Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, is a nasty degenerative condition that destroys the brain cells controlling movement. People with ALS suffer a progressive loss of ability to walk, talk, eat and breathe.
The average life expectancy for someone diagnosed with ALS is just two to five years. It has a devastating impact on the people diagnosed and their families.
On the latest episode of our podcast,Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation, we talk to two women who have suffered a loss in this fight, but who are using their experience with ALS to help others battling the disease.
Nadia Sethi became the Director of Community Engagement and Outreach at the ALS Therapy Development Institute after losing her husband to ALS.
Their courage and determination to turn a tragedy into something positive, to help others, and to hopefully play a role in finding treatments to help people with ALS, is deeply moving and inspiring.
MRI section of a brain affected by ALS with the front section of the brain highlighted
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a nasty disease that steadily attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It’s pretty much always fatal within a few years. As if that wasn’t bad enough, ALS also can overlap with a condition called frontotemporal dementia (ALS/FTD). Together these conditions cause devastating symptoms of muscle weakness along with changes in memory, behavior and personality.
Now researchers at Cambridge University in the UK have managed to grow groups of cells called “mini-brains” that mimic ALS/FTD and could lead to new approaches to treating this deadly combination.
We have written about these mini-brains before. Basically, they are created, using the iPSC method, that takes skin or blood cells from a patient with a particular condition, in this case ALS/FTD, and turns them into the kind of nerve cells in the brain affected by the disease. Because they came from someone who had ALS/FTD they display many of the characteristics of the disease and this gives researchers a great tool to study the condition.
This kind of approach has been done before and given researchers a glimpse into what is happening in the brains of people with ALS/FTD. But in the past those cells were in a kind of clump, and it wasn’t possible to get enough nutrients to the cells in the middle of the clump for the mini-brain to survive for long.
What is different about the Cambridge team is that they were able to create these mini-brains using thin, slices of cells. That meant all the cells could get enough nutrients to survive a long time, giving the team a better model to understand what is happening in ALS/FTD.
In a news release, Dr András Lakatos, the senior author of the study, said: “Neurodegenerative diseases are very complex disorders that can affect many different cell types and how these cells interact at different times as the diseases progress.
“To come close to capturing this complexity, we need models that are more long-lived and replicate the composition of those human brain cell populations in which disturbances typically occur, and this is what our approach offers. Not only can we see what may happen early on in the disease – long before a patient might experience any symptoms – but we can also begin to see how the disturbances change over time in each cell.”
Thanks to these longer-lived cells the team were able to see changes in the mini-brains at a very early stage, including damage to DNA and cell stress, changes that affected other cells which play a role in muscle movements and behavior.
Because the cells developed using the iPSC method are from a patient with ALS/FTD, the researchers were able to use them to screen many different medications to see if any had potential as a therapy. They identified one, GSK2606414, that seemed to help in reducing the build-up of toxic proteins, reduced cell stress and the loss of nerve cells.
The team acknowledge that these results are promising but also preliminary and will require much more research to verify them.
This past Friday the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) awarded $11.99 million to Cedars-Sinai to fund a clinical trial for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the death of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing the muscles in the body to gradually weaken, leading to loss of limb function, difficulty breathing, paralysis, and eventually death. There are medications that can slow down the progression of ALS, but unfortunately there is no cure for the disease.
Clive Svendsen, Ph.D., executive director of Cedars-Sinai’s Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, and his team will be conducting a trial that uses a combined cell and gene therapy approach as a treatment for ALS. The trial builds upon the Stem Cell Agency’s first ALS trial, also conducted by Cedars-Sinai and Svendsen.
Genetically engineered stem cells will be transplanted into the motor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for voluntary movements. These transplanted cells then become astrocytes, a type of support cell that help keep nerve cells functioning. The astrocytes have been genetically altered to deliver high doses of a growth factor which has been shown to protect nerve cells. The goal of this approach is to protect the upper motor neurons controlling muscle function and meaningfully improve the quality of life for ALS patients.
“ALS is a devastating disease that attacks the spinal cord and brain and results in the progressive loss of the ability to move, to swallow and eventually to breathe. ” says Maria T. Millan, M.D., President and CEO of CIRM. “This clinical trial builds on Dr. Svendsen’s work previously funded by CIRM. We are fortunate to be able to support this important work, which was made possible by California citizens who voted to reauthorize CIRM under Proposition 14 this past November.”
Biomedical specialist Mamadou Dialio at work in the Cedars-Sinai Biomanufacturing Center. Photo by Cedars-Sinai.
Following the race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 has been a crash course in learning how complicated creating a new therapy is. It’s not just the science involved, but the logistics. Coming up with a vaccine that is both safe and effective is difficult enough, but then how do you make enough doses of it to treat hundreds of millions of people around the world?
That’s a familiar problem for stem cell researchers. As they develop their products they are often able to make enough cells in their own labs. But as they move into clinical trials where they are testing those cells in more and more people, they need to find a new way to make more cells. And, of course, they need to plan ahead, hoping the therapy is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, so they will need to be able to manufacture enough doses to meet the increased demand.
We saw proof of that planning ahead this week with the news that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has opened up a new Biomanufacturing Center.
Dr. Clive Svendsen, executive director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, said in a news release, the Center will manufacture the next generation of drugs and regenerative medicine therapies.
“The Cedars-Sinai Biomanufacturing Center leverages our world-class stem-cell expertise, which already serves scores of clients, to provide a much-needed biomanufacturing facility in Southern California. It is revolutionary by virtue of elevating regenerative medicine and its therapeutic possibilities to an entirely new level-repairing the human body.”
This is no ordinary manufacturing plant. The Center features nine “clean rooms” that are kept free from dust and other contaminants. Everyone working there has to wear protective suits and masks to ensure they don’t bring anything into the clean rooms.
The Center will specialize in manufacturing induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. Dhruv Sareen, PhD, executive director of the Biolmanufacturing Center, says iPSCs are cells that can be turned into any other kind of cell in the body.
“IPSCs are powerful tools for understanding human disease and developing therapies. These cells enable us to truly practice precision medicine by developing drug treatments tailored to the individual patient or groups of patients with similar genetic profiles.”
The Biomanufacturing Center is designed to address a critical bottleneck in bringing cell- and gene-based therapies to the clinic. After all, developing a therapy is great, but it’s only half the job. Making enough of it to help the people who need it is the other half.
CIRM is funding Dr. Svendsen’s work in developing therapies for ALS and other diseases and disorders.
Having grown up in an era where to find your way around you had to use paper maps, a compass and a knowledge of the stars (OK, I’m not actually that old!) I’m forever grateful to whoever invented the GPS. It’s a lifesaver, and I daresay has also saved more than a few marriages!
Having a way to guide people where they need to be is amazing. Now researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have come up with a similar tool for stem cells. It’s a drug that can help guide stem cells to go where they need to go, to repair damaged tissue and improve the healing process.
In a news release Evan Snyder, MD, PhD, the senior author of the study, explained in wonderfully simply terms what they have done:
“The ability to instruct a stem cell where to go in the body or to a particular region of a given organ is the Holy Grail for regenerative medicine. Now, for the first time ever, we can direct a stem cell to a desired location and focus its therapeutic impact.”
More than a decade ago Snyder and his team discovered that when our body suffers an injury the result is often inflammation and that this then sends out signals for stem cells to come and help repair the damage. This is fine when the problem is a cut or sprain, short term issues in need of a quick fix. But what happens if it’s something more complex, such as a heart attack or stroke where the need is more long term.
In the study, funded in part by CIRM, the team took a molecule, called CXCL12, known to help guide stem cells to damaged tissue, and used it to create a drug called SDV1a. Snyder says this new drug has several key properties.
“Since inflammation can be dangerous, we modified CXCL12 by stripping away the risky bit and maximizing the good bit. Now we have a drug that draws stem cells to a region of pathology, but without creating or worsening unwanted inflammation.”
To test the drug to see how well it worked the team implanted SDV1a and some human brain stem cells into mice with Sandhoff disease, a condition that progressively destroys cells in the brain and spinal cord. They were able to demonstrate that the drug helped the stem cells migrate to where they were needed and to help in repairing the damage. The treated mice had a longer lifespan and better motor function, as well as developing symptoms later than untreated mice.
The team is now testing this drug to see if it has any impact on ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. And Snyder says there are other areas where it could prove effective.
“We are optimistic that this drug’s mechanism of action may potentially benefit a variety of neurodegenerative disorders, as well as non-neurological conditions such as heart disease, arthritis and even brain cancer. Interestingly, because CXCL12 and its receptor are implicated in the cytokine storm that characterizes severe COVID-19, some of our insights into how to selectively inhibit inflammation without suppressing other normal processes may be useful in that arena as well.”
CIRM’s President & CEO, Dr. Maria Millan, says this kind of work highlights the important role the stem cell agency plays, in providing long-term support for promising but early stage research.
“Thanks to decades of investment in stem cell science, we are making tremendous progress in our understanding of how these cells work and how they can be harnessed to help reverse injury or disease. Dr. Snyder’s group has identified a drug that could boost the ability of neural stem cells to home to sites of injury and initiate repair. This candidate could help speed the development of stem cell treatments for conditions such as spinal cord injury and Alzheimer’s disease.”
You know you are working with some of the finest scientific minds in the world when they get elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS). It’s the science equivalent of the baseball, football or even Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. People only get in if their peers vote them in. It’s considered one of the highest honors in science, one earned over many decades of hard work. And when it comes to hard work there are few people who work harder than U.C. San Diego’s Dr. Lawrence Goldstein, one of the newly elected members of the NAS.
For more than 25 years Larry’s work has targeted the brain and, in particular, Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In 2012 his team was the first to create stem cell models for two different forms of Alzheimer’s, the hereditary and the sporadic forms. This gave researchers a new way of studying the disease, helping them better understand what causes it and looking at new ways of treating it.
His work has also helped develop a deeper understanding of the genetics of Alzheimer’s and to identify possible new targets for stem cell and other therapies.
Larry was typically modest when he heard the news, saying: “I have been very fortunate to have wonderful graduate students and fellows who have accomplished a great deal of excellent research. It is a great honor for me and for all of my past students and fellows – I am obviously delighted and hope to contribute to the important work of the National Academy of Sciences.”
But Larry doesn’t intend to rest on his laurels. He says he still has a lot of work to do, including “raising funding to test a new drug approach for Alzheimer’s disease that we’ve developed with CIRM support.”
Jennifer Briggs Braswell, PhD, worked with Larry at UCSD from 2005 to 2018. She says Larry’s election to the NAS is well deserved:
“His high quality publications, the pertinence of his studies in neurodegeneration to our current problems, and his constant, unwavering devotion to the next generation of scientists is matched only by his dedication to improving public understanding of science to motivate social, political, and financial support.
“He has been for me a supportive mentor, expressing enthusiastic belief in the likely success of my good ideas and delivering critique with kindness and sympathy. He continues to inspire me, our colleagues at UCSD and other communities, advocate publicly for the importance of science, and work tirelessly on solutions for neurodegenerative disorders.”
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that destroys the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. As a result of ALS, the motor neurons that enable bodily movement and muscle control are harmed, which can make it difficult to move, speak, eat, and breathe. This condition usually affects people from age 40 to 70, but individuals in their 20s and 30s have also been known to develop ALS. Unfortunately there is no cure for this condition.
However, a study supported by CIRM and conducted by Dr. Martin Marsala at UC San Diego is using a mouse model to look at an approach that uses a gene silencer to protect motor neurons before or shortly after ALS symptoms start to develop.
The gene silencer works by turning off a targeted gene and is delivered via injection. In the case of ALS, previous research suggests that mutations in a gene called SOD1 may cause motor neuronal cell death, resulting in ALS. For this study, Dr. Marsala and his team injected the gene silencer at two sites in the spinal cord in adult mice expressing an ALS-causing mutation of the SOD1 gene. The mice injected did not yet display symptoms of ALS or had only begun showing symptoms.
In mice not yet showing ALS symptoms, they displayed normal neurological function with no onset ALS symptoms after treatment. Additionally, near complete protection of motor neurons and other cells was observed. In mice that had just began showing ALS symptoms, the injection blocked further disease progression as well as further harm to remaining motor neurons. Both of these groups of mice lived without negative side effects for the duration of the study.
In a news release, Dr. Marsala talks about what these results mean for the study of ALS.
“At present, this therapeutic approach provides the most potent therapy ever demonstrated in mouse models of mutated SOD1 gene-linked ALS.”
The next steps for this research would be to conduct additional safety studies with a larger animal model in order to determine an optimal, safe dose for the treatment.
The full results of this study were published in Nature Medicine.
In addition to supporting this research for ALS, CIRM has funded two clinical trials in the field as well. One of these trials is being conducted by BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics and the other trial is being by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
An Organ-Chip used in the study to create a blood-brain barrier (BBB).
The brain is a complex part of the human body that allows for the formation of thoughts and consciousness. In many ways it is the essence of who we are as individuals. Because of its importance, our bodies have developed various layers of protection around this vital organ, one of which is called the blood-brain barrier (BBB).
The BBB is a thin border of various cell types around the brain that regulate what can enter the brain tissue through the bloodstream. Its primary purpose is to prevent toxins and other unwanted substances from entering the brain and damaging it. Unfortunately this barrier can also prevent helpful medications, designed to fix problems, from reaching the brain.
Several brain disorders, such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS – also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), Parkinson’s Disease (PD), and Huntington’s Disease (HD) have been linked to defective BBBs that keep out critical biomolecules needed for healthy brain activity.
In a CIRM-funded study, a team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center created a BBB through the use of stem cells and an Organ-Chip made from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These are a specific type of stem cells that can turn into any type of cell in the body and can be generated from a person’s own cells. In this study, iPSCs were created from adult blood samples and used to make the neurons and other supporting cells that make up the BBB. These cells were then placed inside an Organ-Chip which recreates the environment that cells normally experience within the human body.
Inside the 3-D Organ-Chip, the cells were able to form a BBB that functions as it does in the body, with the ability to block entry of certain drugs. Most notably, when the BBB was generated from cell samples of patients with HD, the BBB malfunctioned in the same way that it does in patients with the disease.
These findings expand the potential for personalized medicine for various brain disorders linked to problems in the BBB. In a press release, Dr. Clive Svendsen, director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and senior author of the study, was quoted as saying,
“The study’s findings open a promising pathway for precision medicine. The possibility of using a patient-specific, multicellular model of a blood barrier on a chip represents a new standard for developing predictive, personalized medicine.”
The full results of the study were published in the scientific journal Cell Stem Cell.
A descriptive illustration of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Courtesy of ALS Foundation website.
Understanding the basic biology of how a cell functions can be crucial to being able to better understand a disease and unlock a potential approach for a treatment. Stem cells are unique in that they give scientists the opportunity to create a controlled environment of cells that might be otherwise difficult to study. Dr. Eva Hedlund and a team of researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden utilize a stem cell model approach to uncover findings related to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that destroys motor neurons, a type of nerve cell, that are important for voluntary muscle movement. When motor neurons can no longer send signals to the muscles, the muscles begin to deteriorate, a process formally known as atrophy. The progressive atrophy leads to muscle paralysis, including those in the legs and feet, arms and hands, and those that control swallowing and breathing. It affects about 30,000 people in the United States alone, with 5,000 new cases diagnosed each year. There is currently no cure.
In a previous study, researchers at the Karolinska Institute were able to successfully create oculomotor neurons from embryonic stem cells. For reasons not yet fully understood, oculomotor neurons are “ALS resilient” and can survive all stages of the disease.
In the current study, published in Stem Cell Reports, Dr. Hedlund and her team found that the oculomotor neurons they generated appeared more resilient to ALS-like degeneration when compared to spinal cord motor neurons, something commonly observed in humans. Furthermore, they discovered that their “ALS resilient” neurons generated from stem cells activate a survival-enhancing signal known as Akt, which is common in oculomotor neurons in humans and could explain their resilience. These results could potentially aid in identifying genetic targets for treatments protecting sensitive neurons from the disease.
In a press release, Dr. Hedlund is quoted as saying,
“This cell culture system can help identify new genes contributing to the resilience in oculomotor neurons that could be used in gene therapy to strengthen sensitive motor neurons.”
CIRM is currently funding two clinical trials for ALS, one of which is being conducted by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the other by Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics. The latter of the trials is currently recruiting patients and information on how to enroll can be found here.
Clive Svendsen, PhD, left, director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, and Samuel Sances, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the institute, with the January 2019 special edition of National Geographic. The magazine cover features a striking image of spinal cord tissue that was shot by Sances in his lab. Photo by Cedars-Sinai.
National Geographic is one of those iconic magazines that everyone knows about but few people read. Which is a shame, because it’s been around since 1888 and has helped make generations of readers aware about the world around them. And now, it’s shifting gears and helping people know more about the world inside them. That’s because a special January edition of National Geographic highlights stem cells.
The issue, called ‘The Future of Medicine’, covers a wide range of issues including stem cell research being done at Cedars-Sinai by Clive Svendsen and his team (CIRM is funding Dr. Svendsen’s work in a clinical trial targeting ALS, you can read about that here). The team is using stem cells and so-called Organ-Chips to develop personalized treatments for individual patients.
Here’s how it works. Scientists take blood or skin cells from individual patients, then using the iPSC method, turn those into the kind of cell in the body that is diseased or damaged. Those cells are then placed inside a device the size of an AA battery where they can be tested against lots of different drugs or compounds to see which ones might help treat that particular problem.
This approach is still in the development phase but if it works it would enable doctors to tailor a treatment to a patient’s specific DNA profile, reducing the risk of complications and, hopefully, increasing the risk it will be successful. Dr. Svendsen says it may sound like science fiction, but this is not far away from being science fact.
“I think we’re entering a new era of medicine—precision medicine. In the future, you’ll have your iPSC line made, generate the cell type in your body that is sick and put it on a chip to understand more about how to treat your disease.”
Dr. Svendsen isn’t the only connection CIRM has to the article. The cover photo for the issue was taken by Sam Sances, PhD, who received a CIRM stem cell research scholarship in 2010-2011. Sam says he’s grateful to CIRM for being a longtime supporter of his work. But then why wouldn’t we be. Sam – who is still just 31 years old – is clearly someone to watch. He got his first research job, as an experimental coordinator, with Pacific Ag Research in San Luis Obispo when he was still in high school.
The Stem Cellar 