ICOC Board Meetings

CIRM invests in stem cell clinical trial targeting lung cancer and promising research into osteoporosis and incontinence

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment
Lung cancer

Lung cancer: Photo courtesy Verywell

The five-year survival rate for people diagnosed with the most advanced stage of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is pretty grim, only between one and 10 percent. To address this devastating condition, the Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) today voted to invest almost $12 million in a team from UCLA that is pioneering a combination therapy for NSCLC.

The team is using the patient’s own immune system where their dendritic cells – key cells in our immune system – are genetically modified to boost their ability to stimulate their native T cells – a type of white blood cell – to destroy cancer cells.  The investigators will combine this cell therapy with the FDA-approved therapy pembrolizumab (better known as Keytruda) a therapeutic that renders cancer cells more susceptible to clearance by the immune system.

“Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death for men and women, leading to 150,000 deaths each year and there is clearly a need for new and more effective treatments,” says Maria T. Millan, M.D., the President and CEO of CIRM. “We are pleased to support this program that is exploring a combination immunotherapy with gene modified cell and antibody for one of the most extreme forms of lung cancer.”

Translation Awards

The CIRM Board also approved investing $14.15 million in four projects under its Translation Research Program. The goal of these awards is to support promising stem cell research and help it move out of the laboratory and into clinical trials in people.

Researchers at Stanford were awarded almost $6 million to help develop a treatment for urinary incontinence (UI). Despite being one of the most common indications for surgery in women, one third of elderly women continue to suffer from debilitating urinary incontinence because they are not candidates for surgery or because surgery fails to address their condition.

The Stanford team is developing an approach using the patient’s own cells to create smooth muscle cells that can replace those lost in UI. If this approach is successful, it provides a proof of concept for replacement of smooth muscle cells that could potentially address other conditions in the urinary tract and in the digestive tract.

Max BioPharma Inc. was awarded almost $1.7 million to test a therapy that targets stem cells in the skeleton, creating new bone forming cells and blocking the destruction of bone cells caused by osteoporosis.

In its application the company stressed the benefit this could have for California’s diverse population stating: “Our program has the potential to have a significant positive impact on the lives of patients with osteoporosis, especially in California where its unique demographics make it particularly vulnerable. Latinos are 31% more likely to have osteoporosis than Caucasians, and California has the largest Latino population in the US, accounting for 39% of its population.”

Application Title Institution CIRM funding
TRAN1-10958 Autologous iPSC-derived smooth muscle cell therapy for treatment of urinary incontinence

 

  

Stanford University

  

$5,977,155

 
TRAN2-10990 Development of a noninvasive prenatal test for beta-hemoglobinopathies for earlier stem cell therapeutic interventions

 

  

Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute

  

$1,721,606

 
TRAN1-10937 Therapeutic development of an oxysterol with bone anabolic and anti-resorptive properties for intervention in osteoporosis  

MAX BioPharma Inc.

  

$1,689,855

 
TRAN1-10995 Morphological and functional integration of stem cell derived retina organoid sheets into degenerating retina models

 

  

UC Irvine

  

$4,769,039

 

Budgeting for the future of the stem cell agency

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
ICOC_DEC17-24

The CIRM Board discusses the future of the Stem Cell Agency

Budgets are very rarely exciting things; but they are important. For example, it’s useful for a family to know when they go shopping exactly how much money they have so they know how much they can afford to spend. Stem cell agencies face the same constraints; you can’t spend more than you have. Last week the CIRM Board looked at what we have in the bank, and set us on a course to be able to do as many of the things we want to, with the money we have left.

First some context. Last year CIRM spent a shade over $306 million on a wide range of research from Discovery, the earliest stage, through Translational and into Clinical trials. We estimate that is going to leave us with approximately $335 million to spend in the coming years.

A couple of years ago our Board approved a 5 year Strategic Plan that laid out some pretty ambitious goals for us to achieve – such as funding 50 new clinical trials. At the time, that many clinical trials definitely felt like a stretch and we questioned if it would be possible. We’re proving that it is. In just two years we have funded 26 new clinical trials, so we are halfway to our goal, which is terrific. But it also means we are in danger of using up all our money faster than anticipated, and not having the time to meet all our goals.

Doing the math

So, for the last couple of months our Leadership Team has been crunching the numbers and looking for ways to use the money in the most effective and efficient way. Last week they presented their plan to the Board.

It boiled down to a few options.

  • Keep funding at the current rate and run out of money by 2019
  • Limit funding just to clinical trials, which would mean we could hit our 50 clinical trial goal by 2020 but would not have enough to fund Discovery and Translational level research
  • Place caps on how much we fund each clinical trial, enabling us to fund more clinical trials while having enough left over for Discovery and Translational awards

The Board went for the third option for some good reasons. The plan is consistent with the goals laid out in our Strategic Plan and it supports Discovery and Translational research, which are important elements in our drive to develop new therapies for patients.

Finding the right size cap

Here’s a look at the size of the caps on clinical trial funding. You’ll see that in the case of late stage pre-clinical work and Phase 1 clinical trials, the caps are still larger than the average amount we funded those stages last year. For Phase 2 the cap is almost the same as the average. For Phase 3 the cap is half the amount from last year, but we think at this stage Phase 3 trials should be better able to attract funding from other sources, such as industry or private investors.

cap awards

Another important reason why the Board chose option three – and here you’ll have to forgive me for being rather selfish – is that it means the Administration Budget (which pays the salaries of the CIRM team, including yours truly) will be enough to cover the cost of running this research plan until 2020.

The bottom line is that for 2018 we’ll be able to spend $130 million on clinical stage research, $30 million for Translational stage, and $10 million for Discovery. The impact the new funding caps will have on clinical stage projects is likely to be small (you can see the whole presentation and details of our plan here) but the freedom it gives us to support the broad range of our work is huge.

And here is where to go if you are interested in seeing the different funding opportunities at CIRM.

CIRM Board invests in three new stem cell clinical trials targeting arthritis, cancer and deadly infections

/ Kevin McCormack / 8 Comments
knee

Arthritis of the knee

Every day at CIRM we get calls from people looking for a stem cell therapy to help them fight a life-threatening or life-altering disease or condition. One of the most common calls is about osteoarthritis, a painful condition where the cartilage that helps cushion our joints is worn away, leaving bone to rub on bone. People call asking if we have something, anything, that might be able to help them. Now we do.

At yesterday’s CIRM Board meeting the Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee or ICOC (the formal title of the Board) awarded almost $8.5 million to the California Institute for Biomedical Research (CALIBR) to test a drug that appears to help the body regenerate cartilage. In preclinical tests the drug, KA34, stimulated mesenchymal stem cells to turn into chondrocytes, the kind of cell found in healthy cartilage. It’s hoped these new cells will replace those killed off by osteoarthritis and repair the damage.

This is a Phase 1 clinical trial where the goal is primarily to make sure this approach is safe in patients. If the treatment also shows hints it’s working – and of course we hope it will – that’s a bonus which will need to be confirmed in later stage, and larger, clinical trials.

From a purely selfish perspective, it will be nice for us to be able to tell callers that we do have a clinical trial underway and are hopeful it could lead to an effective treatment. Right now the only alternatives for many patients are powerful opioids and pain killers, surgery, or turning to clinics that offer unproven stem cell therapies.

Targeting immune system cancer

The CIRM Board also awarded Poseida Therapeutics $19.8 million to target multiple myeloma, using the patient’s own genetically re-engineered stem cells. Multiple myeloma is caused when plasma cells, which are a type of white blood cell found in the bone marrow and are a key part of our immune system, turn cancerous and grow out of control.

As Dr. Maria Millan, CIRM’s President & CEO, said in a news release:

“Multiple myeloma disproportionately affects people over the age of 65 and African Americans, and it leads to progressive bone destruction, severe anemia, infectious complications and kidney and heart damage from abnormal proteins produced by the malignant plasma cells.  Less than half of patients with multiple myeloma live beyond 5 years. Poseida’s technology is seeking to destroy these cancerous myeloma cells with an immunotherapy approach that uses the patient’s own engineered immune system T cells to seek and destroy the myeloma cells.”

In a news release from Poseida, CEO Dr. Eric Ostertag, said the therapy – called P-BCMA-101 – holds a lot of promise:

“P-BCMA-101 is elegantly designed with several key characteristics, including an exceptionally high concentration of stem cell memory T cells which has the potential to significantly improve durability of response to treatment.”

Deadly infections

The third clinical trial funded by the Board yesterday also uses T cells. Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles were awarded $4.8 million for a Phase 1 clinical trial targeting potentially deadly infections in people who have a weakened immune system.

Viruses such as cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr, and adenovirus are commonly found in all of us, but our bodies are usually able to easily fight them off. However, patients with weakened immune systems resulting from chemotherapy, bone marrow or cord blood transplant often lack that ability to combat these viruses and it can prove fatal.

The researchers are taking T cells from healthy donors that have been genetically matched to the patient’s immune system and engineered to fight these viruses. The cells are then transplanted into the patient and will hopefully help boost their immune system’s ability to fight the virus and provide long-term protection.

Whenever you can tell someone who calls you, desperately looking for help, that you have something that might be able to help them, you can hear the relief on the other end of the line. Of course, we explain that these are only early-stage clinical trials and that we don’t know if they’ll work. But for someone who up until that point felt they had no options and, often, no hope, it’s welcome and encouraging news that progress is being made.