Gilead

A model for success

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Dr. Maria Millan, CIRM’s President & CEO

Funding models are rarely talked about in excited tones.  It’s normally relegated to the dry tomes of academia. But in CIRM’s case, the funding model we have created is not just fundamental to our success in advancing regenerative medicine in California, it’s also proving to be a model that many other agencies are looking at to see if they can replicate it.

A recent article in the journal Cell & Gene Therapy Insights looks at what the CIRM model does and how it has achieved something rather extraordinary.

Full disclosure. I might be a tad biased here as the article was written by my boss, Dr. Maria Millan, and two of my colleagues, Dr. Sohel Talib and Dr. Shyam Patel.

I won’t go into huge detail here (you can get that by reading the article itself) But the article “highlights 3 elements of CIRM’s funding model that have enabled California academic researchers and companies to de-risk development of novel regenerative medicine therapies and attract biopharma industry support.”

Those three elements are:

1. Ensuring that funding mechanisms bridge the entire translational “Valley of Death”

2. Constantly optimizing funding models to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving industry

3. Championing the portfolio and proactively engaging potential industry partners

As an example of the first, they point to our Disease Team awards. These were four-year investments that gave researchers with promising projects the time, support and funds they needed to not only develop a therapy, but also move it out of academia into a company and into patients.  Many of these projects had struggled to get outside investment until CIRM stepped forward. One example they offer is this one.

“CIRM Disease Team award funding also enabled Dr. Irving Weissman and the Stanford University team to discover, develop and obtain first-in-human clinical data for the innovative anti-CD47 antibody immunotherapy approach to cancer. The spin-out, Forty Seven, Inc., then leveraged CIRM funding as well as venture and public market financing to progress clinical development of the lead candidate until its acquisition by Gilead Sciences in April 2020 for $4.9B.”

But as the field evolved it became clear CIRM’s funding model had to evolve too, to better meet the needs of a rapidly advancing industry. So, in 2015 we changed the way we worked. For example, with clinical trial stage projects we reduced the average time from application to funding from 22 months to 120 days. In addition to that applications for new clinical stage projects were able to be submitted year-round instead of only once or twice a year as in the past.

We also created hard and fast milestones for all programs to reach. If they met their milestone funding continued. If they didn’t, funding stopped. And we required clinical trial stage projects, and those for earlier stage for-profit companies, to put up money of their own. We wanted to ensure they had “skin in the game” and were as committed to the success of their project as we were.

Finally, to champion the portfolio we created our Industry Alliance Program. It’s a kind of dating program for the researchers CIRM funds and companies looking to invest in promising projects. Industry partners get a chance to look at our portfolio and pick out projects they think are interesting. We then make the introductions and see if we can make a match.

And we have.

“To date, the IAP has also formally enrolled 8 partners with demonstrated commitment to cell and gene therapy development. The enrolled IAP partners represent companies both small and large, multi-national venture firms and innovative accelerators.

Over the past 18 months, the IAP program has enabled over 50 one-on-one partnership interactions across CIRM’s portfolio from discovery stage pluripotent stem cell therapies to clinical stage engineered HSC therapies.”

As the field continues to mature there are new problems emerging, such as the need to create greater manufacturing capacity to meet the growth in demand for high quality stem cell products. CIRM, like all other agencies, will also have to evolve and adapt to these new demands. But we feel with the model we have created, and the flexibility we have to pivot when needed, we are perfectly situated to do just that.

CIRM-funded treatment for cancer granted FDA breakthrough therapy designation

/ Yimy Villa / Leave a comment
Mark Chao, M.D., Ph.D., cofounder of Forty Seven, Inc. and current VP of oncology clinical research at Gilead Sciences

An antibody therapeutic, magrolimab, being tested for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a group of cancers in which the bone marrow does not produce enough healthy blood cells , was granted breakthrough therapy designation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

Breakthrough therapy designations from the FDA are intended to help expedite the development of new treatments. They require preliminary clinical evidence that demonstrates that the treatment may have substantial improvement in comparison to therapy options currently available. CIRM funded a Phase 1b trial in MDS and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), another type of blood cancer, that provided the data on which the breakthrough therapy designation is based.

Cancer cells express a signal known as CD47, which sends a “don’t eat me” message to macrophages, white blood cells that are part of the immune system designed to “eat” and destroy unhealthy cells. Magrolimab works by blocking the signal, enabling the body’s own immune system to detect and destroy the cancer cells.

Magrolimab was initially developed by a team led by Irv Weissman, M.D. at Stanford University with the support of CIRM awards. This led to the formation of Forty Seven, Inc., which was subsequently acquired by Gilead Sciences in April 2020 for $4.9 billion (learn more about other highlighted partnership events on CIRM’s Industry Alliance Program website by clicking here).

In CIRM’s 2019-2020 18-Month Report, Mark Chao, M.D., Ph.D.,  who co-founded Forty Seven, Inc. and currently serves as the VP of oncology clinical research at Gilead Sciences, credits CIRM with helping progress this treatment.

“CIRM’s support has been instrumental to our ability to rapidly progress Forty Seven’s CD47 antibody targeting approach.”

Magrolimab is currently being studied as a combination therapy with azacitidine, a chemotherapy drug, in a Phase 3 clinical trial in previously untreated higher risk MDS. This is one of the last steps before seeking FDA approval for widespread commercial use.

Merdad Parsey, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer at Gilead Sciences

In a press release, Merdad Parsey, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer at Gilead Sciences discusses the significance of the designation from the FDA and the importance of the treatment.

“The Breakthrough Therapy designation recognizes the potential for magrolimab to help address a significant unmet medical need for people with MDS and underscores the transformative potential of Gilead’s immuno-oncology therapies in development.”

Perseverance: from theory to therapy. Our story over the last year – and a half

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Some of the stars of our Annual Report

It’s been a long time coming. Eighteen months to be precise. Which is a peculiarly long time for an Annual Report. The world is certainly a very different place today than when we started, and yet our core mission hasn’t changed at all, except to spring into action to make our own contribution to fighting the coronavirus.

This latest CIRM Annual Reportcovers 2019 through June 30, 2020. Why? Well, as you probably know we are running out of money and could be funding our last new awards by the end of this year. So, we wanted to produce as complete a picture of our achievements as we could – keeping in mind that we might not be around to produce a report next year.

Dr. Catriona Jamieson, UC San Diego physician and researcher

It’s a pretty jam-packed report. It covers everything from the 14 new clinical trials we have funded this year, including three specifically focused on COVID-19. It looks at the extraordinary researchers that we fund and the progress they have made, and the billions of additional dollars our funding has helped leverage for California. But at the heart of it, and at the heart of everything we do, are the patients. They’re the reason we are here. They are the reason we do what we do.

Byron Jenkins, former Naval fighter pilot who battled back from his own fight with multiple myeloma

There are stories of people like Byron Jenkins who almost died from multiple myeloma but is now back leading a full, active life with his family thanks to a CIRM-funded therapy with Poseida. There is Jordan Janz, a young man who once depended on taking 56 pills a day to keep his rare disease, cystinosis, under control but is now hoping a stem cell therapy developed by Dr. Stephanie Cherqui and her team at UC San Diego will make that something of the past.

Jordan Janz and Dr. Stephanie Cherqui

These individuals are remarkable on so many levels, not the least because they were willing to be among the first people ever to try these therapies. They are pioneers in every sense of the word.

Sneha Santosh, former CIRM Bridges student and now a researcher with Novo Nordisk

There is a lot of information in the report, charting the work we have done over the last 18 months. But it’s also a celebration of everyone who made it possible, and our way of saying thank you to the people of California who gave us this incredible honor and opportunity to do this work.

We hope you enjoy it.

CIRM Highlights Industrial Alliance Program (IAP)

/ Yimy Villa / Leave a comment

In the addition to the innovative scientists and clinicians who conceive and develop novel experimental therapies, it takes a village to drive a promising experimental therapy through phases of clinical trials, regulatory marketing approval, and commercialization before it becomes broadly accessible to patients with unmet medical needs. In this case, the village is the broader industry including institutional investors and biopharma companies that have the capital, resources and expertise to carry the development programs past the finish line. 

A big part of what CIRM does revolves around nurturing projects at the very early stages. By providing funding and guidance through our collaborative team of experts, CIRM de-risks its therapy development programs through pre-clinical and clinical stages, thereby readying them for industry partnerships to support them through the last mile. CIRM funding to California academic institutions has enabled the launch of more than 40 spinout companies, one of which we will highlight below.

On April 7th, 2020, Forty Seven, Inc. was acquired by Gilead Sciences for $4.9 billion. CIRM funded the preclinical and early clinical development of an anti-CD47 antibody candidate for cancer at Stanford and subsequently funded two Forty Seven clinical trials. Now, Gilead will leverage all of its resources to accelerate the development of this promising cancer immunotherapy.

Dr. Mark Chao, Co-Founder, Forty Seven, Inc. had this to say about CIRM.

“CIRM’s support has been instrumental to our early successes and our ability to rapidly progress Forty Seven’s CD47 antibody targeting approach with magrolimab. CIRM was an early collaborator in our clinical programs and it’s support was instrumental in helping us reach a point where we could become a part of Gilead and move forward with our research.”

To proactively enable more partnering successes such as Forty Seven, CIRM has established the Industry Alliance Program (IAP) as a direct opportunity for the industry to partner with CIRM grantees in accelerating the most promising stem cell, gene and regenerative medicine therapy programs to commercialization. Through the IAP, CIRM is a dedicated and proactive partner to industry and CIRM grantees.

We recently launched a website for those interested in knowing more about these partnerships. It describes the IAP program in more detail can be accessed by clicking here.

If you are a potential industry partner wishing to learn more about CIRM’s IAP, please contact:

Big time validation for early support

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

It’s not every day that a company and a concept that you helped support from the very beginning gets snapped up for $4.9 billion. But that’s what is happening with Forty Seven Inc. and their anti-cancer therapies. Gilead, another California company by the way, has announced it is buying Forty Seven Inc. for almost $5 billion.

The deal gives Gilead access to Forty Seven’s lead antibody therapy, magrolimab, which switches off CD47, a kind of “do not eat me” signal that cancer cells use to evade the immune system.

CIRM has supported this program from its very earliest stages, back in 2013, when it was a promising idea in need of funding. Last year we blogged about the progress it has made from a hopeful concept to an exciting therapy.

When Forty Seven Inc. went public in 2018, Dr. Irv Weissman, one of the founders of the company, attributed a lot of their success to CIRM’s support.

Dr. Irv Weissman

“The story of the funding of this work all of the way to its commercialization and the clinical trials reported in the New England Journal of Medicine is simply this: CIRM funding of a competitive grant took a mouse discovery of the CD47 ‘don’t eat me’ signal through all preclinical work to and through a phase 1 IND with the FDA. Our National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not fund any part of the clinical trial or preclinical run up to the trial, so it is fortunate for those patients and those that will follow, if the treatment continues its success in larger trials, that California voters took the state’s right action to fund research not funded by the federal government.”

Dr. Maria Millan, CIRM’s President & CEO, says the deal is a perfect example of CIRM’s value to the field of regenerative medicine and our ability to work with our grantees to make them as successful as possible.

“To say this is incredible would be an understatement! Words cannot describe how excited we are that this novel approach to battling currently untreatable malignancies has the prospect of making it to patients in need and this is a major step. Speaking on behalf of CIRM, we are very honored to have been a partner with Forty Seven Inc. from the very beginning.

CIRM Senior Science Officer, Dr. Ingrid Caras, was part of the team that helped a group of academic scientists take their work out of the lab and into the real world.

“I had the pleasure of working with and helping the Stanford team since CIRM provided the initial funding to translate the idea of developing CD47 blockade as a therapeutic approach. This was a team of superb scientists who we were fortunate to work closely with them to navigate the Regulatory environment and develop a therapeutic product. We were able to provide guidance as well as funding and assist in the ultimate success of this project.”

Forty Seven Inc. is far from the only example of this kind of support and collaboration. We have always seen ourselves as far more than just a funding agency. Money is important, absolutely. But so too is bringing the experience and expertise of our team to help academic scientists take a promising idea and turn it into a successful therapy.

After all that’s what our mission is, doing all we can to accelerate stem cell therapies to patients with unmet medical needs. And after a deal like this, Forty Seven Inc. is definitely accelerating its work.