Earlier this month, Dr. Deborah Deas was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine, or NAM. Membership in the academy is one of the highest national honors in health and medicine.
Amongst many other honors, Dr. Deas is recognized for being a national contributor to addressing health disparities through diversifying the physician workforce, especially around the shortage of Black males in medicine.
“I was ecstatic to learn that I was elected. It will allow me to have a greater voice at the national level in science as well as in diversity, equity, and inclusion. I’m also so pleased about what we are doing at CIRM, and this is such a great opportunity to not only represent myself but also the UC system as well as CIRM.”
Ysabel Duron (pictured on left) at While House Cancer Moonshot event.
Simultaneously, another Board member, founder and President of the Latino Cancer Institute Ysabel Duron was asked to join the American Cancer Society (ACS) National Breast Cancer Roundtable (NBCRT).
Last week, Ms. Duron attended the event at the white house with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, where she announced the launch of NBCRT.
The ACS NBCRT is a national coalition working to accelerate progress across the breast cancer continuum through strategic partnerships to eliminate disparities and reduce mortality. The ACS NBCRT works to ensure all women have access to quality screening and treatment, including Black women and women in other historically excluded communities, to address the social and emotional needs of patients and their families.
“I feel both honored to join the ACS NBCRT and the weight of this responsibility and obligation to those who suffer and die from this horrific disease every day. I am also committed, during the critical next steps in determining initiatives to propose, to spotlight the gaps and needs in education, quality care and access to the most advanced diagnostics and treatment for Latina and other underserved populations.”
This brings the total number of CIRM funded clinical trials to 83.
$11,999,984 was awarded to Dr. Jana Portnow at the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope. They are using Neural stem cells (NSCs) as a form of delivery vehicle to carry a cancer-killing virus that specifically targets brain tumor cells.
Glioblastoma is the most common malignant primary brain tumor in adults and each year about 12,000 Americans are diagnosed. The 5-year survival rate is only about 10%.
The current standard of care involves surgically removing the tumor followed by radiation, chemotherapy, and alternating electric field therapy. Despite these treatments, survival remains low.
The award to Dr. Portnow will fund a clinical trial to assess the safety and effectiveness of this stem cell-based treatment for Glioblastoma.
The Board also awarded $3,111,467 to Dr. Boris Minev of Calidi Biotherapeutics. This award is in the form of a CLIN1 grant, with the goal of completing the testing needed to apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to start a clinical trial in people.
This project uses donor fat-derived mesenchymal stem cells that have been loaded with oncolytic virus to target metastatic melanoma, triple negative breast cancer, and advanced head & neck squamous cell carcinoma.
“There are few options for patients with advanced solid tumor cancers such as glioblastoma, melanoma, breast cancer, and head & neck cancer,” says Maria T. Millan, M.D., President and CEO of CIRM. “Surgical resection, chemotherapy and radiation are largely ineffective in advanced cases and survival typically is measured in months. These new awards will support novel approaches to address the unmet medical needs of patients with these devastating cancers.”
The CIRM Board also voted to approve awarding $71,949,539 to expand the CIRM Alpha Clinics Network. The current network consists of six sites and the Board approved continued funding for those and added an additional three sites. The funding is to last five years.
The goal of the Alpha Clinics award is to expand existing capacities for delivering stem cell, gene therapies and other advanced treatment to patients. They also serve as a competency hub for regenerative medicine training, clinical research, and the delivery of approved treatments.
Each applicant was required to submit a plan for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to support and facilitate outreach and study participation by underserved and disproportionately affected populations in the clinical trials they serve.
The successful applicants are:
Application
Program Title
Institution/Principal Investigator
Amount awarded
INFR4-13579
The Stanford Alpha Stem Cell Clinic
Stanford University – Matthew Porteus
$7,997,246
INFR4-13581
UCSF Alpha Stem Cell Clinic
U.C. San Francisco – Mark Walters
$7,994,347
INFR4-13586
A comprehensive stem cell and gene therapy clinic to advance new therapies for a diverse patient population in California
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center – Michael Lewis
$7,957,966
INFR4-13587
The City of Hope Alpha Clinic: A roadmap for equitable and inclusive access to regenerative medicine therapies for all Californians
City of Hope – Leo Wang
$8,000,000
INFR4-13596
Alpha Stem Cell Clinic for Northern and Central California
U.C. Davis – Mehrdad Abedi
$7,999,997
INFR4-13685
Expansion of the Alpha Stem Cell and Gene Therapy Clinic at UCLA
U.C. Los Angeles – Noah Federman
$8,000,000
INFR4-13878
Alpha Clinic Network Expansion for Cell and Gene Therapies
University of Southern California – Thomas Buchanan
$7,999,983
INFR4-13952
A hub and spoke community model to equitably deliver regenerative medicine therapies to diverse populations across four California counties
U.C. Irvine – Daniela Bota
$8,000,000
INFR4-13597
UC San Diego Health CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic
U.C. San Diego – Catriona Jamieson
$8,000,000
The Board also unanimously, and enthusiastically, approved the election of Maria Gonzalez Bonneville to be the next Vice Chair of the Board. Ms. Bonneville, the current Vice President of Public Outreach and Board Governance at CIRM, was nominated by all four constitutional officers: the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Treasurer and the Controller.
In supporting the nomination, Board member Ysabel Duron said: “I don’t think we could do better than taking on Maria Gonzalez Bonneville as the Vice Chair. She is well educated as far as CIRM goes. She has a great track record; she is empathetic and caring and will be a good steward for the taxpayers to ensure the work we do serves them well.”
In her letter to the Board applying for the position, Ms. Bonneville said: “CIRM is a unique agency with a large board and a long history. With my institutional knowledge and my understanding of CIRM’s internal workings and processes, I can serve as a resource for the new Chair. I have worked hand-in-hand with both the Chair and Vice Chair in setting agendas, prioritizing work, driving policy, and advising accordingly. I have worked hard to build trusted relationships with all of you so that I could learn and understand what areas were of the most interest and where I could help shed light on those particular programs or initiatives. I have also worked closely with Maria Millan for the last decade, and greatly enjoy our working relationship. In short, I believe I provide a level of continuity and expertise that benefits the board and helps in times of transition.”
In accepting the position Ms. Bonneville said: “I am truly honored to be elected as the Vice Chair for the CIRM Board. I have been a part of CIRM for 11 years and am deeply committed to the mission and this new role gives me an opportunity to help support and advance that work at an exciting time in the Agency’s life. There are many challenges ahead of us but knowing the Board and the CIRM team I feel confident we will be able to meet them, and I look forward to helping us reach our goals.”
Ms. Bonneville will officially take office in January 2023.
The vote for the new Chair of CIRM will take place at the Board meeting on December 15th.
While there have been some encouraging advances in treating cancer in recent decades, there are still many cancers that either resist treatment or recur after treatment. Today the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) approved investing in a therapy targeting some of these hard-to-treat tumors.
BioEclipse Therapeutics Inc. was awarded nearly $8M to test a therapy using immune cells loaded with a cancer-killing virus that targets cancer tissue but spares healthy tissue.
BioEclipse combines two approaches—an immune cell called a cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cell and a virus engineered to kill cancer cells called an oncolytic virus (OV)—to create what they call “a multi-mechanistic, targeted treatment.”
They will use the patient’s own immune cells and, in the lab, combine them with the OV. The cell/virus combination will then be administered back to the patient. The job of the CIK cells is to carry the virus to the tumors. The virus is designed to specifically attack and kill tumors and stimulate the patient’s immune system to attack the tumor cells. The goal is to eradicate the primary tumor and prevent relapse and recurrence.
“With the intent to develop this treatment for chemotherapy-resistant or refractory solid tumors—including colorectal cancer, triple negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, gastric cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, and osteosarcoma—it addresses a significant unmet medical need in fatal conditions for which there are limited treatment options,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, President and CEO of CIRM.
The CIRM Board also approved more than $18 million in funding four projects under the Translation Projects program. The goal of this program is to support promising regenerative medicine (stem cell-based or gene therapy) projects that accelerate completion of translational stage activities necessary for advancement to clinical study or broad end use.
The awards went to:
Application
Title
Institution
Award Amount
TRAN1-133442
Optogenetic therapy for treating retinitis pigmentosa and other inherited retinal diseases
Paul Bresge Ray Therapeutics Inc.
$3,999,553
TRAN3-13332
Living Synthetic Vascular Grafts with Renewable Endothelium
Aijun Wang UC Davis
$3,112,567
TRAN1-13370
Next generation affinity-tuned CAR for prostate cancer
Preet Chaudhary University of Southern California
$5,805,144
TRAN1-3345
Autologous MPO Knock-Out Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension
Hematologic malignancies are cancers that affect the blood, bone marrow and lymph nodes and include different forms of leukemia and lymphoma. Current treatments can be effective, but in those patients that do not respond, there are few treatment options. Today, the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) approved investing $4.1 million in a therapy aimed at helping patients who have failed standard therapy.
Dr. Ezra Cohen, at the University of California San Diego, and Oncternal Therapeutics are targeting a protein called ROR1 that is found in B cell malignancies, such as leukemias and lymphomas, and solid tumors such as breast, lung and colon. They are using a molecule called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that can enable a patient’s own T cells, an important part of the immune system, to target and kill their cancer cells. These cells are derived from a related approach with an antibody therapy that targets ROR1-binding medication called Cirmtuzumab, also created with CIRM support. This CAR-T product is designed to recognize and kill cancer stem cells that express ROR1.
This is a late-stage preclinical project so the goal is to show they can produce enough high-quality cells to treat patients, as well as complete other regulatory measures needed for them to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to test the therapy in a clinical trial in people.
If given the go-ahead by the FDA the therapy will target patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
“CAR-T cell therapies represent a transformational advance in the treatment of hematologic malignancies,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, CIRM’s President and CEO. “This approach addresses the need to develop new therapies for patients whose cancers are resistant to standard chemotherapies, who have few therapeutic options and a very poor chance or recovery.”
2020 has been, to say the very least, a difficult and challenging year for all of us. But while the focus of the world has, understandably, been on the coronavirus there was also some really promising advances in stem cell research. Those advances are captured in a great new documentary called Ending Disease.
The documentary is by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Joe Gantz. In it he follows ten people who are facing life-threatening or life-changing diseases and injuries and who turn to pioneering stem cell therapies for help.
It’s an inspiring documentary, one that reminds you of the real need for new treatments and the tremendous hope and promise of stem cell therapies. Here’s a look at a trailer for Ending Disease.
You can see an exclusive screening of Ending Disease on Friday, January 8th, 2021 at 5:00pm PST.
After the livestream, there will be a live Q&A session where former members of the successful Proposition 14 campaign team – which refunded CIRM with an additional $5.5 billion – will be joined by CIRM’s President and CEO Dr. Maria Millan, talking about what lies ahead for CIRM and the future of stem cell research.
To purchase a ticket, click here. It only costs $12 and 50% of the ticket sales proceeds will go to Americans for Cures to help them continue to advocate for the advancement of stem cell research, and more importantly, for the patients and families to whom stem cell research provides so much hope.
If you need any extra persuading that it’s something you should definitely put on our calendar, here’s a letter from the film maker Joe Gantz.
I am the director of the documentary Ending Disease: The Stem Cell, Anti-Cancer T-Cell, & Antibody Revolution In Medicine, a film that will help inform people about the progress that’s been made in this field and how people with their lives on the line are now able to benefit from these new regenerative therapies.
I was granted unprecedented access to ten of the first generation of clinical trials using stem cell and regenerative medicine to treat and cure many of the most devastating diseases and conditions including: brain cancer, breast cancer, leukemia and lymphoma, HIV, repairing a broken spinal cord, retinitis pigmentosa and SCID. The results are truly inspiring.
This is personal for me. After spending four years making this documentary, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Upon diagnosis, I immediately felt the same desperation as millions of families who are in search of a medical breakthrough. I understood, on a personal level, what the patients we followed in the film all knew: when you are diagnosed with a disease, there is a narrow window of time in which you can effectively seek a life-saving treatment or cure. If treatment becomes available outside of that window, then it is too late. However, Ending Disease shows that with continued support for regenerative medicine, we can create a near future in which one-time cures and highly mitigating therapies are available to patients for a whole host of diseases.
Cancer stem cells are one of the main reasons why cancers are able to survive surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. They are able to hide from those therapies and, at a future date, emerge and spread the cancer in the body once again.
Jionglia Cheng, PhD.
Jionglia Cheng, PhD., the lead author of a new CIRM-funded study, says that’s one of the reasons why pancreatic cancer has proved so difficult to treat.
“Pancreatic cancer remains a major health problem in the United States and soon will be the second most common cause of mortality due to cancer. A majority of pancreatic cancer patients are often resistant to clinical therapies. Thus, it remains a challenge to develop an efficacious clinically useful pancreatic cancer therapy.”
Dr. Cheng, a researcher with ChemRegen Inc., teamed up with John Cashman at the Human BioMolecular Research Institute and identified a compound, that seems to be effective in blocking the cancer stem cells.
In earlier studies the compound, called PAWI-2, demonstrated effectiveness in blocking breast, prostate and colon cancer. When tested in the laboratory PAWI-2 showed it was able to kill pancreatic cancer stem cells, and also was effective in targeting drug-resistant pancreatic cancer stem cells.
In addition, when PAWI-2 was used with a drug called erlotinib (brand name Tarceva) which is commonly prescribed for pancreatic cancer, the combination proved more effective against the cancer stem cells than erlotinib alone.
In a news release Dr. Cheng said: “In the future, this molecule could be used alone or with other chemotherapy albeit at lower doses, as a new therapeutic drug to combat pancreatic cancer. This may lead to much less toxicity to the patient,”
Anytime you read a news headline that claims a new discovery “may treat all cancer” it’s time to put your skeptic’s hat on. After all, there have been so many over-hyped “discoveries” over the years that later flopped, that it would be natural to question the headline writer. And yet, this time, maybe, this one has some substance behind it.
Andrew Sewell with research fellow Garry Dolton. (Photo Credit: Cardiff University)
Researchers at the University of Cardiff in Wales have discovered a new kind of immune cell, a so-called “killer T-cell”, that appears to be able to target and kill many human cancer cells, such as those found in breast, prostate and lung cancer. At least in the lab.
The immune system is our body’s defense against all sorts of threats, from colds and flu to cancer. But many cancers are able to trick the immune system and evade detection as they spread throughout the body. The researchers found one T-cell receptor (TCR) that appears to be able to identify cancer cells and target them, but leave healthy tissues alone.
In an interview with the BBC, Prof. Andrew Sewell, the lead researcher on the study said: “There’s a chance here to treat every patient. Previously nobody believed this could be possible. It raises the prospect of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ cancer treatment, a single type of T-cell that could be capable of destroying many different types of cancers across the population.”
The study, published in the journal Nature Immunology, suggests the TCR works by using a molecule called MR1 to identify cancerous cells. MR1 is found on every cell in our body but in cancerous cells it appears to give off a different signal, which enables the TCR to identify it as a threat.
When the researchers injected this TCR into mice that had cancer it was able to clear away many of the cells. The researchers admit there is still a long way to go before they know if this approach will work in people, but Sewell says they are encouraged by their early results.
“There are plenty of hurdles to overcome. However, if this testing is successful, then I would hope this new treatment could be in use in patients in a few years’ time.”
CIRM is funding a number of clinical trials that use a similar approach to targeting cancers, taking the patient’s own immune T-cells and, in the lab, “re-educating” to be able to recognize the cancerous cells. Those cells are then returned to the patient where it’s hoped they’ll identify and destroy the cancer. You can read about those here , here, here, here, and here.
Various types of cancer can become particularly aggressive and difficult to treat once they spread from their initial point of origin to other parts of the body. This unfortunate phenomenon, known as metastasis, can make treatment very challenging, decreasing the chance of survival for the patient.
In order to better understand this process, a CIRM supported study at USC looked at breast cancer cells circulating in the blood that eventually invade the brain. The findings, which appear in Cancer Discovery, shed light on how tumor cells in the blood are able to target a particular organ, which may enable the development of treatments than can prevent metastasis from occurring.
Dr. Min Yu
Dr. Min Yu and her lab at USC were able to isolate breast cancer cells from the blood of breast cancer patients whose cancer had already metastasized. The team then expanded the number of cancer cells through a process known as cell culture. These expanded human tumor cells were then injected into the bloodstream of animal models. It was found that these cells migrated to the brain as was predicted.
Upon further analysis, Dr. Yu and her lab discovered a protein on the surface of the tumor cells in the bloodstream that enable them to breach the blood brain barrier, a protective layer around the brain that blocks the passage of certain substances, and enter the brain. Additionally, Dr. Yu and her team discovered another protein inside the tumor cells that shield them from the brain’s immune response, enabling these cells to grow inside the brain.
In a news release in Science Magazine, Dr. Yu talks about how these findings could be used to improve treatment and prevention options for those with aggressive cancers:
“We can imagine someday using the information carried by circulating tumor cells to improve the detection, monitoring and treatment of the spreading cancers. A future therapeutic goal is to develop drugs that get rid of circulating tumor cells or target those molecular signatures to prevent the spread of cancer.”
CIRM has also funded a separate clinical trial related to the treatment of breast cancer related brain metastases.
A new independent report says developing stem cell treatments and cures for some of the most common and deadly diseases could produce multi-billion dollar benefits for California in reduced healthcare costs and improved quality and quantity of life.
The report, by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, looked at the value of hypothetical future interventions to reduce or cure cancer, diabetes, stroke and blindness.
Predicting the future is always complicated and uncertain and many groups are looking at the best models to determine the value and economic impact of cell and gene therapy as the first products are just entering the market. This study provides some insights into the potential financial benefits of developing effective stem cell treatments for some of the most intractable diseases affecting California today.
The impact could affect millions of people. In
2018 for Californians over the age of 50:
Nearly half were
predicted to develop diabetes in their lifetime
More than one third
will experience a stroke
Between 5 and 8 percent will develop either breast, colorectal,
lung, or prostate cancer
The report says that a therapy that decreased
the incidence of diabetes by 50 percent in Californians over the age of 51
would translate into a gain for the state of $322 billion in social value
between now and 2050. Even just reducing diabetes 10% would lead to a gain of
$60 billion in social value over the same period.
For stroke a 50 percent reduction would generate an estimated $229 billion in social value. A 10 percent reduction would generate $47 billion
For breast cancer a 50 percent reduction would generate $56 billion in social value; for colorectal cancer it would be $72 billion; for lung cancer $151 billion; and prostate cancer $53 billion.
The impact of a cure for any one of those
diseases would be enormous. For example, a 51-year-old woman cured of lung
cancer could expect to gain a lifetime social value of almost half a million
dollars ($467,275). That’s a measure of years of healthy life gained, of years
spent enjoying time with family and friends and not wasting away or lying in a
hospital bed.
The researchers say: “Though advances in
scientific research defy easy predictions, investing in biomedical research is
important if we want to reduce the burden of common and costly diseases for
individuals, their families, and society. These findings show the value and
impact breakthrough treatments could have for California.”
“Put in this context, the CIRM investment
would be worthwhile if it increased our chances of success even modestly.
Against the billions of dollars in disease burden facing California, the
relatively small initial investment is already paying dividends as researchers
work to bring new therapies to patients.”
The researchers determined the “social value”
using a measure called a quality adjusted life-year (QALY). This is a way of
estimating the cost effectiveness and consequences of treating or not treating
a disease. For example, one QALY is equivalent to one year of perfect health for
an individual. In this study the value of that year was estimated at $150,000.
If someone is sick with, say, diabetes, their health would be estimated to be
0.5 QALY or $75,000. So, the better health a person enjoys and the longer they
enjoy it the higher QALY score they accumulate. In the case of a disease
affecting millions of people in that state or country that can obviously lead
to very large QALY scores representing potentially billions of dollars.
Stanford researchers have found that cancer cells have a protein called CD24 on their surface that enables them to protect themselves against the body’s immune cells. Courtesy of Shutterstock
Getting a breast cancer diagnosis is devastating news in and of itself. Currently, there are treatment options that target three different types of receptors, which are named hormone epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2), estrogen receptors (ER), and progesterone receptors (PR), commonly found in breast cancer cells, . Unfortunately, in triple-negative breast cancer, which occurs in 10-20% of breast cancer cases, all three receptors are absent, making this form of breast cancer very aggressive and difficult to treat.
In recent years, researchers have discovered that proteins on the cell surface can tell macrophages, an immune cell designed to detect and engulf foreign or abnormal cells, not to eat and destroy them. This can be useful to help normal cells keep the immune system from attacking them, but cancer cells can also use these “don’t eat me” signals to hide from the immune system.
An illustration of a macrophage, a vital part of the immune system, engulfing and destroying a cancer cell. Antibody 5F9 blocks a “don’t eat me” signal emitted from cancer cells. Courtesy of Forty Seven, Inc.
In fact, because of this concept, a CIRM-funded clinical trial is being conducted that uses an antibody called 5F9 to block a “don’t eat me” signal known as CD47 that is found in cancer cells. The results of this trial, which have been announced in a previous blog post, are very promising.
Further building on this concept, a CIRM-funded study has now discovered a potential new target for triple-negative breast cancer as well as ovarian cancer. Dr. Irv Weissman and a team of researchers at Stanford University have discovered an additional “don’t eat me” signal called CD24 that cancers seem to use to evade detection and destruction by the immune system.
In a press release, Dr. Weissman talks about his work with CD47 and states that,
“Finding that not all patients responded to anti-CD47 antibodies helped fuel our research at Stanford to test whether non-responder cells and patients might have alternative ‘don’t eat me’ signals.”
The scientists began by looking for signals that were produced more highly in cancers than in the tissues from which the cancers arose. It is here that they discovered CD24 and then proceeded to implant human breast cancer cells in mice for testing. When the CD24 signaling was blocked, the mice’s immune system attacked the cancer cells.
An important discovery was that ovarian and triple-negative breast cancer were highly affected by blocking of CD24 signaling. The other interesting discovery was that the effectiveness of CD24 blockage seems to be complementary to CD47 blockage. In other words, some cancers, like blood cancers, seem to be highly susceptible to blocking CD47, but not to CD24 blockage. For other cancers, like ovarian cancer, the opposite is true. This could suggest that most cancers will be susceptible to the immune system by blocking the CD24 or CD47 signal, and that cancers may be even more vulnerable when more than one “don’t eat me” signal is blocked.
Dr. Weissman and his team are now hopeful that potential therapies to block CD24 signaling will follow in the footsteps of the clinical trials related to CD47.
The full results to the study were published in Nature.
The Stem Cellar 