When people ask me what I do at CIRM I sometimes half-jokingly tell them that I’m the official translator: I take complex science and turn it into everyday English. That’s important. The taxpayers of California have a right to know how their money is being spent and how it might benefit them. But that message can be even more effective when it comes from the scientists themselves.
Recently we asked some of the scientists we are funding to do research into COVID-19 to record what’s called an “elevator pitch”. This is where they prepare an explanation of their work that is in ordinary English and is quite short, short enough to say it to someone as you ride in an elevator. Hence the name.
It sounds easy enough. But it’s not. When you are used to talking in the language of science day in and day out, suddenly switching codes to talk about your work in plain English can take some practice. Also, you have spent years, often decades, on this work and to have to explain it in around one minute is no easy thing.
But our researchers rose to the challenge. Here’s some examples of just how well they did.
Dr. Jianhua Yu (left), Dr. Helen Blau (center), and Dr. Albert Wong (right)
The COVID-19 virus targets many different parts of the body, often with deadly or life-threatening consequences. This past Friday the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) approved investments in three early-stage research programs taking different approaches to battling the virus.
Dr. Jianhua Yu at the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope was awarded $150,000 to use stem cells from umbilical cord blood to attack the virus. Dr. Yu and his team have many years of experience in taking cord blood cells and turning them into what are called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) natural killer (NK) cells. The goal is to deploy these CAR NK cells to specifically target cells infected with COVID-19. This leverages the body of work at the City of Hope to develop this technology for cancer.
Dr. Helen Blau of Stanford University was awarded $149,996 to target recovery of muscle stem cells of the diaphragm in COVID-19 patients who have an extended period on a ventilator.
Patients with severe coronavirus often suffer respiratory failure and end up on mechanical ventilation that takes over the work of breathing. Over time, the diaphragm, the main muscle responsible for inhaling and exhaling, weakens and atrophies. There is no treatment for this kind of localized muscle wasting and it is anticipated that some of these patients will take months, if not years, to fully recover. Dr. Blau’s team proposes to develop a therapy with Prostaglandin E2 and Bupivacaine based on data generated by Dr. Blau’s group that these drugs, already approved by the FDA for other indications, have the potential to stimulate muscle stem cell recovery.
Dr. Albert Wong, also from Stanford University, was awarded $149,999 to develop vaccine candidates against COVID-19.
Most vaccine candidates are focused on getting the body to produce an antibody response to block the virus. However, Dr. Wong thinks that to be truly effective, a vaccine also needs to produce a CD8+ T cell response to augment an effective immune response to remove the COVID-19 infected cells that are hijacked by the virus to spread and cause illness. This team will use the experience it gained using CIRM funds to vaccine against glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer, to advance a similar approach to produce an effective cellular immune response to combat COVID-19.
“CIRM is committed to supporting novel, multi-pronged approaches to battle this COVID-19 crisis that leverage solid science and knowledge gained in other areas.” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, the President & CEO of CIRM. “These three projects highlight three very different approaches to combatting the acute devastating health manifestations of COVID-19 as well as the debilitating sequelae that impact the ability to recover from the acute illness. Through this COVID funding opportunity, CIRM is enabling researchers to re-direct work they have already done, often with CIRM support, to quickly develop new approaches to COVID-19.”
The Stem Cellar 