It’s hard to think of something as being rare when it affects up to 30 million Americans and 300 million people worldwide. But the truth is there are more than 6,000 conditions – those affecting 200,000 people or fewer – that are considered rare.
Today, February 28th, is Rare Disease Day. It’s a day to remind ourselves of the millions of people, and their families, struggling with these diseases. These conditions are also called or orphan diseases because, in many cases, drug companies were not interested in adopting them to develop treatments.
At the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), we have no such reservations. In fact last Friday our governing Board voted to invest almost $12 million to support a clinical trial for IPEX syndrome. IPEX syndrome is a condition where the body can’t control or restrain an immune response, so the person’s immune cells attack their own healthy tissue. This leads to the development of Type 1 diabetes, severe eczema, damage to the small intestines and kidneys and failure to thrive. It’s diagnosed in infancy, most of those affected are boys, and it is often fatal.
Taylor Lookofsky (who has IPEX syndrome) and his father Brian
IPEX is one of two dozen rare diseases that CIRM is funding a clinical trial for. In fact, more than one third of all the projects we fund target a rare disease or condition. Those include:
Some might question the wisdom of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in conditions that affect a relatively small number of patients. But if you see the faces of these patients and get to know their families, as we do, you know that often agencies like CIRM are their only hope.
Dr. Maria Millan, CIRM’s President and CEO, says the benefits of one successful approach can often extend far beyond one rare disease.
“Children with IPEX syndrome clearly represent a group of patients with an unmet medical need, and this therapy could make a huge difference in their lives. Success of this treatment in this rare disease presents far-reaching potential to develop treatments for a larger number of patients with a broad array of immune disorders.”
CIRM is proud to fund and spread awareness of rare diseases and invites you to watch this video about how they affect families around the world.
All this month we are using our blog and social media to highlight a new chapter in CIRM’s life, thanks to the voters approving Proposition 14. We are looking back at what we have done since we were created in 2004, and also looking forward to the future.Today we feature a blog written by two of our fabulous Discovery and Translation team Science Officers, Dr. Kent Fitzgerald and Dr. Ross Okamura.
Dr. Ross Okamura
If you believe that you can know a person by their deeds, the partnership opportunities offered by CIRM illustrate what we, as an agency, believe is the most effective way to deliver on our mission statement, accelerating regenerative medicine treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.
Dr. Kent Fitzgerald
In our past, we have offered awards covering basic biology projects which in turn provided the foundation to produce promising therapies to ease human suffering. But those are only the first steps in an elaborate process.
In order to bring these potential therapies to the clinic, selected drug candidates must next go through a set of activities designed to prepare them for review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For cell therapies, the first formal review is often the Pre- Investigational New Drug Application Consultation or pre-IND. This stage of drug development is commonly referred to as Translational, bridging the gap between our Discovery or early stage research and Clinical Trial programs.
One of our goals at CIRM is to prepare Translational projects we fund for that pre-IND meeting with the FDA, to help them gather data that support the hope this approach will be both safe and effective in patients. Holding this meeting with the FDA is the first step in the often lengthy process of conducting FDA regulated clinical trials and hopefully bringing an approved therapy to patients.
What type of work is required for a promising candidate to move from the Discovery stage into FDA regulated development? To address the needs of Translational science, CIRM offers the Translational Research Project funding opportunity. Activities that CIRM supports at the Translational stage include:
Process Development to allow manufacturing of the candidate therapy under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). This is to show that they can manufacture at a large enough scale to treat patients.
Assay development and qualification of measurements to determine whether the drug is being manufactured safely while retaining its curative properties.
Studies to determine the optimal dose and the best way to deliver that dose.
Pilot safety studies looking how the patient might respond after treatment with the drug.
The development of a clinical plan indicating under what rules and conditions the drug might be prescribed to a patient.
These, and other activities supported under our Translational funding program, all help to inform the FDA when they consider what pivotal studies they will require prior to approving an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, the next step in the regulatory approval process.
Since CIRM first offered programs specifically aimed at addressing the Translational stage of therapeutic candidates we have made 41 awards totaling approximately $150 million in funding. To date, 13 have successfully completed and achieved their program goals, while 19 others are still actively working towards meeting their objective. Additionally, three (treating Spina Bifida, Osteonecrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease) of the 13 programs have gone on to receive further CIRM support through our Clinical Stage programs.
During our time administering these awards, CIRM has actively partnered with our grantees to navigate what is required to bring a therapy from the bench to the bedside. CIRM operationalizes this by setting milestones that provide clear definitions of success, specific goals the researchers have to meet to advance the project and also by providing resources for a dedicated project manager to help ensure the project can keep the big picture in mind while executing on their scientific progress.
Throughout all this we partner with the researchers to support them in every possible way. For example, CIRM provides the project teams with Translational Advisory Panels (TAPs, modeled after the CIRM’s Clinical Advisory Panels) which bring in outside subject matter experts as well as patient advocates to help provide additional scientific, regulatory and clinical expertise to guide the development of the program at no additional cost to the grantees. One of the enduring benefits that we hope to provide to researchers and organizations is a practical mastery of translational drug development so that they may continue to advance new and exciting therapies to all patients.
Through CIRM’s strong and continued support of this difficult stage of development, CIRM has developed an internal practical expertise in advancing projects through Translation. We employ our experience to guide our awardees so they can avoid common pitfalls in the development of cell and gene therapies. The end goal is simple, helping to accelerate their path to the clinic and fulfilling the mission of CIRM that has been twice given to us by the voters of California, bringing treatments to patients suffering from unmet medical needs.
Wei Yao and Nancy Lane of UC Davis: Photo courtesy UC Davis
There are many challenges in taking even the most promising stem cell treatment and turning it into a commercial product approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). One of the biggest is expertise. The scientists who develop the therapy may be brilliant in the lab but have little experience or expertise in successfully getting their work through a clinical trial and ultimately to market.
That’s why a team at U.C. Davis has just signed a deal with a startup company to help them move a promising stem cell treatment for arthritis, osteoporosis and fractures out of the lab and into people.
They plan to test a hybrid molecule called RAB-001 which has shown promise in helping direct mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) – these are cells typically found in the bone marrow and fat tissue – to help stimulate bone growth and increase existing bone mass and strength. This can help heal people suffering from conditions like osteoporosis or hard to heal fractures. RAB-001 has also shown promise in reducing inflammation and so could prove helpful in treating people with inflammatory arthritis.
Overcoming problems
In a news article on the UC Davis website, Wei Yao, said RAB-001 seems to solve a problem that has long puzzled researchers:
“There are many stem cells, even in elderly people, but they do not readily migrate to bone. Finding a molecule that attaches to stem cells and guides them to the targets we need provides a real breakthrough.”
The UC Davis team already has approval to begin a Phase 1 clinical trial to test this approach on people with osteonecrosis, a disease caused by reduced blood flow to bones. CIRM is funding this work.
The RABOME team also hopes to test RAB-001 in clinical trials for healing broken bones, osteoporosis and inflammatory arthritis.
CIRM solution
To help other researchers overcome these same regulatory hurdles in developing stem cell therapies CIRM created the Stem Cell Center with QuintilesIMS, a leading integrated information and technology-enabled healthcare service provider that has deep experience and therapeutic expertise. The Stem Cell Center will help researchers overcome the challenges of manufacturing and testing treatments to meet FDA standards, and then running a clinical trial to test that therapy in people.
CIRM funds research trying to solve the Alzheimer’s puzzle
In science, there are a lot of terms that could easily mystify people without a research background; “translational” is not one of them. Translational research simply means to take findings from basic research and advance them into something that is ready to be tested in people in a clinical trial.
Yesterday our Governing Board approved $15 million in funding for four projects as part of our Translational Awards program, giving them the funding and support that we hope will ultimately result in them being tested in people.
Those projects use a variety of different approaches in tackling some very different diseases. For example, researchers at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco received $5.9 million to develop a new way to help the more than five million Americans battling Alzheimer’s disease. They want to generate brain cells to replace those damaged by Alzheimer’s, using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) – an adult cell that has been changed or reprogrammed so that it can then be changed into virtually any other cell in the body.
CIRM’s mission is to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs and Alzheimer’s – which has no cure and no effective long-term treatments – clearly represents an unmet medical need.
Another project approved by the Board is run by a team at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). They got almost $4.5 million for their research helping people with sickle cell anemia, an inherited blood disorder that causes intense pain, and can result in strokes and organ damage. Sickle cell affects around 100,000 people in the US, mostly African Americans.
The CHORI team wants to use a new gene-editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9 to develop a method of editing the defective gene that causes Sickle Cell, creating a healthy, sickle-free blood supply for patients.
Right now, the only effective long-term treatment for sickle cell disease is a bone marrow transplant, but that requires a patient to have a matched donor – something that is hard to find. Even with a perfect donor the procedure can be risky, carrying with it potentially life-threatening complications. Using the patient’s own blood stem cells to create a therapy would remove those complications and even make it possible to talk about curing the disease.
While damaged cartilage isn’t life-threatening it does have huge quality of life implications for millions of people. Untreated cartilage damage can, over time lead to the degeneration of the joint, arthritis and chronic pain. Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) were awarded $2.5 million to develop an off-the-shelf stem cell product that could be used to repair the damage.
The fourth and final award ($2.09 million) went to Ankasa Regenerative Therapeutics, which hopes to create a stem cell therapy for osteonecrosis. This is a painful, progressive disease caused by insufficient blood flow to the bones. Eventually the bones start to rot and die.
As Jonathan Thomas, Chair of the CIRM Board, said in a news release, we are hoping this is just the next step for these programs on their way to helping patients:
“These Translational Awards highlight our goal of creating a pipeline of projects, moving through different stages of research with an ultimate goal of a successful treatment. We are hopeful these projects will be able to use our newly created Stem Cell Center to speed up their progress and pave the way for approval by the FDA for a clinical trial in the next few years.”
The Stem Cellar 