progenitor cells

Reversing hearing loss through regenerative medicine

/ Esteban Cortez / Leave a comment
These images show cellular regeneration, in pink, in a preclinical model of sensorineural hearing loss. The control is on the left and the right has been treated. Image: Hinton AS, Yang-Hood A, Schrader AD, Loose C, Ohlemiller KK, McLean WJ.

Most of us know someone affected by hearing loss, but we may not fully realize the hardships that lack of hearing can bring. Hearing loss can lead to isolation, frustration, and a debilitating ringing in the ears known as tinnitus. It is also closely correlated with dementia. 

The biotechnology company Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to reverse hearing loss — not with hearing aids or implants, but with a new kind of regenerative therapy. The company uses small molecules to program progenitor cells, a descendant of stem cells in the inner ear, to create the tiny hair cells that allow us to hear. 

Progenitor cells generate hair cells when humans are in utero, but they become dormant before birth and never again turn into more specialized cells such as the hair cells of the cochlea. Humans are born with about 15,000 hair cells in each cochlea. Such cells die over time and never regenerate. 

These two images show that one of Frequency’s lead compounds, FREQ-162, drives progenitor cells to turn into oligodendrocytes. The control is on the left and the right has been treated. Image: Frequency Therapeutics

“Tissues throughout your body contain progenitor cells, so we see a huge range of applications,” says Frequency co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Chris Loose Ph.D. “We believe this is the future of regenerative medicine.” 

In 2012, the research team was able to use small molecules to turn progenitor cells into thousands of hair cells in the lab. Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology affiliate faculty member Jeff Karp says no one had ever produced such a large number of hair cells before. He still remembers looking at the results while visiting his family, including his father, who wears a hearing aid. 

“I looked at them and said, ‘I think we have a breakthrough,’” Karp says. “That’s the first and only time I’ve used that phrase.” 

About the Clinical Trial 

Hair cells die off when exposed to loud noises or drugs including certain chemotherapies and antibiotics. Frequency’s drug candidate is designed to be injected into the ear to regenerate these cells within the cochlea. In clinical trials, the company has already improved people’s hearing as measured by tests of speech perception — the ability to understand speech and recognize words. 

In Frequency’s first clinical study, the company saw statistically significant improvements in speech perception in some participants after a single injection, with some responses lasting nearly two years. 

The company has dosed more than 200 patients to date and has seen clinically meaningful improvements in speech perception in three separate clinical studies. Another study failed to show improvements in hearing compared to the placebo group, but the company attributes that result to flaws in the design of the trial. 

Now Frequency is recruiting for a 124-person trial from which preliminary results should be available early next year. 

The company’s founders hope to solve a problem that impacts more than 40 million people in the U.S. and hundreds of millions more around the world. 

“Hearing is such an important sense; it connects people to their community and cultivates a sense of identity,” says Karp. “I think the potential to restore hearing will have enormous impact on society.” 

The founders believe their approach — injecting small molecules into the inner ear to turn progenitor cells into more specialized cells — offers advantages over gene therapies, which may rely on extracting a patient’s cells, programming them in a lab, and then delivering them to the right area. 

“Tissues throughout your body contain progenitor cells, so we see a huge range of applications,” Loose says. “We believe this is the future of regenerative medicine.” 

Read the source article here. 

3D brain model shows potential for treatment of hypoxic brain injuries in infants

/ Yimy Villa / Leave a comment
Image of 3D brain cultures in the Sergiu Pasca lab.
Photo courtesy of Timothy Archibald.

A baby’s time in the womb is one of the most crucial periods in terms of its development. The average length of gestation, which is defined as the amount of time in the womb from conception to birth, is approximately 40 weeks. Unfortunately, for reasons not yet fully understood, there are times that babies are born prematurely, which can lead to problems.

These infants can have underdeveloped portions of the brain, such as the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for advanced brain functions, including cognition, speech, and the processing of sensory and motor information. The brains of premature infants can be so underdeveloped that they are unable to control breathing. This, in combination with underdeveloped lungs, can lower oxygen levels in the blood, which can lead to hypoxic, or low oxygen related, brain injuries.

In a previous study, doctors Anca and Sergiu Pasca and their colleagues at Stanford developed a technique to create a 3D brain that mimics structural and functional aspects of the developing human brain.

Using this same technique, in a new study with the aid of CIRM funding, the team grew a 3D brain that contained cells and genes similar to the human brain midway through the gestational period. They then exposed this 3D brain to low oxygen levels for 48 hours, restored the oxygen level after this time period, and observed any changes.

It was found that progenitor cells in a region known as the subventricular zone, a region that is critical in the growth of the human cortex, are affected. Progenitor cells are “stem cell like” cells that give rise to mature brain cells such as neurons. They also found that the progenitor cells transitioned from “growth” mode to “survival” mode, causing them to turn into neurons sooner than normal, which leads to fewer neurons in the brain and underdevelopment.

In a press release, Dr. Anca Pasca is quoted as saying,

“In the past 20 years, we’ve made a lot of progress in keeping extremely premature babies alive, but 70% to 80% of them have poor neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

The team then tested a small molecule to see if it could potentially reverse this response to low oxygen levels by keeping the progenitor cells in “growth” mode. The results of this are promising and Dr. Sergiu Pasca is quoted as saying,

“It’s exciting because our findings tell us that pharmacologically manipulating this pathway could interfere with hypoxic injury to the brain, and potentially help with preventing damage.”

The complete findings of this study were published in Nature.

The best scientists always want to know more

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment

Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton

Some years ago I was in the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge in England when I noticed a display case with a cloth over it. Being a naturally curious person, downright nosy in fact, I lifted the cloth. In the display case was a first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica and in the margins were notes, corrections put there by Newton for the second edition.

It highlighted for me how the best scientists never stop working, never stop learning, never stop trying to improve what they do.

That came back to me when I saw a news release from ViaCyte, a company we are funding in a Phase 1 clinical trial to treat type 1 diabetes.  The news release announced results of a study showing that insulin-producing cells, created in the lab from embryonic stem cells, can not only mature but also function properly after being implanted in a capsule-like device and placed under the skin of an animal model.

VC-01-cross-section-5

Now the clinical trial we are funding with ViaCyte uses a similar, but slightly different set of cells in people. The device in the trial contains what ViaCyte calls PEC-01™ pancreatic progenitor cells. These are essentially an earlier stage of the mature pancreatic cells that our body uses to produce insulin. The hope is that when implanted in the body, the cells will mature and then behave like adult pancreatic cells, secreting insulin and other hormones to keep blood glucose levels stable and healthy.

Those cells and that device are being tested in people with type 1 diabetes right now.

Learning more

But in this study ViaCyte wanted to know if beta cells, a more mature version of the cells they are using in our trial, would also work or have any advantages over their current approach.

The good news, published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine,  is that these cells did work. As they say in their news release:

“The animal study also demonstrated for the first time that when encapsulated in a device and implanted into mice, these more mature cells are capable of producing functional pancreatic beta cells. ViaCyte is also the first to show that these further differentiated cells can function in vivo following cryopreservation, a valuable process step when contemplating clinical and commercial application.”

This does not mean ViaCyte wants to change the cells it uses in the clinical trial. As President and CEO Paul Laikind, PhD, makes clear:

“For a number of reasons we believe that the pancreatic progenitor cells that are the active component of the VC‐01 product candidate are better suited for cell replacement therapy. However, the current work has expanded our fundamental knowledge of beta cell maturation and could lead to further advances for the field.”

And that’s what I mean about the best scientists are the ones who keeping searching, keeping looking for answers. It may not help them today, but who knows how important that work will prove in the future.