears for rare disease

But in everything she does, in the end it always comes down to the patient families. Chris says so many children and families battling a rare disease feel they are alone. So she created with her team, the RARE Bear program to let them know they aren’t alone, that they are part of a worldwide community of support. She says each bear is handmade by the RARE Bear Army which spans 9 countries including 45 states in the US.  Each RARE Bear is different, because “they are all one of a kind bears for one of a kind kids. And that’s why we are here, to help rare kids one bear at a time.”  The RARE Bear program, also helps with rare disease awareness, patient outreach and rare disease community building which is key for RARE Science Research Programs.

It’s working. Chris recently got this series of photos and notes from the parents of a young girl in England, after they got their bear.

“I wanted to say a huge heartfelt thank you for my daughters Rare bear. It arrived today to Essex, England & as you can see from my pictures Isabella loves her already! We have named her Faith as a reminder to never give up!”

Patients are the Heroes at the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinics Symposium

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

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UCSD’s Catriona Jamieson and patient advocate Sandra Dillon at the CIRM Alpha Clinic Network Symposium

Sometimes, when you take a moment to stand back and look at what you have accomplished, you can surprise yourself at how far you have come, and how much you have done in a short space of time.

Take the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinics Network for example. In the 18 months since our Board invested $24 million to kick start the first three Alpha Clinics the Network has signed up 21 clinical trials. That’s no small achievement. But as far as the Alpha Clinics Network team is concerned, that’s just a start.

Alpha clinic table

Last week UC San Diego hosted the Second Annual CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinics Network Symposium. The gathering of scientists, medical staff and patient advocates spent a little time talking about the past, about what has been achieved so far, but most of the time was devoted to looking to the future, planning where they want to go and how they are going to get there.

The Network’s goal is to now dramatically increase the number of high quality stem cell clinical trials it is running, to make it even easier for companies and researchers looking for a site to carry out their trial, and to make it even easier for patients looking to sign up for one.

Alpha clinic panel

Panel at symposium: L to R: David Higgins, CIRM Board; David Parry, GSK; Catriona Jamieson, UCSD: John Zaia, City of Hope; John Adams, UCLA

For companies, the lure of having three Alpha Clinics (UC San Diego, City of Hope and the combined team of UCLA/UC Irvine) packed with skilled, experienced staff that specialize in delivering stem cell therapies is a big draw. (By the way, if you know anyone looking for funding for a clinical trial send them here).

The Alpha Clinic teams not only know how to deliver the therapies, they also know how to deliver patients. They spend a lot of time working with patients and patient advocates on the best ways to recruit people for trials, and the best way to design those trials so that they are as easy as possible for patients to take part in.

This attention to making it as good an experience for patients as possible starts from the very first time that a patient calls the clinics to find out if they are eligible for a trial. If there is no trial that is appropriate for that particular patient, the staff try to find an alternative trial at another location that might work.

Making sure it’s a good fit

If the Network does have a trial that meets the needs of the patient, then they begin the conversation to find out if the patient is eligible to apply. The goal of this part of the process is not simply to try and fill up available slots but to make sure that the patient is both a good match for the proposed therapy and that they also completely understand what’s involved in getting that therapy. For example, they need to understand if the trial involves staying overnight or several nights in the hospital, or if there are things they need to do ahead of time to prepare.

For the clinics themselves, one of the biggest challenges is insurance coverage. While the trial itself may be free, the patient may need to have some tests ahead of the treatment, to make sure they don’t have any underlying problems that could put their health at risk. The clinics need to know if the patient’s insurance will cover the cost of those tests and if they don’t what their options are. For a rare disease, where it’s challenging to find enough patients to produce meaningful results, these kinds of problems can jeopardize the whole trial.

The Alpha Clinics Network is working hard to develop answers to all of those problems, to create systems that make it as easy as possible to get a clinical trial up and running, and to recruit and keep patients in that trial.

Challenges to overcome

Part of the challenge is that many of these trials are for first-in-human therapies, meaning no one has ever tried this in a person before. That means the doctors, nurses and all the support staff in these clinics need to be specially trained in dealing with an entirely new way of treating people, with an entirely new class of therapies. And this isn’t just about technical skills. They also need to be good at communication, helping the patients understand everything that is happening or about to happen.

In a state like California, one of the most diverse places on earth, that’s no easy challenge. According to a UCLA study there are more than 220 languages spoken in LA County alone. Coping with that level of linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity is a challenge that the Alpha Clinics are working hard to meet.

Listening to patients

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Patient advocates were also an important voice at the symposium, talking about their experiences in clinical trials and how they have helped change their lives, and how they have, in some cases, saved their lives. But they also had some thoughts on how the researchers can do an even better job. That is the subject for a future blog.

While everyone acknowledged the challenges the CIRM Alpha Clinics face, they also celebrated what they have accomplished so far, and looked forward to the future. And the symposium was a chance to remind all of us that the reason we are in this is to help patients battling deadly diseases and disorders. So it was fitting that Thomas Kipps, the Deputy Director of Research at the UCSD Moore’s Cancer Center, took the opportunity to thank those who are not just the focus of this work, but also the heroes.

Kipps

Thomas Kipps: Photo courtesy Patient Power

“Clinical trials involve a very important skill set. You have to first and foremost put the patient first in any clinical trial. I think we cannot ignore the fact that these are human beings that are brave souls that have gone forward. These are the heroes who are going out and forging new territory.”

How do you know if they really know what they’re saying “yes” to?

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

How can you not love something titled “Money, Mischief and Science.” It just smacks of intrigue and high stakes.

And when the rest of the title is “What Have We Learned About Doing Stem Cell Research?” you have an altogether intriguing topic for a panel discussion.

Sue and Bill Gross Hall: Photo by Hoang Xuan Pham/ UC Irvine

Sue and Bill Gross Hall: Photo by Hoang Xuan Pham/ UC Irvine

That panel – featuring CIRM’s own Dr. Geoff Lomax, a regular contributor to The Stem Cellar – is just one element in a day-long event at the University of California, Irvine this Friday, November 13.

Super Symposium

The 2015 Stem Cell Symposium: “The Challenge of Informed Consent in Times of Controversy” looks at some of the problems researchers, companies, institutions and organizations face when trying to put together a clinical trial.

In many cases the individuals who want to sign up for a clinical trial involving the use of stem cells are facing life-threatening diseases or problems. Often they have tried every other option available and this trial may be their last hope. So how can you ensure that they fully understand the risks involved in signing up for a trial?

Equally important is that many of the trials now underway now are Phase 1 trials. The main goal of this kind of trial is to show that the therapy is safe and so the number of cells they use is often too small to have any obvious benefit to the patient. So how can you explain that to a patient who may chose to ignore your caveats and focus instead on the hope, distant as it may be, that this could help them?

Challenging questions

The symposium will feature experts in the fields of science, law, technology and ethics as they consider:

  • Does informed consent convey different meanings depending on who invokes the term?
  • When do we know that consent is informed?
  • What are human research subjects entitled to know before, during and after agreeing to participate in clinical trials?
  • How might the pushback on fetal tissue research impact the scientific development of vaccines, research on Alzheimer’s disease or other medical advancements?

So if you are looking for something thought provoking and engaging to do this Friday, here you are:

“The Challenge of Informed Consent in Times of Controversy,” Friday, Nov. 13, 9am – 4:30pm, at the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center on the University of California, Irvine campus.

The symposium will be livestreamed, and a video recording will be available on www.law.uci.edu following the event.

REGISTER: The symposium is free to UCI student, staff and faculty. There is a $20 registration fee for non-UCI attendees. Visit the event page to register.