Diane Winokur

Stem Cell Agency’s Diane Winokur hailed as Visionary

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments
Diane and JT

CIRM Board member Diane Winokur with CIRM Board Chair Jonathan Thomas at FFB Awards dinner

Generally speaking, I am not a huge fan of gala dinners. It’s not that I don’t like seeing people who do remarkable things getting a well-deserved honor. It’s just that the dinners often go on too long and the food is usually not very good (hey, this is San Francisco, those things matter). But last night’s Foundation Fighting Blindness Visionary Awards in San Francisco was definitely an exception to that rule.

Academy of Sciences Grand Opening

Academy of Sciences in San Francisco

Now it may be that the awards were held in the spectacular Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park, or that the food was delicious. But I think the real reason is that CIRM Board member Diane Winokur was one of those being honored. The other honoree was Dr. Jacque Duncan, an amazing physician at UC San Francisco who has dedicated her life to battling diseases of the retina. The whole event was deeply emotional, and truly inspiring.

Now, Diane is a remarkable woman in many respects. She’s the Board’s Patient Advocate member for ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) and multiple sclerosis. But Diane also considers herself a Patient Advocate for all Californians and works hard to help advance the research that could help them. She has a personal connection to vision loss as well; one of her dear friends has lost his sight because of retinitis pigmentosa, and his daughter is losing hers because of the same disease.

Diane at podiumDiane highlighted the work that CIRM is doing to help battle vision destroying diseases; how we have invested more than $125 million in 25 different projects. She talked about the encouraging news from clinical trials we are funding targeting retinitis pigmentosa and dry age-related macular degeneration. Diane said:

“These stem cell clinical trials show that progress is being made. Not as fast as we would like, but as everyone here knows, good science takes time. As a patient advocate on the CIRM Board it’s my role to represent the patient, to be their voice in making decisions about what projects to fund.

Patients are at the heart of everything we do at CIRM, from deciding on funding issues to supporting clinical trials. That’s why I feel so honored to get this award. It comes from an organization, that is equally committed to doing all it can to help people in need, to putting the patient at the center of everything they do.”

It’s clear that patients really are at the heart of the work the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) does. As the organizations CEO Benjamin Yerxa said:

“We support 77 labs in the US, often funding projects no one else would. We do this because we know it is necessary to advance the field. And we are going to keep doing this as best we can, as fast as we can, for as long as we can, because we know so many people are depending on us to help them.”

The other honoree, Jacque Duncan, said after attending many previous Visionary Award dinners and seeing the people being honored it was humbling to be in that company. She talked about the exciting progress being made in the field and the people who are making it possible.

“None of this happens by chance. The path to developing new treatments takes the passion of scientists and doctors, and the commitment of patients to raising the funds needed to do this research. One gala dinner at a time, one Vision Walk at a time. All of this creates community and a common purpose. I truly believe that because of this, tomorrow will be brighter than today.”

Perhaps it’s only appropriate to leave the last word to Diane, who ended her speech saying:

“The Nobel prize winning physicist Heinrich Rohrer once said that science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.

I believe that working together, CIRM and the Foundation Fighting Blindness, we can create that new tomorrow.”

Stem cell agency funds Phase 3 clinical trial for Lou Gehrig’s disease

/ Kevin McCormack / 9 Comments

ALS

At CIRM we don’t have a disease hierarchy list that we use to guide where our funding goes. We don’t rank a disease by how many people suffer from it, if it affects children or adults, or how painful it is. But if we did have that kind of hierarchy you can be sure that Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, would be high on that list.

ALS is a truly nasty disease. It attacks the neurons, the cells in our brain and spinal cord that tell our muscles what to do. As those cells are destroyed we lose our ability to walk, to swallow, to talk, and ultimately to breathe.

As Dr. Maria Millan, CIRM’s interim President and CEO, said in a news release, it’s a fast-moving disease:

“ALS is a devastating disease with an average life expectancy of less than five years, and individuals afflicted with this condition suffer an extreme loss in quality of life. CIRM’s mission is to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs and, in keeping with this mission, our objective is to find a treatment for patients ravaged by this neurological condition for which there is currently no cure.”

Having given several talks to ALS support groups around the state, I have had the privilege of meeting many people with ALS and their families. I have seen how quickly the disease works and the devastation it brings. I’m always left in awe by the courage and dignity with which people bear it.

BrainStorm

I thought of those people, those families, today, when our governing Board voted to invest $15.9 million in a Phase 3 clinical trial for ALS run by BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics. BrainStorm is using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) that are taken from the patient’s own bone marrow. This reduces the risk of the patient’s immune system fighting the therapy.

After being removed, the MSCs are then modified in the laboratory to  boost their production of neurotrophic factors, proteins which are known to help support and protect the cells destroyed by ALS. The therapy, called NurOwn, is then re-infused back into the patient.

In an earlier Phase 2 clinical trial, NurOwn showed that it was safe and well tolerated by patients. It also showed evidence that it can help stop, or even reverse  the progression of the disease over a six month period, compared to a placebo.

CIRM is already funding one clinical trial program focused on treating ALS – that’s the work of Dr. Clive Svendsen and his team at Cedars Sinai, you can read about that here. Being able to add a second project, one that is in a Phase 3 clinical trial – the last stage before, hopefully, getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for wider use – means we are one step closer to being able to offer people with ALS a treatment that can help them.

Diane Winokur, the CIRM Board Patient Advocate member for ALS, says this is something that has been a long time coming:

CIRM Board member and ALS Patient Advocate Diane Winokur

“I lost two sons to ALS.  When my youngest son was diagnosed, he was confident that I would find something to save him.  There was very little research being done for ALS and most of that was very limited in scope.  There was one drug that had been developed.  It was being released for compassionate use and was scheduled to be reviewed by the FDA in the near future.  I was able to get the drug for Douglas.  It didn’t really help him and it was ultimately not approved by the FDA.

When my older son was diagnosed five years later, he too was convinced I would find a therapy.  Again, I talked to everyone in the field, searched every related study, but could find nothing promising.

I am tenacious by nature, and after Hugh’s death, though tempted to give up, I renewed my search.  There were more people, labs, companies looking at neurodegenerative diseases.

These two trials that CIRM is now funding represent breakthrough moments for me and for everyone touched by ALS.  I feel that they are a promising beginning.  I wish it had happened sooner.  In a way, though, they have validated Douglas and Hugh’s faith in me.”

These therapies are not a cure for ALS. At least not yet. But what they will do is hopefully help buy people time, and give them a sense of hope. For a disease that leaves people desperately short of both time and hope, that would be a precious gift. And for people like Diane Winokur, who have fought so hard to find something to help their loved ones, it’s a vindication that those efforts have not been in vain.

Ingenious CIRM-funded stem cell approach to treating ALS gets go-ahead to start clinical trial

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment
svend

Clive Svendsen

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was first identified way back in 1869 but today, more than 150 years later, there are still no effective treatments for it. Now a project, funded by CIRM, has been given approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start a clinical trial that could help change that.

Clive Svendsen and his team at Cedars-Sinai are about to start a clinical trial they hope will help slow down the progression of the disease. And they are doing it in a particularly ingenious way. More on that in a minute.

First, let’s start with ALS itself. It’s a particularly nasty, rapidly progressing disease that destroys motor neurons, those are the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control movement. People with ALS lose the ability to speak, eat, move and finally, breathe. The average life expectancy after diagnosis is just 3 – 4 years. It’s considered an orphan disease because it affects only around 30,000 people in the US; but even with those relatively low numbers that means that every 90 minutes someone in the US is diagnosed with ALS, and every 90 minutes someone in the US dies of ALS.

Ingenious approach

In this clinical trial the patients will serve as their own control group. Previous studies have shown that the rate of deterioration of muscle movement in the legs of a person with ALS is the same for both legs. So Svendsen and his team will inject specially engineered stem cells into a portion of the spine that controls movement on just one side of the body. Neither the patient nor the physician will know which side has received the cells. This enables the researchers to determine if the treated leg is deteriorating at a slower rate than the untreated leg.

The stem cells being injected have been engineered to produce a protein called glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) that helps protect motor neurons. Svendsen and the team hope that by providing extra GDNF they’ll be able to protect the motor neurons and keep them alive.

Reaching a milestone

In a news release announcing the start of the trial, Svendsen admitted ALS is a tough disease to tackle:

“Any time you’re trying to treat an incurable disease, it is a long shot, but we believe the rationale behind our new approach is strong.”

Diane Winokur, the CIRM Board patient advocate for ALS, says this is truly a milestone:

“In the last few years, thanks to new technologies, increased interest, and CIRM support, we finally seem to be seeing some encouraging signs in the research into ALS. Dr. Svendsen has been at the forefront of this effort for the 20 years I have followed his work.  I commend him, Cedars-Sinai, and CIRM.  On behalf of those who have suffered through this cruel disease and their families and caregivers, I am filled with hope.”

You can read more about Clive Svendsen’s long journey to this moment here.