Chronic granulomatous disease

Friday Round Up

/ Yimy Villa / 1 Comment

Here’s a look at a couple of stories that caught our eye this week:

Jasper Therapeutics has had a busy couple of weeks. Recently they announced data from their Phase 1 clinical trial treating people with Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). This is a group of disorders in which immature blood-forming cells in the bone marrow become abnormal and leads to low numbers of normal blood cells, especially red blood cells. We blogged about that here.

The data showed that six patients were given JSP191 – in combination with low-dose radiation five of the six had no detectable levels of disease and the sixth patient had reduced levels.

This was a big deal for us because CIRM funded the early stage research and even a clinical trial  that led to the development of JSP191.

Now Jasper has announced it is partnering with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial using JSP191, as part of a treatment for chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). Congratulations to Jasper. And congratulations to us for helping them get there.

Oh, and just to toot our horn a little bit more – it is Friday after all – we have funded other approaches to CGD including one that resulted in curing Brenden Whittaker.

OK, enough about us.

To say that this last year has been a stressful one would be something of an understatement. But it’s not just people who get stressed. Stem cells do too. And, like people, when stem cells get stressed they don’t always behave in the way you would like them to. When some people get stressed they find a cocktail can help take the edge of it. Apparently that works for stem cells as well!

Now we are not talking about slipping a Manhattan or Mai Tai into a petri dish filled with stem cells. We are talking about a very different kind of cocktail.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have developed what they describe as a “four-part small molecule cocktail” that can help protect a specific kind of stem cell from stress. The cell is an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC), which has the ability to turn into any other kind of cell in the body. iPSC’s have great potential for treating a variety of different diseases and conditions, but they’re also sensitive and without the right conditions and environment they can get stressed and that in turn can damage their DNA and lead to them dying.

In a news release Dr. Ilyas Singeç, the lead researcher, says this NIH “cocktail” could help prevent that: “The small-molecule cocktail is safeguarding cells and making stem cell use more predictable and efficient. In preventing cellular stress and DNA damage that typically occur, we’re avoiding cell death and improving the quality of surviving cells. The cocktail will become a broadly used staple of the stem cell field and boost stem cell applications in both research and the clinic.”  

The team hope this could enhance the potential therapeutic uses of iPSCs in finding treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injury.

The study is published in the journal Nature Methods.

Gene therapy gives patient a cure and a new lease on life

/ Yimy Villa / 1 Comment
Brenden Whittaker (left), of Ohio, is a patient born with a rare genetic immune disease who was treated at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center in a CIRM funded gene therapy trial. Dr. David Williams (on right) is Brenden’s treating physician.
Photo courtesy of Rose Lincoln – Harvard Staff Photographer

Pursuing an education can be quite the challenge in itself without the added pressure of external factors. For Brenden Whittaker, a 25 year old from Ohio, the constant trips to the hospital and debilitating nature of an inherited genetic disease made this goal particularly challenging and, for most of his life, out of sight.

Brenden was born with chronic granulomatous disease (CGD), a rare genetic disorder that affects the proper function of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that is an essential part of the body’s immune system. This leads to recurring bacterial and fungal infections and the formation of granulomas, which are clumps of infected tissue that arise as the body attempts to isolate infections it cannot combat. People with CGD are often hospitalized routinely and the granulomas themselves can obstruct digestive pathways and other pathways in the body. Antibiotics are used in an attempt to prevent infections from occurring, but eventually patients stop responding to them. One in two people with CGD do not live past the age of 40.

In Brenden’s case, when the antibiotics he relied on started failing, the doctors had to resort to surgery to cut out an infected lobe of his liver and half his right lung. Although the surgery was successful, it would only be a matter of time before a vital organ was infected and surgery would no longer be an option.

This ultimately lead to Brenden becoming the first patient in a CGD gene therapy trial at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.  The trial, lead by UCLA’s Dr. Don Kohn thanks to a CIRM grant, combats the disease by correcting the dysfunctional gene inside a patient’s blood stem cells. The patient’s corrected blood stem cells are then reintroduced, allowing the body to produce properly functioning neutrophils, rebooting the immune system.

It’s been a little over three years since Brenden received this treatment in late 2015, and the results have been remarkable. Dr. David Williams, Brenden’s treating physician, expected Brenden’s body to produce at least 10 percent of the functional neutrophils, enough so that Brenden’s immune system would provide protection similar to somebody without CGD. The results were over 50 percent, greatly exceeding expectations.

Brenden Whittaker mowing the lawn in the backyard of his home in Columbus, Ohio. He is able to do many more things without the fear of infection since participating in the trial. Photo courtesy of Colin McGuire

In an article published by The Harvard Gazette, Becky Whittaker, Brendan’s mother, is quoted as saying, ““Each day that he’s free of infection, he’s able to go to class, he’s able to work at his part-time job, he’s able to mess around playing with the dog or hanging out with friends…[this] is a day I truly don’t believe he would have had beyond 2015 had something not been done.”

In addition to the changes to his immune system, the gene therapy has reinvigorated Brenden’s drive for the future. Living with CGD had caused Brenden to miss out on much of his schooling throughout the years, having to take constant pauses from his academics at a community college. Now, Brenden aims to graduate with an associate’s degree in health sciences in the spring and transfer to Ohio State in the fall for a bachelor’s degree program. In addition to this, Brenden now has dreams of attending medical school.

In The Harvard Gazette article, Brenden elaborates on why he wants to go to medical school saying, ” Just being the patient for so long, I want to give back. There are so many people who’ve been there for me — doctors, nurses who’ve been there for me [and] helped me for so long.”

In a press release dated February 25, 2019, Orchard Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company that is continuing the aforementioned approach for CGD, announced that six patients treated have shown adequate neutrophil function 12 months post treatment. Furthermore, these six patients no longer receive antibiotics related to CGD. Orchard Therapeutics also announced that they are in the process of designing a registrational trial for CGD.

CIRM-Funded Clinical Trials Targeting Blood and Immune Disorders

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

This blog is part of our Month of CIRM series, which features our Agency’s progress towards achieving our mission to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.

This week, we’re highlighting CIRM-funded clinical trials to address the growing interest in our rapidly expanding clinical portfolio. Today we are featuring trials in our blood and immune disorders portfolio, specifically focusing on sickle cell disease, HIV/AIDS, severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID, also known as bubble baby disease) and rare disease called chronic granulomatous disease (CGD).

CIRM has funded a total of eight trials targeting these disease areas, all of which are currently active. Check out the infographic below for a list of those trials.

For more details about all CIRM-funded clinical trials, visit our clinical trials page and read our clinical trials brochure which provides brief overviews of each trial.

Rare Disease Day, a chance to raise awareness and hope.

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

logo-rare-disease-day

Battling a deadly disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s is difficult; but battling a rare and deadly disease is doubly so. At least with common diseases there is a lot of research seeking to develop new treatments. With rare diseases there is often very little research, and so there are fewer options for treatment. Even just getting a diagnosis can be hard because most doctors may never have heard about, let alone seen, a case of a disease that only affects a few thousand individuals.

That’s why the last day of February, every year, has been designated Rare Disease Day.  It’s a time to raise awareness amongst the public, researchers, health  professionals and policy makers about the impact these diseases have on the lives of those affected by them. This means not just the individual with the problem, but their family and friends too.

There are nearly 7,000 diseases in the U.S. that are considered rare, meaning they affect fewer than 200,000 people at any given time.

No numbers no money

The reason why so many of these diseases have so few treatment options is obvious. With diseases that affect large numbers of people a new treatment or cure stands to make the company behind it a lot of money. With diseases that affect very small numbers of people the chances of seeing any return on investment are equally small.

Fortunately at CIRM we don’t have to worry about making a profit, all we are concerned with is accelerating stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs. And in the case of people with rare diseases, those needs are almost invariably unmet.

That’s why over the years we have invested heavily in diseases that are often overlooked because they affect relatively small numbers of people. In fact right now we are funding clinical trials in several of these including sickle cell anemia, retinitis pigmentosa and chronic granulomatous disease. We are also funding work in conditions like Huntington’s disease, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and SCID or “bubble baby” disease.

Focus on the people

As in everything we do our involvement is not just about funding research – important as that is – it’s also about engaging with the people most affected by these diseases, the patient advocate community. Patient advocates help us in several ways:

  • Collaborating with us and other key stakeholders to try and change the way the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) works. Our goal is to create an easier and faster, but no less safe, method of approving the most promising stem cell therapies for clinical trial. With so few available treatments for rare diseases having a smoother route to a clinical trial will benefit these communities.
  • Spreading the word to researchers and companies about CIRM 2.0, our new, faster and more streamlined funding opportunities to help us move the most promising therapies along as fast as possible. The good news is that this means anyone, anywhere can apply for funding. We don’t care how many people are affected by a disease, we only care about the quality of the proposed research project that could help them.
  • Recruiting Patient Advocates to our Clinical Advisory Panels (CAPs), teams that we assign to each project in a clinical trial to help guide and inform the researchers at every stage of their work. This not only gives each project the best possible chance of succeeding but it also helps the team stay focused on the mission, of saving, and changing, people’s lives.
  • Helping us recruit patients for clinical trials. The inability to recruit and retain enough patients to meet a project’s enrollment requirements is one of the biggest reasons many clinical trials fail. This is particularly problematic for rare diseases. By using Patient Advocates to increase our ability to enroll and retain patients we will increase the likelihood a clinical trial is able to succeed.

Organizing to fight back

There are some great organizations supporting and advocating on behalf of families affected by rare diseases, such as the EveryLife Foundation  and the National Organization for Rare Diseases (NORD).  They are working hard to raise awareness about these diseases, to get funding to do research, and to clear away some of the regulatory hurdles researchers face in being able to move the most promising therapies out of the lab and into clinical trials where they can be tested on people.

For the individuals and families affected by conditions like beta thalassemia and muscular dystrophy – potentially fatal genetic disorders – every day is Rare Disease Day. They live with the reality of these problems every single day. That’s why we are committed to working hard every single day, to find a treatment that can help them and their loved ones.