Dr. Jill Helms, and associate! Photo courtesy Stanford University
Jill Helms is not your average Stanford University faculty member. Yes, she is a professor in the Department of Surgery. Yes, she has published lots of scientific studies. Yes, she is a stem cell scientist (funded by CIRM). And yes, she is playing a leading role in Ankasa Regenerative Therapeutics, a company focused on tissue repair and regeneration. But she is so much more than all that.
She is a brilliant public speaker, a fashionista, and has ridden her horse to work (well, Stanford is referred to as The Farm, so why not!) and she lives on a farm of her own called “Follow Your Bliss.” The name comes from philosopher Joseph Campbell who wrote, “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of path that has been there all the while, waiting for you. And the life you ought to be living is the one you are living.”
Dr. Helms says that pretty much sums up her life. She says she feels enormously blessed.
Well, we felt enormously blessed when she agreed to sit down with us and chat about her work, her life and her love of fashion for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine podcast, Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation.
Normally if you meet someone who has a mini-fridge filled with brains, your first thought is to call the police. But when that someone is Dr. Alysson Muotri, a professor at U.C. San Diego, your second thought is “do tell me more.”
Alysson is a researcher who is fascinated by the human brain. He is working on many levels to try and unlock its secrets and give us a deeper understanding of how our brains evolved and how they work.
One of the main focuses of his work is autism (he has a son on the autism spectrum) and he has found a way to see what is happening inside the cells affected by autism—work that is already leading to the possibility of new treatments.
As for those mini-brains in his lab? Those are brain organoids, clumps of neurons and other cells that resemble—on a rudimentary level—our brains. They are ideal tools for seeing how our brains are organized, how the different cells signal and interact with each other. He’s already sent some of these brain organoids into space.
Brain in space
Alysson talks about all of this, plus how our brains compare to those of Neanderthals, on the latest episode of our podcast, Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation.
Dr. Nicole Koutsodendris, photo courtesy Gladstone Institutes
In the world of scientific research, the people doing clinical trials tend to suck up all the oxygen in the room. They’re the stars, the ones who are bringing potential therapies to patients. However, there’s another group of researchers who toil away in the background, but who are equally deserving of praise and gratitude.
Dr. Lana Zholudeva, photo courtesy Gladstone Institutes
These are the scientists who do basic or discovery-level research. This is where all great therapies start. This is where a researcher gets an idea and tests it to see if it holds promise. A good idea and a scientist who asks a simple question, “I wonder if…..”
Dr. Yadong Huang, Photo courtesy Gladstone Institutes
In our latest “Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation” podcast we talk to three researchers who are asking those questions and getting some truly encouraging answers. They are scientists at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco: one seasoned scientist and two young post-docs trying to make a name for themselves. And they might just have discovered a therapy that could help people battling Alzheimer’s disease.
Taking even the most promising therapy and moving it out of the lab and into people is an incredibly complex process and usually requires a great team. Now, two great teams have paired up to do just that with a therapy for type 1 diabetes (T1D). ViaCyte and CRISPR Therapeutics have put their heads together and developed an approach that has just been given clearance by Health Canada to start a clinical trial.
Regular readers of this blog know that CIRM has been a big supporter of ViaCyte for many years, investing more than $72 million in nine different awards. They have developed an implantable device containing embryonic stem cells that develop into pancreatic progenitor cells, which are precursors to the islet cells destroyed by T1D. The hope is that when this device is transplanted under a patient’s skin, the progenitor cells will develop into mature insulin-secreting cells that can properly regulate the glucose levels in a patient’s blood.
One of the challenges in earlier testing was developing a cell-based therapy that could evade the immune system, so that people didn’t need to have their immune system suppressed to prevent it attacking and destroying the cells. This particular implantable version sprang out of an early stage award we made to ViaCyte (DISC2-10591). ViaCyte and CRISPR Therapeutics helped with the design of the therapeutic called VCTX210.
In a news release, Michael Yang, the President and CEO of ViaCyte, said getting approval for the trial was a major milestone: “Being first into the clinic with a gene-edited, immune-evasive cell therapy to treat patients with type 1 diabetes is breaking new ground as it sets a path to potentially broadening the treatable population by eliminating the need for immunosuppression with implanted cell therapies. This approach builds on previous accomplishments by both companies and represents a major step forward for the field as we strive to provide a functional cure for this devastating disease.”
The clinical trial, which will be carried out in Canada, is to test the safety of the therapy, whether it creates any kind of reaction after being implanted in the body, and how well it does in evading the patient’s immune system. In October our podcast – Talking ‘Bout (re)Generation – highlighted work in T1D and included an interview with Dr. Manasi Jaiman, ViaCyte’s Vice President for Clinical Development. Here’s an excerpt from that podcast.
Dr. Manasi Jaimin, ViaCyte VP Clinical development
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the 2020 election became one of the most contentious in living history it suddenly made trying to get a proposition on the ballot in California a lot harder. That meant the fate of Proposition 14, a ballot initiative refunding CIRM, California’s Stem Cell Agency, was in doubt. And if the agency went down, then a vital source of future funding for scientific research that could change and even save lives would also disappear.
It was a pretty nerve-racking time for all of us involved. We waited day after day after day after day before the election was finally called. Happily, it was in our favor. But only just!
In this podcast we talk to two of the key figures in this saga. Melissa King and Maria Bonneville. Melissa was part of the team that helped secure the votes needed to pass Proposition 14, and Maria helped keep CIRM on track to cope with whatever the outcome of the election was.
Adrienne Shapiro and Marissa Cors are a remarkable pair by any definition. The mother and daughter duo share a common bond, and a common goal. And they are determined not to let anyone stop them achieving that goal.
Marissa was born with sickle cell disease (SCD) a life-threatening genetic condition where normally round, smooth red blood cells are instead shaped like sickles. These sickle cells are brittle and can clog up veins and arteries, blocking blood flow, damaging organs, and increasing the risk of strokes. It’s a condition that affects approximately 100,000 Americans, most of them Black.
Adrienne became a patient advocate, founding Axis Advocacy, after watching Marissa get poor treatment in hospital Emergency Rooms. Marissa often talks about the way she is treated like a drug-seeker simply because she knows what medications she needs to help control excruciating pain on her Sickle Cell Experience Live events on Facebook.
Now the two are determined to ensure that no one else has to endure that kind of treatment. They are both fierce patient advocates, vocal both online and in public. And we recently got a chance to sit down with them for our podcast, Talking ‘Bout (re) Generation. These ladies don’t pull any punches.
Anyone who knows anything about CIRM knows about Bob Klein. He’s the main author and driving force behind both Proposition 71 and Proposition 14, the voter-approved ballot initiatives that first created and then refunded CIRM. It’s safe to say that without Bob there’d be no CIRM.
Recently we had the great good fortune to sit down with Bob to chat about the challenges of getting a proposition on the ballot in a time of pandemic and electoral pandemonium, what he thinks CIRM’s biggest achievements are (so far) and what his future plans are.
At first glance Lauren Miller Rogen and Dr. David Higgins seem an unlikely pair. She’s an actor, writer, director and has worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. He has a doctorate in molecular biology and genetics and has worked at some of the most well-known companies in biotech. But together they make a great team.
Lauren and David are both on the CIRM Board. She’s a patient advocate for Alzheimer’s and the driving force (with her husband Seth) of HFC (Hilarity for Charity), which has raised millions of dollars to help families battling the disease and to educate young people about the condition. It’s also made a lot of people laugh along the way. David is a patient advocate for Parkinson’s and has been instrumental is creating support groups that help patients and families cope with the disease.
It seems like everyone, including my dog Freddie, has a podcast these days. So now we do too.
According to the Podcasthosting.org website there are some two million podcasts in the world. Make that two million and one. That’s because CIRM is launching its own podcast and doing it with one of the biggest names in biotech.
Our podcast is called – with a nod to The Who – “Talking ’bout (Re)Generation” and the first episode features our President & CEO Dr. Maria Millan interviewing Dr. Derrick Rossi, the co-founder of Moderna. Moderna, as I am sure you know, is the maker of one of the most effective vaccines against COVID.
In the interview Dr. Rossi talks about his early days as a postdoc at Stanford – supported by CIRM – and the career arc that led him to help create the company behind the vaccine, and what his plans are for the future. It’s a fun, chatty, lively interview; one you can listen to in the car, at home or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
We want the podcast to be fun for your ear holes and interesting and engaging for your brain. We’re going to be talking to scientists and researchers, doctors and nurses, patients and patient advocates and anyone else we think has something worth listening to.
We have other episodes planned and will share those with you in the near future. In the meantime, if you have any ideas or individuals you think would make a good subject for a podcast let us know, we are always happy to hear from you.
In 2005, the New Oxford American Dictionary named “podcast” its word of the year. At the time a podcast was something many had heard of but not that many actually tuned in to. My how times have changed. Now there are some two million podcasts to chose from, at least according to the New York Times, and who am I to question them.
Yesterday, in the same New York Times, TV writer Margaret Lyons, wrote about how the pandemic helped turn her from TV to podcasts: “Much in the way I grew to prefer an old-fashioned phone call to a video chat, podcasts, not television, became my go-to medium in quarantine. With their shorter lead times and intimate production values, they felt more immediate and more relevant than ever before.”
I mention this because an old colleague of ours at CIRM, Neil Littman, has just launched his own podcast and the first guest on it was Jonathan Thomas, Chair of the CIRM Board. Their conversation ranged from CIRM’s past to the future of the regenerative field as a whole, with a few interesting diversions along the way. It’s fun listening. And as Margaret Lyons said it might be more immediate and more relevant than ever before.
The Stem Cellar 