Liver transplant

CIRM invests $1.3 million to study stem cells in metabolic liver disease

/ Pallavi Penumetcha / Leave a comment
Grikscheit

Dr. Tracy Grikscheit. Image courtesy of Children’s Hospital LA.

Metabolic liver disease, is an emerging public health concern in Western countries, but has largely been overshadowed by health issues such as cancer and diabetes. Chronic liver disease (of which metabolic liver disease is a significant contributor) however, is a significant public health concern, evidenced by its contribution to nearly 2 million deaths per year worldwide.

The primary treatment option for metabolic liver disease is a liver transplant. In fact, of the liver transplants performed every year, 14% are due to damage associated with metabolic disorders. With any organ transplant, however, such a procedure comes with drawbacks, the most frustrating of which is the need for patients to wait for an organ donor.

As transplants are not a reasonable or feasible option for many people, alternative treatment options are necessary.  Enter Dr. Tracy Grikscheit, a doctor-scientist at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, who hopes to make liver transplant a thing of the past for the millions of people who live with metabolic liver disease.

Dr. Grikscheit was awarded a $1.3 million grant to study how stem cells can be used to treat liver disease caused by metabolic disorders. In a press release, Dr. Grikscheit details the importance and practicality of using stem cells to treat liver disease:

“Liver-based metabolic diseases are the perfect starting point to apply cellular therapy to liver disorders. The only current therapy — a liver transplant — is costly and in short supply. Plus, it requires suppressing the patient’s immune system, which has long-term consequences.”

The project, termed UPLiFT for Universal Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapy, aims to use pluripotent stem cells (cells that can turn into any cell in the body) to correct liver associated disorders like Crigler-Najjar Syndrome. A genetic mutation in liver cells of these patients makes them unable to covert bilirubin (a byproduct of red blood cell degradation) to its non-toxic form. Dr. Grikscheit hopes to bypass the need for a liver transplant by giving these patients pluripotent stem cells that can become liver cells without the genetic mutation, and are able to convert bilirubin to its non-toxic form. The use of pluripotent stem cells would also potentially eliminate the need for lifelong immunosuppressive therapy

Dr. Grikscheit will use the CIRM grant to test safety and efficacy of the stem cell treatment in pre-clinical trials to determine the optimal cell dosage that will be both safe and relieve disease symptoms, as well as assessing any off-target effects of the treatment. She has previously received a grant from CIRM to study stem cell therapy options for digestive neuromuscular condition, which you can read about here.

 

Using stem cells to take an inside approach to fixing damaged livers

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

Often on the Stem Cellar we write about work that is in a clinical trial. But getting research to that stage takes years and years of dedicated work. Over the next few months we are going to profile some of the scientists we fund who are doing Discovery, or early stage research, to highlight the importance of this work in developing the treatments that could ultimately save lives.

 This first profile is by Pat Olson, Ph.D., CIRM’s Vice President of Discovery & Translation

liver

Most of us take our liver for granted.  We don’t think about the fact that our liver carries out more than 500 functions in our bodies such as modifying and removing toxins, contributing to digestion and energy production, and making substances that help our blood to clot.  Without a liver we probably wouldn’t live more than a few days.

Our liver typically functions well but certain toxins, viral infections, long-term excess alcohol consumption and metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes can have devastating effects on it.  Under these conditions, functional liver cells, called hepatocytes, die and are replaced with cells called myofibroblasts.  Myofibroblasts are cells that secrete excess collagen leading to fibrosis, a form of scarring, throughout the liver.  Eventually, a liver transplant is required but the number of donor livers available for transplant is small and the number of persons needing a functional liver is large.  Every year in the United States,  around 6,000 patients receive a new liver and more than 35,000 patients die of liver disease.

Searching for options

willenbring photo

Dr. Holger Willenbring

Dr. Holger Willenbring, a physician scientist at UCSF, is one of the CIRM-funded researchers pursuing a stem cell/regenerative medicine approach to discover a treatment for patients with severe liver disease.  There are significant challenges to treating liver disease including getting fully multi-functional hepatocytes and getting them to engraft and/or grow sufficiently to achieve adequate mass for necessary liver functions.

In previous CIRM–funded discovery research, Dr. Willenbring and his team showed that they could partially reprogram human fibroblasts (the most common cell found in connective tissue) and then turn them into immature hepatocytes.  (see our Spotlight on Liver Disease video from 2012 featuring Dr. Willenbring.) These immature hepatocytes, when transplanted into an immune-deficient mouse model of human liver failure, were shown to mature over time into hepatocytes that were comparable to normal human hepatocytes both in their gene expression and their function.

This was an important finding in that it suggested that the liver environment in a living animal (in vivo), rather than in a test tube (in vitro) in the laboratory, is important for full multi-functional maturation of hepatocytes.  The study also showed that these transplanted immature human hepatocytes could proliferate and improve the survival of this mouse model of chronic human liver disease.  But, even though this model was designed to emphasizes the growth of functional human hepatocytes, the number of cells generated was not great enough to suggest that transplantation could be avoided

A new approach

Dr. Willenbring and his team are now taking the novel approach of direct reprogramming inside the mouse.  With this approach, he seeks to avoid the challenge of low engraftment and proliferation of transplanted hepatocytes generated in the lab and transplanted. Instead, they aim to take advantage of the large number of myofibroblasts in the patient’s scarred liver by turning them directly into hepatocytes.

Recently, he and his team have shown proof-of principle that they can deliver genes to myofibroblasts and turn them into hepatocytes in a mouse. In addition these in vivo myofibroblasts-derived hepatocytes are multi-functional, and can multiply in number, and can even reverse fibrosis in a mouse with liver fibrosis.

From mice to men (women too)

Our latest round of funding for Dr. Willenbring has the goal of moving and extending these studies into human cells by improving the specificity and effectiveness of reprogramming of human myofibroblasts into hepatocytes inside the animal, rather than the lab.

He and his team will then conduct studies to test the therapeutic effectiveness and initial safety of this approach in preclinical models. The ultimate goal is to generate a potential therapy that could eventually provide hope for the 35,000 patients who die of liver disease each year in the US.

 

 

What’s the big idea? Or in this case, what’s the 19 big ideas?

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment

supermarket magazineHave you ever stood in line in a supermarket checkout line and browsed through the magazines stacked conveniently at eye level? (of course you have, we all have). They are always filled with attention-grabbing headlines like “5 Ways to a Slimmer You by Christmas” or “Ten Tips for Rock Hard Abs” (that one doesn’t work by the way).

So with those headlines in mind I was tempted to headline our latest Board meeting as: “19 Big Stem Cell Ideas That Could Change Your Life!”. And in truth, some of them might.

The Board voted to invest more than $4 million in funding for 19 big ideas as part of CIRM’s Discovery Inception program. The goal of Inception is to provide seed funding for great, early-stage ideas that may impact the field of human stem cell research but need a little support to test if they work. If they do work out, the money will also enable the researchers to gather the data they’ll need to apply for larger funding opportunities, from CIRM and other institutions, in the future

The applicants were told they didn’t have to have any data to support their belief that the idea would work, but they did have to have a strong scientific rational for why it might

As our President and CEO Randy Mills said in a news release, this is a program that encourages innovative ideas.

Randy Mills, Stem Cell Agency President & CEO

Randy Mills, CIRM President & CEO

“This is a program supporting early stage ideas that have the potential to be ground breaking. We asked scientists to pitch us their best new ideas, things they want to test but that are hard to get funding for. We know not all of these will pan out, but those that do succeed have the potential to advance our understanding of stem cells and hopefully lead to treatments in the future.”

So what are some of these “big” ideas? (Here’s where you can find the full list of those approved for funding and descriptions of what they involve). But here are some highlights.

Alysson Muotri at UC San Diego has identified some anti-retroviral drugs – already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – that could help stop inflammation in the brain. This kind of inflammation is an important component in several diseases such as Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, Lupus and Multiple Sclerosis. Alysson wants to find out why and how these drugs helps reduce inflammation and how it works. If he is successful it is possible that patients suffering from brain inflammation could immediately benefit from some already available anti-retroviral drugs.

Stanley Carmichael at UC Los Angeles wants to use induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – these are adult cells that have been genetically re-programmed so they are capable of becoming any cell in the body – to see if they can help repair the damage caused by a stroke. With stroke the leading cause of adult disability in the US, there is clearly a big need for this kind of big idea.

Holger Willenbring at UC San Francisco wants to use stem cells to create a kind of mini liver, one that can help patients whose own liver is being destroyed by disease. The mini livers could, theoretically, help stabilize a person’s own liver function until a transplant donor becomes available or even help them avoid the need for liver transplantation in the first place. Considering that every year, one in five patients on the US transplant waiting list will die or become too sick for transplantation, this kind of research could have enormous life-saving implications.

We know not all of these ideas will work out. But all of them will help deepen our understanding of how stem cells work and what they can, and can’t, do. Even the best ideas start out small. Our funding gives them a chance to become something truly big.

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