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CIRM’s Randy Mills: New FDA rules for stem cells won’t fix the problem

/ Kevin McCormack / 6 Comments

For the last two days the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been holding a hearing in Bethesda, Maryland on new regulations that would tighten control over stem cell treatments. The FDA invited public testimony during the hearing on the regulations that would impact many of the clinics that currently offer unproven therapies

The testimony has been impassioned to say the least. Supporters of the clinics say they offer a valuable service and that patients should be allowed to decide for themselves how they want their own cells to be used. Opponents say the clinics are little more than snake oil sales people, offering bogus, unproven treatments.

One of those presenting was Randy Mills, CIRM’s President and CEO. Randy has been very vocal in the past about the need for the FDA to change the way it regulates stem cell therapies.

In California Healthline Randy explained why he thinks the rules the FDA is proposing will not fix the problem, and may even make it worse:

FDA Must Find A Middle Ground For Sake Of Patients

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Randy Mills

We aren’t happy, as a lot of people aren’t happy, with the proliferation of these stem cell clinics — some of which are probably doing good work. But some are clearly making rather outlandish claims for which there’s no real data. 

There are a couple of conditions coming together to create this storm.

One is that the need is very real. These patients are really struggling. They don’t have alternatives. They’re desperate and they need help. It’s not in the realm of possibility to talk to somebody who is suffering as badly as these patients are and to say, ‘You have to wait a few more decades for the science to catch up.’

On the other hand, we have a regulatory paradigm that only provides two pathways to put a cell therapy onto the market. One pathway is the most intense regulatory requirement anywhere in the world for any product — the biologics license application through the FDA, which takes 10 to 20 years and costs over $1 billion.

The other is through the exemptions the FDA has made, which require absolutely no pre-market approval whatsoever. You can be on the market in days, with no data.

The regulatory burden associated with one is massive and the other is almost nonexistent.

So it’s not at all surprising that we’re seeing a proliferation of these stem cell clinics popping up that are operating under the assumption that they fall under the exemption.

What the FDA is doing now is saying, ‘We’re not happy with this. We’re going to define some terms more narrowly than in the past … and make it more difficult to legally be on the market under the less burdensome regulatory pathway.’

That’s what this meeting is about.

The problem with their strategy is twofold. It doesn’t address the patients, or the need side of the equation. And I don’t think it has a chance of actually working because the FDA will acknowledge that they do not have the resources to enforce these types of regulations at the clinic level.

They would have to be essentially regulating the practice of physicians, which is well beyond their capabilities. Even if they were able to enforce it, it would just drive these patients somewhere else.

We’re advocating for the creation of some middle pathway that would bring essentially unregulated therapies into the regulatory fold, but in a manner which could be complied with.

I would rather know these clinics are being regulated and collecting data than have them operating under the radar screen of the FDA. I would like there to be a formal pre-market review of these therapies before they’re put on the market. I would like there to be safety and efficacy data.

I’m going to try hard to get the FDA to see that just plugging this hole won’t make the problem go away.

Thinking that they’re going to strengthen the regulation and that patients are going to be satisfied that there’s absolutely no chance for help is naive.

There isn’t a lot of evidence to suggest these types of procedures are overly risky. It’s not that they don’t have risk, but everything in medicine does. If you’re a patient who has absolutely no alternative, you’re probably willing to take the chance.

Salk scientists explain why brain cells are genetically diverse

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

twin_boys

I’ve always wondered why some sets of genetically identical twins become not so identical later in life. Sometimes they differ in appearance. Other times, one twin is healthy while the other is plagued with a serious disease. These differences can be explained by exposure to different environmental factors over time, but there could also be a genetic explanation involving our brains.

The brain is composed of approximately 100 billion cells called neurons, each with a DNA blueprint that contains instructions that determine the function of these neurons in the brain. Originally it was thought that all cells, including neurons, have the same DNA. But more recently, scientists discovered that the brain is genetically diverse and that neurons within the same brain can have slightly different DNA blueprints, which could give them slightly different functions.

Jumping genes and genetic diversity

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Fred “Rusty” Gage: Photo courtesy Salk Institute

Why and how neurons have differences in their DNA are questions that Salk Institute professor Fred Gage has pursued for more than a decade. In 2005, his lab discovered a mechanism during neural development that causes differences in the DNA of neurons. As a brain stem cell develops into a neuron, long interspersed nuclear elements (L1s), which are small pieces of DNA, copy and paste themselves, seemingly at random, throughout a neuron’s genome.

These elements were originally dubbed “jumping genes” because of their ability to hop around and insert themselves into DNA. It turns out that L1s do more than copy and paste themselves to create changes in DNA, they also can delete chunks of DNA. In a CIRM-funded study published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Gage and colleagues at the Salk Institute reported new insights into L1 activity and how it creates genetic diversity in the brain.

Copy, paste, delete

Gage and his team had clues that L1s can cause DNA deletions in neurons back in 2013. They used a technique called single-cell sequencing to record the sequence of individual neuronal genomes and saw that some of their genomes had large sections of DNA added or missing.

They thought that L1s could be the reason for these insertions and deletions, but didn’t have proof until their current study, which used an improved method to identify areas of the neuronal genome modified by L1s. This method, combined with a computer algorithm that can easily tell the difference between various types of L1 modifications, revealed that areas of the genome with L1s were susceptible to DNA cutting caused by enzymes that home in on the L1 sequences. These breaks in the DNA then cause the observed deletions.

Gage explained their findings in a news release:

“In 2013, we discovered that different neurons within the same brain have various complements of DNA, suggesting that they function slightly differently from each other even within the same person. This recent study reveals a new and surprising form of variation that will help us understand the role of L1s, not only in healthy brains but in those affected by schizophrenia and autism.”

Jennifer Erwin, first author on the study, further elaborated:

“The surprising part was that we thought all L1s could do was insert into new places. But the fact that they’re causing deletions means that they’re affecting the genome in a more significant way,” says Erwin, a staff scientist in Gage’s group.”

Insights into brain disorders

It’s now known that L1s are important for the brain’s genetic diversity, but Gage also believes that L1s could play a role in causing brain disorders like schizophrenia and autism where there is heightened L1 activity in the neurons of these patients. In future work, Gage and his team will study how L1s can cause changes in genes associated with schizophrenia and autism and how these changes can effect brain function and cause disease.

Young man with spinal cord injury regains use of hands and arms after stem cell therapy

/ Kevin McCormack / 26 Comments
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Kris Boesen – Photo courtesy USC

Hope is such a fragile thing. We cling to it in bad times. It offers us a sense that we can bear whatever hardships we are facing today, and that tomorrow will be better.

Kris Boesen knows all about holding on to hope during bad times. On March 6th of this year he was left paralyzed from the neck down after a car accident. Kris and his parents were warned the damage might be permanent.

Kris says at that point, life was pretty bleak:

“I couldn’t drink, couldn’t feed myself, couldn’t text or pretty much do anything, I was basically just existing. I wasn’t living my life, I was existing.”

For Kris and his family hope came in the form of a stem cell clinical trial, run by Asterias Biotherapeutics and funded by CIRM. The Asterias team had already enrolled three patients in the trial, each of whom had 2 million cells transplanted into their necks, primarily to test for safety. In early April Kris became the first patient in the trial to get a transplant of 10 million stem cells.

Within two weeks he began to show signs of improvement, regaining movement and strength in his arms and hands:

“Now I have grip strength and do things like open a bottle of soda and feed myself. Whereas before I was relying on my parents, now after the stem cell therapy I am able to live my life.”

The therapy involves human embryonic stem cells that have been differentiated, or converted, into cells called oligodendrocyte progenitors. These are capable of becoming the kind of cells which help protect nerve cells in the central nervous system, the area damaged in spinal cord injury.

The surgery was performed by Keck Medicine of USC’s Dr. Charles Liu. In a news release about the procedure, he says improvements of the kind Kris has experienced can make a huge difference in someone’s life:

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Dr. Charles Liu, Keck School of Medicine: Photo courtesy USC

“As of 90 days post-treatment, Kris has gained significant improvement in his motor function, up to two spinal cord levels. In Kris’ case, two spinal cord levels means the difference between using your hands to brush your teeth, operate a computer or do other things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, so having this level of functional independence cannot be overstated.”

We blogged about this work as recently as last week, when Asterias announced that the trial had passed two important safety hurdles.  But Kris’ story is the first to suggest this treatment might actually be working.

Randy Mills, CIRM’s President & CEO, says:

 “With each patient treated in this clinical trial we learn.  We gain more experience, all of which helps us put into better context the significance of this type of event for all people afflicted with debilitating spinal cord injuries. But let us not lose sight of the individual here.  While each participant in a clinical trial is part of the group, for them success is binary.  They either improve or they do not.  Kris bravely and selflessly volunteered for this clinical trial so that others may benefit from what we learn.  So it is fitting that today we celebrate Kris’ improvements and stop to thank all those participating in clinical trials for their selfless efforts.”

For patient advocates like Roman Reed, this was a moment to celebrate. Roman has been championing stem cell research for years and through his Roman Reed Foundation helped lay the groundwork for the research that led to this clinical trial:

“This is clear affirmative affirmation that we are making Medical History!  We were able to give a paralyzed quadriplegic patient back the use of his hands! With only half a clinical dosage. Now this person may hold and grasp his loved ones hands in his own hands because of the actions of our last two decades for medical research for paralysis CURE! CARPE DIEM!”

It’s not unheard of for people with the kind of injury Kris had to make a partial recovery, to regain some use of their arms and hands, so it’s impossible to know right now if the stem cell transplant was the deciding factor.

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Kris at home: photo courtesy USC

Kris’ dad, Rodney, says he doesn’t care how it happened, he’s just delighted it did:

“He’s going to have a life, even if (the progress) stops just this second, and this is what he has, he’s going to have a better life than he would have definitely had before, because there are so many things that this opens up the world for him, he’s going to be able to use his hands.”

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CIRM jumped on the iPS cell bandwagon before it had wheels

/ Don Gibbons / Leave a comment

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

The first press release I issued that announced new research grants after arriving at CIRM in 2008 detailed 18 “New Cell Line” awards. Ten of those grants, announced in June that year, were for a type of stem cell that had not even been proven to exist until November the year before. Those induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) so dramatically changed our field that their discovery led to the Nobel prize for Shinya Yamanaka just four years later.

Even though California voters approved the creation of CIRM in November 2004 and the agency’s first office opened just a few months later, the first grants for research projects did not get approved until February 2007. Litigation by opponents of stem cell research and the monumental task of setting up a granting agency from scratch resulted in a two-year gap between the vote and getting down to the business the voters resoundingly supported.

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One of the first videos we placed on CIRMTV on YouTube was on iPSCs

Those first research grants sought to increase the sparse number of California researchers actually doing research with human embryonic stem cells. But just eight months later, in October 2007, CIRM staff had enough confidence in the mettle of California’s researchers that they went to our Board with a concept proposal for the New Cell Line awards that included the option of developing human iPS cells. While Yamanaka had first reprogrammed mouse skin cells to iPS cells in 2006, at the time of the Board presentation it was only speculated to be possible with human tissue. Not until the following month did he and Wisconsin’s James Thomson simultaneous publish the creation of human iPS cells, which CIRM staff annotated into the New Cell Line Request for Applications before they posted it in December 2007.

Former colleague Uta Grieshammer managed the New Cell Line awards as a CIRM senior science officer. In a recent interview she said the scientific questions posed by those grants showed the value of these awards.

 “The types of research we ended up funding under this call reflected the breadth of the questions important to embryonic stem cell and iPS cell work.”

Those projects included:

  • Creating early stage embryonic stem cells (ESCs), called ICM stage, which had been done in mice but not humans;
  • creating “clinical grade” ESCs fit for use in patients;
  • creating ESCs from embryos discarded by families at IVF clinics because they carried mutations for inherited diseases with the goal of developing better models for those diseases;
  • creating iPS cells from people with diseases, also to develop better models of disease;
  • ways to make iPS cells that did not result in the reprogramming factors being integrated into the cell’s genes permanently, which could render them unfit for human therapy;
  • looking to see if the age of the adult cell used to make iPS cells matters in the resulting stem cell;
  • comparing iPS and ESC lines to see if they are truly equivalent.

Those all turned out to be critical questions for the field, many still dominating much of the research today.  One of the most robust areas of iPS research involves creating disease-in-a-dish models using patient-derived stem cells for diseases that have been historically difficult to model in animals. One of the New Cell Line grantees, Fred Gage at the Salk Institute in San Diego, became one of the first researchers anywhere to report physiological differences between nerves grown from normal individuals versus nerves grown from patients with mental health conditions.

uta-grieshammer “The excitement to me personally with the result of our New Cell Lines is access to understanding complex genetic diseases through iPS cells,” said Uta, who currently is helping us untangle even more complex diseases as part of the management team for California’s personalized medicine initiative.

Gage, along with a co-investigator at Johns Hopkins, just last week received a $15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to screen drug libraries against iPS cell-derived nerves to look for treatments for schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. Clearly the CIRM team was onto something back in 2007.

Footnote:  This will be my last regular post for The Stem Cellar. I will be retiring from CIRM later this month, though I may heed the call if my colleagues ask me to do a guest post from my new base on Cape Cod.

Clearing the first hurdle: spinal cord injury trial passes safety review

/ Kevin McCormack / 9 Comments
Jake 2

Jake Javier, participant in Asterias clinica trial

Starting a clinical trial is like taking a step into the unknown. It’s moving a potential therapy out of the lab and testing it in people. To reach this point the researchers have done a lot of work trying to ensure the therapy is safe. But that work was done in the lab, and on mice or other animals. Now it’s time to see what happens when you try it in the real world.

It can be quite nerve wracking for everyone involved: both the researchers, because years of hard work are at stake, and the patients, because they’re getting something that has never been tested in humans before; something that could, potentially, change their lives.

Today we got some good news about one clinical trial we are funding, the Asterias Biotherapeutics spinal cord injury trial. Asterias announced that its Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) has reviewed the safety data from the first two groups of patients treated and found no problems or bad side effects.

That’s an important first step in any clinical trial because it shows that, at the very least, the therapy is not going to make the patient’s condition any worse.

The big question now, is will it make their condition better? That’s something we’ll come back to at a later date when we have a better idea how the people treated in the trial are doing. But for now let’s take a deeper dive into the safety data.

Asterias – by the numbers

This current trial is a Phase 1/2a trial. The people enrolled have all experienced injuries in the C5-C7 vertebrae – that’s high up in the neck – and have essentially lost all feeling and movement below the injury site. All are treated between two weeks and one month after the injury was sustained.

The therapy involves transplants of Asterias’ AST-OPC1 cells which were made from human embryonic stem cells. The AST-OPC1 cells have been turned into oligodendrocyte progenitors, which are capable of becoming the kind of cells which help protect nerve cells in the central nervous system, the area damaged in spinal cord injury.

The first group of three patients in the Asterias trial was given 2 million cells. The second group of five patients received 10 million cells. The DMC said the safety data from those patients looked fine, that there were no signs of problems.

As Dr. Edward Wirth, the Chief Medical Officer at Asterias, said in a news release, this means the company can plan for its next phase:

“The positive safety data in the previous phase 1 study and in the ongoing phase 1/2a study gives us the confidence to now proceed to administration of 20 million cells, which based on our significant pre-clinical research is likely well within the dosing range where we would expect to see clinically meaningful improvement in these patients.”

Asterias is now looking to enroll 5-8 patients for this 20 million cell phase.

jake and family

For people like Jake Javier this news is not about numbers or data, it’s personal. Earlier this summer Jake broke his neck at a pool party, celebrating graduating from high school. It left him paralyzed from the chest down with extremely limited use of his arms and hands. On July 7th Jake was enrolled in the Asterias trial, and had ten million cells transplanted into his neck.

It could be months, even as much as one year, before we know if those cells are having any beneficial effect on Jake. But at least for now we know they don’t seem to be having any negative effects.

“First do no harm” is the cardinal rule that all budding physicians are taught. This trial seems to be meeting that benchmark. Our hope now is that it will do a lot more, and truly make a difference in the lives of people like Jake.

As Randy Mills, CIRM’s President and CEO, said in a news release:

“I recently met with Jake and heard first-hand what he and his family are going through in the aftermath of his injury. But I also saw a young man with remarkable courage and determination. It is because of Jake, and the others who volunteer to take part in clinical trials, that progress is possible. They are true heroes.”

* On a side note, Roman Reed, a great champion of stem cell research and a patient advocate extraordinaire, helped make much of this story happen. He helped Jake enroll in the Asterias trial ,and the research that led to this therapy was pioneered by Dr. Hans Keirstead who was funded by the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act.

 

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Seeing is believing: how some scientists – including two funded by CIRM – are working to help the blind see

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
retinitis pigmentosas_1

How retinitis pigmentosa destroys vision – new stem cell research may help reverse that

“A pale hue”. For most of us that is a simple description, an observation about color. For Kristin Macdonald it’s a glimpse of the future. In some ways it’s a miracle. Kristin lost her sight to retinitis pigmentosa (RP). For many years she was virtually blind. But now, thanks to a clinical trial funded by CIRM she is starting to see again.

Kristin’s story is one of several examples of restoring sight in an article entitled “Why There’s New Hope About Ending Blindness” in the latest issue of National Geographic.  The article explores different approaches to treating people who were either born without vision or lost their vision due to disease or injury.

Two of those stories feature research that CIRM has funded. One is the work that is helping Kristin. Retinitis pigmentosa is a relatively rare condition that destroys the photoreceptors at the back of the eye, the cells that actually allow us to sense light. The National Geographic piece highlights how a research team at the University of California, Irvine, led by Dr. Henry Klassen, has been working on a way to use stem cells to replace and repair the cells damaged by RP.

“Klassen has spent 30 years studying how to coax progenitor cells—former stem cells that have begun to move toward being specific cell types—into replacing or rehabilitating failed retinal cells. Having successfully used retinal progenitor cells to improve vision in mice, rats, cats, dogs, and pigs, he’s testing a similar treatment in people with advanced retinitis pigmentosa.”

We recently blogged about this work and the fact that this team just passed it’s first major milestone – – showing that in the first nine patients treated none experienced any serious side effects. A Phase 1 clinical trial like this is designed to test for safety, so it usually involves the use of relatively small numbers of cells. The fact that some of those treated, like Kristin, are showing signs of improvement in their vision is quite encouraging. We will be following this work very closely and reporting new results as soon as they are available.

The other CIRM-supported research featured in the article is led by what the writer calls “an eyeball dream team” featuring University of Southern California’s Dr. Mark Humayun, described as “a courteous, efficient, impeccably besuited man.” And it’s true, he is.

The team is developing a stem cell device to help treat age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in the US.

“He and his fellow principal investigator, University of California, Santa Barbara stem cell biologist Dennis Clegg, call it simply a patch. That patch’s chassis, made of the same stuff used to coat wiring for pacemakers and neural implants, is wafer thin, bottle shaped, and the size of a fat grain of rice. Onto this speck Clegg distributes 120,000 cells derived from embryonic stem cells.”

Humayun and Clegg have just started their clinical trial with this work so it is likely going to be some time before we have any results.

These are just two of the many different approaches, using several different methods, to address vision loss. The article is a fascinating read, giving you a sense of how science is transforming people’s lives. It’s also wonderfully written by David Dobbs, including observations like this:

“Neuroscientists love the eye because “it’s the only place you see the brain without drilling a hole,” as one put it to me.”

For a vision of the future, a future that could mean restoring vision to those who have lost it, it’s a terrific read.

 

New approach could help turn back the clock and reverse damage for stroke patients

/ Kevin McCormack / 4 Comments
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Stroke: courtesy WebMD

Stroke is the leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the US. Every year almost 800,000 people suffer from a stroke. The impact on their lives, and the lives of those around them can be devastating.

Right now the only treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tissue plasminogen activator or tPA. This helps dissolve the blood clot causing most strokes and restores blood flow to the brain. However, to be fully effective this has to be administered within about 3-4 hours after the stroke. Many people are unable to get to the hospital in time and as a result suffer long-term damage, damage that for most people has been permanent.

But now a new study in Nature Medicine shows that might not be the case, and that this damage could even be reversible.

The research, done by a team at the University of Southern California (USC) uses a one-two punch combination of stem cells and a protein that helps those cells turn into neurons, the cells in the brain damaged by a stroke.

First, the researchers induced a stroke in mice and then transplanted human neural stem cells alongside the damaged brain tissue. They then added in a dose of the protein 3K3A-APC or a placebo.

hey found that mice treated with 3K3A-APC had 16 times more human stem-cell derived neurons than the mice treated with the placebo. Those neurons weren’t just sitting around doing nothing. USC’s Berislav Zlokovic, senior author of the paper, says they were actively repairing the stroke-induced damage.

“We showed that 3K3A-APC helps the grafted stem cells convert into neurons and make structural and functional connections with the host’s nervous system. No one in the stroke field has ever shown this, so I believe this is going to be the gold standard for future studies. Functional deficits after five weeks of stroke were minimized, and the mice were almost back to normal in terms of motor and sensorimotor functions. Synapses formed between transplanted cells and host cells, so there is functional activation and cooperation of transplanted cells in the host circuitry.”

The researchers wanted to make sure the transplanted cell-3K3A-ACP combination was really the cause of the improvement in the mice so they then used what’s called an “assassin toxin” to kill the neurons they had created. That reversed the improvements in the treated mice, leaving them comparable to the untreated mice. All this suggests the neurons had become an integral part of the mouse’s brain.

So how might this benefit people? You may remember that earlier this summer Stanford researchers produced a paper showing they had helped some 18 stroke patients, by injecting stem cells from donor bone marrow into their brain. The improvements were significant, including in at least one case regaining the ability to walk. We blogged about that work here

In that study, however, the cells did not become neurons nor did they seem to remain in the brain for an extended period. It’s hoped this new work can build on that by giving researchers an additional tool, the 3K3A-ACP protein, to help the transplanted cells convert to neurons and become integrated into the brain.

One of the other advantages of using this protein is that it has already been approved by the FDA for use in people who have experienced an ischemic stroke, which accounts for about 87 percent of all strokes.

The USC team now hope to get approval from the FDA to see if they can replicate their experiences in mice in people, through a Phase 2 clinical trial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Deborah Deas joins CIRM Board

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Deborah Deas has been appointed dean of the UCR School of Medicine

Deborah Deas, MD, MPH, UCR School of Medicine

Dr. Deborah Deas is clearly not someone who opts for the quiet life. If she were, she would have stayed home in Adams Run, the tiny town in rural South Carolina where she was born.

The website, NeighborhoodScout.com describes Adams Run (current population 1,492) as:

“One of the quietest neighborhoods in America. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.”

Dr. Deas obviously wasn’t a tea drinker because she packed her bags and went off to college in Charleston. That was the first step on a journey that led the self-described “farmer’s daughter” to become an MD, then an MPH (Masters in Public Health), before assuming a leadership role at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). More recently she headed to California’s Inland Empire where she was named the Dean and CEO for Clinical Affairs of the UC Riverside School of Medicine.

And now we are delighted to add to that list of achievements by announcing she is the newest member of the CIRM Board.

She was appointed to the Board by state Treasurer John Chiang who praised her for her:

“Passion to improve  health for underserved populations and to diversify the health care work force. She is committed to making the benefits of advanced medicine available to all Californians.”

 

In a news release our CIRM Board Chair, Jonathan Thomas, was equally fulsome in his praise and welcome to Dr. Deas.

 “We are delighted to have someone with Dr. Deas’ broad experience and expertise join us at CIRM. Her medical background and her commitment to diversity and inclusion are important qualities to bring to a Board that is striving to deliver stem cell treatments to patients, and to reflect the diversity of California.”

To say that she brings a broad array of skills and experience to the Board is something of an understatement. She is board certified in adult psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry and addiction psychiatry, and is widely regarded as a national leader in research into youth binge drinking, adolescent nicotine dependence, marijuana use and panic disorder, and pharmaceutical treatment of pediatric depressive disorder.

As if that wasn’t enough, she has also been named as one of the best doctors in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report for the last eight years.

But the road to UC Riverside and CIRM hasn’t always been easy. In a first person perspective in Psychiatric News.

she said that at MUSC she was just one of two African Americans among the 500 residents in training:

“It was not uncommon for me to be mistaken by many for a social worker, a secretary, or a ward clerk despite wearing my white coat with Deborah Deas, M.D., written on it. This mistake was even made by some of my M.D. peers. I found that the best response was to ask, “And just why do you think I am a social worker?”

She says the lessons she learned from her parents and grandparents helped sustain her:

“They emphasized the importance of setting goals and keeping your eyes on the prize. Service was important, and the ways that one could serve were numerous. The notion that one should learn from others, as well as teach others, was as common as baked bread. My parents instilled in me that education is the key to a fruitful future and that it is something no one can take away from you.”

Her boss at UC Riverside, the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, Paul D’Anieri said Dr. Deas is a great addition to the CIRM Board:

“Deborah is a public servant at heart. Her own values and goals to help underserved patient populations align with the goals of CIRM to revolutionize medicine and bring new, innovative treatments to all patients who can benefit. I am confident that Dr. Deas’ service will have a lasting positive impact for CIRM and for the people of California.”

Dr. Deas ends her article in Psychiatric News saying:

“The farmer’s daughter has come a long way. I have stood on the shoulders of many, pushing forward with an abiding faith that there was nothing that I could not accomplish.”

She has indeed come a long way. We look forward to being a part of the next stage of her journey, and to her joining CIRM and bringing that “abiding faith” to our work.

 

 

Scientists Sink their Teeth into a Molecular Understanding of Human Personality

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

There’s plenty of scientific evidence that genes play a key role in defining personality. But how exactly? I mean, how is gene activity in cells ultimately linked to a person’s schmoozing talents at a cocktail party? CIRM-funded research published today in Nature, by collaborative teams at UC San Diego and the Salk Institute identified intriguing connections between brain cells and behavior in Williams Syndrome, a rare genetic disease that has specific effects on personality.

Williams Syndrome 101

Williams Syndrome (WS), occurring in roughly 1 in 10,000 births, is caused by a small deletion in chromosome 7 resulting in the loss of 25 genes. Serious heart disease, distinct facial features, visual-spatial disabilities, developmental delays and hypersensitive hearing are just some of the common WS symptoms. People with WS also share a characteristic pattern of social behaviors: they have extremely out-going, caring personalities and are very good at reading other people’s emotions. By exploring how this chromosome deletion leads to a predictable set of behaviors, the research team sought a better understanding of not only the molecular basis of WS but also of human social interactions in general. UCSD professor and co-senior author, Alysson Muotri, recalled his initial interest in the project in a university press release interview:

“I was fascinated on how a genetic defect, a tiny deletion in one of our chromosomes, could make us friendlier, more empathetic and more able to embrace our differences.”

Making Williams Syndrome in a Dish with Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
The research team relied on stem cell technology to generate a human model of WS in the lab. With the required permissions, they first obtained dental pulp tissue from the baby teeth of five children with WS as well as from four children with typical development for comparison purposes. Cells from the dental pulp were reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells which have the ability to specialize into almost every cell type. Using an established cell culture recipe, the iPS cells were stimulated to become neural progenitor cells (NPCs) which resemble cells of the developing brain that haven’t fully matured into a nerve cell, or neuron.

Initial observations of the NPCs revealed a defect in WS cells: they grew more slowly than the typical cells. Increased cell death in the WS cells was responsible for the slower growth. Based on these results, the team focused on the involvement of FZD9, a gene that is active in NPCs and is known to regulate cell death and cell division. It also is one of the genes deleted in the main form of WS. So the team suppress FZD9 activation in the healthy typical NPCs and, sure enough, the lack of the gene led to an increase in apoptosis just as they saw in WS cells. To confirm this result, they tried the opposite experiment by inserting the FZD9 gene into the WS cells. This genetic manipulation reduced cell death to similar levels seen in the typical NPCs.

muotri_dendrite

Dendrites from one neuron receive incoming nerve signals. Image.

Fully maturing the NPCs into neurons uncovered more differences between the WS and typical cell sets. To receive incoming nerve signals, neurons send out finger like projections called dendrites to make physical connections with other neurons. Several little knob-like structures called dendritic spines grow out of each dendrite to help optimize the nerve signaling. Now, compared to the healthy typical neurons, the WS neurons had more dendrites, more spine structures and a greater dendritic length. These structural differences didn’t just change the appearance of the neurons, they translated into increased activity at the synapses, the spot where an electrical nerve signal travels from one neuron to the next.

Making Connections Between Brain Cells and Behavior
Do these iPS cell-derived results carried out in a lab dish have any relevance to what might be going on in the brain as a whole? Yes. Brain imaging of living study participants with WS shows a reduced surface area in the cortical layer, the same area of the brain implicated in other social function disorders. As Muotri explains, increased cell death – seen in the iPS derived WS cells  – appears to cause the development of abnormally smaller structures in WS brains:

“We discovered that WS neural progenitor cells failed to proliferate due to high levels of cell death. And as a consequence of the lower replication of progenitor cells, WS brains have reduced cortex surface area.”

And a study of brain samples from deceased donors showed increased dendrite length and dendritic spines in neurons of WS brains compared to typical brains, a result also predicted by the iPS experiments. Again, these differences were seen particularly in a layer of the brain cortex thought to be involved in other social function disorders like autism. Putting the results together, Muotri speculates that the out-going personalities seen in people WS may be explained by these structural and functional changes:

“At the functional level, they make more synapses or connections to other neurons than what you would expect. That might underlie the WS super-social aspect and their gregarious human brain, giving insights into autism and other disorders that affect the social brain.”

 

By drawing a direct line from genes to cells to brain structure to human behavior, these scientists are in a great position to chip away at a holistic understanding of how personality is generated and how it can go awry.

 

Unlocking the secrets of how stem cells decide what kind of cell they’re going to be

/ Kevin McCormack / 3 Comments
Laszlo Nagy, Ph.D., M.D.

Laszlo Nagy, Ph.D., M.D.: Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute

Before joining CIRM I thought OCT4 was a date on the calendar. But a new study says it may be a lot closer to a date with destiny, because this study says OCT4 helps determine what kinds of cell a stem cell will become.

Now, before we go any further I should explain for people who have as strong a science background as I do – namely none – that OCT4 is a transcription factor, this is a protein that helps regulate gene activity by turning certain genes on at certain points, and off at others.

The new study, by researches at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), found that OCT4 plays a critical role in priming genes that cause stem cells to differentiate or change into other kinds of cells.

Why is this important? Well, as we search for new ways of treating a wide variety of different diseases we need to find the most efficient and effective way of turning stem cells into the kind of cells we need to regenerate or replace damaged tissue. By understanding the mechanisms that determine how a stem cell differentiates, we can better understand what we need to do in the lab to generate the specific kinds of cells needed to replace those damaged by, say, heart disease or cancer.

The study, published in the journal Molecular Cell, shows how OCT4 works with other transcription factors, sometimes directing a cell to go in one direction, sometimes in another. For example, it collaborates with a vitamin A (aka retinoic acid) receptor (RAR) to convert a stem cell into a neuronal precursor, a kind of early stage brain cell. However, if OCT4 interacts with another transcription factor called beta-catenin then the stem cell goes in another regulatory direction altogether.

In an interview with PhysOrg News, senior author Laszlo Nagy said this finding could help develop more effective methods for producing specific cell types to be used in therapies:

“Our findings suggest a general principle for how the same differentiation signal induces distinct transitions in various types of cells. Whereas in stem cells, OCT4 recruits the RAR to neuronal genes, in bone marrow cells, another transcription factor would recruit RAR to genes for the granulocyte program. Which factors determine the effects of differentiation signals in bone marrow cells – and other cell types – remains to be determined.”

In a way it’s like programming all the different devices that are attached to your TV at home. If you hit a certain combination of buttons you get to one set of stations, hit another combination and you get to Netflix. Same basic set up, but completely different destinations.

“In a sense, we’ve found the code for stem cells that links the input—signals like vitamin A and Wnt—to the output—cell type. Now we plan to explore whether other transcription factors behave similarly to OCT4—that is, to find the code in more mature cell types.”