Translating Center

Hitting our goals: Making good progress

/ Kevin McCormack / 4 Comments

Way, way back in 2015 – seems like a lifetime ago doesn’t it – the team at CIRM sat down and planned out our Big 6 goals for the next five years. The end result was a Strategic Plan that was bold, ambitious and set us on course to do great things or kill ourselves trying. Well, looking back we can take some pride in saying we did a really fine job, hitting almost every goal and exceeding them in some cases. So, as we plan our next five-year Strategic Plan we thought it worthwhile to look back at where we started and what we achieved. Goal #5 was Advance.

A dictionary definition of progression is “The act of moving forward or proceeding in a course.” That’s precisely what we set out to do when we set one of the goals in our 2015 Strategic Plan. We wanted to do all that we could to make sure the work we were funding could advance to the next stage. The goal we set was:

Advance: Increase projects advancing to the next stage of development by 50%.

The first question we faced was what did we mean by progression and how were we going to measure it? The answer basically boiled down to this: when a CIRM award completes one stage of research and gets CIRM funding to move on to the next stage or to develop a second generation of the same device or therapy.

In the pre-2016 days we’d had some success, on average getting around nine progression events every year. But if we were going to increase that by 50 percent we knew we had to step up our game and offer some incentives so that the team behind a successful project had a reason, other than just scientific curiosity, to try and move their research to the next level.

So, we created a series of linkages between the different stages of research, so the product of each successful investment was the prerequisite for the next stage of development for the research or technology.

We changed the way we funded projects, going from offering awards on an irregular basis to having them happen according to a pre-defined schedule with each program type offered multiple times a year. This meant potential applicants knew when the next opportunity to apply would come, enabling them to prepare and file at the time that was best for them and not just because we said so. We also timed these schedules so that programs could progress from one stage to the next without interruption.

But that’s not all. We recognized that some people may be great scientists at one level but didn’t have the experience or expertise to carry their project forward. So, we created both an Accelerating Center and Translating Center to help them do that. The Translating Center helped projects do the work necessary to get ready to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to start a clinical trial. The Accelerating Center helped the team prepare that application for the trial and then plan how that trial would be carried out.

Creating these two centers had an additional benefit; it meant the work that did progress did so faster and was of a higher quality than it might otherwise have been.

Putting all those new building blocks in place meant a lot of work for the CIRM team, on top of their normal duties. But, as always, the team rose to the challenge. By the end of December 2020, a total of 74 projects had advanced or progressed to the next level, an increase of 100 percent on our pre-2016 days.

When we were laying out the goals we said that “The full implementation of these programs will create the chassis of a machine that provides a continuous, predictable, and timely pathway for the discovery and development of promising stem cell treatments.” Thanks to the voter approved Proposition 14 we now have the fund to help those treatments realize that promise.

With an eye toward 2020, CIRM looks at clinical milestones achieved in 2016

/ Karen Ring / 5 Comments

strategy-wideOne year ago, CIRM announced its strategic plan for the next five years. It’s a bold vision to maximize our impact in stem cell research by accelerating stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.

Our strategic plan, which can be found on our website, details how CIRM will invest in five main program areas including infrastructure, education, discovery, translation and clinical research. While CIRM has invested in these areas in the past, we are doing so now with a renewed focus to make sure our efforts have a lasting impact in California and more importantly for patients.

Now that a year has passed, it’s time to review our progress and look ahead to the next four years.

Our Progress

2016 was a very productive year. On the infrastructure side, CIRM successfully launched the Translating and Accelerating Centers, awarding both grants to QuintilesIMS. The Translating Center supports preclinical research that’s ready to advance to clinical trials but still needs approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Accelerating Center picks up where the Translating Center leaves off and offers support and management services for clinical trial projects to ensure that they succeed. Collectively called The Stem Cell Center, the goal of this new infrastructure is to increase efficiency and shorten the time it takes to get human stem cell trials up and running.

On the research side in 2016, CIRM funded over 70 promising stem cell projects ranging from education to discovery, translational and clinical projects. While of these areas are important to invest in, CIRM has shifted its focus to funding clinical trials in hopes that one or more of these trials will develop into an approved therapy for patients. So far, we’ve funded 25 trials, 22 of which are currently active since CIRM was established.

In our strategic plan, we gave ourselves the aggressive goal of funding 50 new clinical trials by 2020, which equates to 10 new trials per year. So far in 2016, we’ve funded eight clinical trials and tomorrow at our December ICOC meeting, our Governing Board will determine whether we meet our yearly clinical milestone of 10 trials by considering two more for funding.

The first trial is testing a stem cell treatment that could improve the outcome of kidney transplants. For normal kidney transplants, the recipient is required to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their body from rejecting the donated organ. This clinical trial aims to bypass the need for these drugs, which carry an increased risk of cancer, infection and heart disease, by injecting blood stem cells and other immune cells from the kidney donor into the patient receiving the kidney. You can read more about this proposed trial here.

The second clinical trial is a stem cell derived therapy to improve vision in patients with a degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa. This disease destroys the light sensing cells at the back of the eye and has no cure. The trial hopes that by transplanting stem cell derived retinal progenitor cells into the back of the eye, these injected cells will secrete factors that will keep the cells in the eye healthy and possibly improve a patient’s vision. You can read more about this proposed trial here.

Our Future

No matter the outcome at tomorrow’s Board meeting, I think our agency should be proud of its accomplishments since launching our strategic plan. The eight clinical trials we’ve funded this year are testing stem cell therapies for diseases including muscular dystrophy, kidney disease, primary immune diseases, and multiple types of cancer and blood disorders.

At this pace, it seems likely that we will achieve many of the goals in our strategic plan including our big goal of 50 new clinical trials. But pride and a sense of accomplishment are not what CIRM is ultimately striving for. Our mission and the reason why we exist are to help people and improve their lives. I’ll leave you with a quote from our President and CEO Randy Mills:

CIRM CEO and President, Randy Mills.

Randy Mills

“In everything we do there is a real sense of urgency, because lives are at stake. Our Board’s support for these programs highlights how every member of the CIRM team shares that commitment to moving the most promising research out of the lab and into patients as quickly as we can.”

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Creating a “Pitching Machine” to speed up our delivery of stem cell treatments to patients

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

hitting-machine

When baseball players are trying to improve their hitting they’ll use a pitching machine to help them fine tune their stroke. Having a device that delivers a ball at a consistent speed can help a batter be more consistent and effective in their swing, and hopefully get more hits.

That’s what we are hoping our new Translating and Accelerating Centers will do. We call these our “Pitching Machine”, because we hope they’ll help researchers be better prepared when they apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval to start a clinical trial, and be more efficient and effective in the way they set up and run that clinical trial once they get approval.

The CIRM Board approved the Accelerating Center earlier this summer. The $15 million award went to QuintilesIMS, a leading integrated information and technology-enabled healthcare service provider.

The Accelerating Center will provide key core services for researchers who have been given approval to run a clinical trial, including:

  • Regulatory support and management services
  • Clinical trial operations and management services
  • Data management, biostatistical and analytical services

The reason why these kinds of service are needed is simple, as Randy Mills, our President and CEO explained at the time:

“Many scientists are brilliant researchers but have little experience or expertise in navigating the regulatory process; this Accelerating Center means they don’t have to develop those skills; we provide them for them.”

The Translating Center is the second part of the “Pitching Machine”. That is due to go to our Board for a vote tomorrow. This is an innovative new center that will support the stem cell research, manufacturing, preclinical safety testing, and other activities needed to successfully apply to the FDA for approval to start a clinical trial.

The Translating Center will:

  • Provide consultation and guidance to researchers about the translational process for their stem cell product.
  • Initiate, plan, track, and coordinate activities necessary for preclinical Investigational New Drug (IND)-enabling development projects.
  • Conduct preclinical research activities, including pivotal pharmacology and toxicology studies.
  • Manufacture stem cell and gene modified stem cell products under the highest quality standards for use in preclinical and clinical studies.

The two centers will work together, helping researchers create a comprehensive development plan for every aspect of their project.

For the researchers this is important in giving them the support they need. For the FDA it could also be useful in ensuring that the applications they get from CIRM-funded projects are consistent, high quality and meet all their requirements.

We want to do everything we can to ensure that when a CIRM-funded therapy is ready to start a clinical trial that its application is more likely to be a hit with the FDA, and not to strike out.

Just as batting practice is crucial to improving performance in baseball, we are hoping our “Pitching Machine” will raise our game to the next level, and enable us to deliver some game-changing treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.

 

If you want to accelerate stem cell therapies then create an Accelerating Center

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

Buckle up

Buckle up, we’re about to Accelerate

“You can’t teach fish to fly,” is one of the phrases that our CIRM President & CEO, Randy Mills, likes to throw out when asked why we needed to create new centers to help researchers move their most promising therapies out of the lab and into clinical trials.

His point is that many researchers are terrific at research but not so great at the form filling and other process-oriented skills needed to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a clinical trial.

So instead of asking them to learn how to do all those things, why don’t we, CIRM, create a system that will do it for them? And that’s where we came up with the idea for the Accelerating Center (we’re also creating a Translating Center – that’s a topic for a future blog but if you can’t wait to find out the juicy details you can find them here.)

The Accelerating Center will be a clinical research organization that provides regulatory, operational and other support services to researchers and companies hoping to get their stem cell therapies into a clinical trial. The goal is to match the scientific skills of researchers with the regulatory and procedural skills of the Accelerating Center to move these projects through the review process as quickly as possible.

But it doesn’t end there. Once a project has been given the green light by the FDA, the Accelerating Center will help with actually setting up and running their clinical trial, and helping them with data management to ensure they get high quality data from the trial. Again these skills are essential to run a good clinical trial but things researchers may not have learned about when getting a PhD.

We just issued what we call an RFA (Request for Applications)  for people interested in partnering with us to help create the Accelerating Center. To kick-start the process we are awarding up to $15 million for five years to create the Center, which will be based in California.

To begin with, the Accelerating Center will focus on supporting CIRM-funded stem cell projects. But the goal is to eventually extend that support to other stem cell programs.

Now, to be honest, there’s an element of self-interest in all this. We have a goal under our new Strategic Plan of funding 50 new clinical trials over the next five years. Right now, getting a stem cell-related project approved is a slow and challenging process. We think the Accelerating Center is one tool to help us change that and give the most promising projects the support they need to get out of the lab and into people.

There’s a lot more we want to do to help speed up the approval process as well, including working with the FDA to create a new, streamlined regulatory process, one that is faster and easier to navigate. But that may take some time. So in the meantime, the Accelerating Center will help “fish” to do what they do best, swim, and we’ll take care of the flying for them.