Category Archives: Stem Cells

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If you want to serve on the Institute of Medicine panel examining the $3 billion California stem cell agency, you have a chance during the next few weeks.

The panel has lost a member because of a conflict of interest and is now engaged in the process of replacing him. The IOM will consider both expressions of interest and suggestions for candidates. Currently, the panel has no member from California, which leaves it minus an important perspective.

Christine Stencel, senior media relations officer for the IOM, told the California Stem Cell Report that the IOM expects to fill vacancy by its meeting Jan. 24 in California.

David Scadden of Harvard resigned from the IOM/CIRM panel earlier this month because of his ties to Fate Therapeutics of San Diego, which lists him as a scientific founder.

Persons interested in serving or nominating candidates can email Adrienne Stith at Astith@nas.edu.

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The end of the year is a traditional time for the media to come up with lists of both the dubious and meritorious events and personages of the year. This year's nominations from a California stem cell researcher include Geron, Roman Reed and the new chairman of the California stem cell agency.

Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell scientist at UC Davis and one of the few stem cell scientists who blogs regularly, today revealed his awards for 2011. They ranged from the political cartoon of the year to the stem cell scientific issue of the year.

Geron was named in the "misstep of the year." Knoepfler wrote,

"You guys really screwed up by dropping your stem cell program in this manner. I believe this bordered on the unethical. I commend the actual stem cell scientists at Geron, but the person(s) who as leaders pulled the trigger on killing the stem cell program did wrong."

Roman Reed was named "stem cell activist of the year." Reed is the man who came up with the CIRM motto several years ago, "Turning stem cells into cures." He has long been active on stem cell issues, along with his equally hard-working father, Don Reed.

Jonathan Thomas, the relatively new chairman of the stem cell agency, was named "stem cell leader of the year." Thomas was elected chairman of the agency in June, replacing Bob Klein, who stepped down. Knoepfler wrote that Thomas "has impressed the stem cell community and made some very positive changes at CIRM to make an awesome organization even better."

Knoepfler has much more,  including the stem cell biotech of the year –
Advanced Cell Technology of Santa Monica, Ca. – which Knoepfler said has two hESC trials on track and an "impressive scientific leadership." Not to be overlooked is the stem cell scientific issue of the year – "warts" or genetic changes -- at least possible ones involving iPS cells. Knoepfler points out that the subject has drawn a vast number of citations in journal articles.

We should not forget the stem cell blog of the year, which came in as a tie between Stem Cell Network of Canada and Stem Cell Assays by William Gunn of San Diego and Alexey Berseney of Philadelphia. Knoepfler also mentioned the CIRM Research Blog, overseen by Amy Adams, and the California Stem Cell Report. Knoepfler said the California Stem Cell Report "is read by a who’s who of the stem cell world, and is a source of important information about CIRM," although Knoepfler said he wished the blog was more balanced "in terms of positive and critical stories." However, Knoepfler did note that several more positive items have appeared recently, but this analyst warns of the perils of excessive exuberance.

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A blogger on the web site of Los Angeles television station KNBC today supported a new multibillion bond measure for the California stem cell agency but with an interesting qualification.

Joe Mathews, author and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, said the new bonds should be backed by a tax on the people and companies involved in the business of health care. He wrote,

"New stem cell moneys can't come out of funds that would otherwise go to other programs."

Mathews said voters "probably" shouldn't approve another multibillion dollar bond measure for CIRM that is paid back through the state's general fund. He wrote, however,

"(T)hat doesn't necessarily mean there shouldn't be another stem cell bond. California's major universities have invested in stem cell research, with help from the agency.

"Major researchers have relocated to the state. And the unknown nature of stem cell research's promise, while frustrating efforts to justify the research dollar for dollar, argues for doing more to learn more.

"What the state budget picture does require is that any stem cell bond should have a clear funding mechanism -- a specific tax or new revenue source (some sort of levy on companies and people involved in the business of health care) -- that would be more than enough to pay back any bond."

Mathews is co-author of "California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It," which declares that the initiative process is one of major fault points in California government. The initiative was used to create the $3 billion stem cell agency in 2004, making it immune from normal state government accountability and locking in funding that cannot be touched by the legislature or government despite any other financial needs of the state.

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The chairman of the $3 billion California stem cell agency has made his second entry into the blogosphere, this time adding a bit more on Geron's abandonment of what would have been its historic hESC clinical trial.

Jonathan Thomas, a Los Angeles bond financier, wrote yesterday on the CIRM research blog, which has recently been the site of more spritely and relevant items.

Geron's action has particular relevance for CIRM, which awarded the company a $25 million loan last May to help with the clinical trial.

Thomas said CIRM's "immediate concern" when officials heard the surprise news was for the patients and the families involved in the trials. Thomas continued,

"However, Geron is a business. The company decided that their cancer therapies were farther along than the stem cell trial and when they held the stem cell program against the prism of economic reality they made a business decision to end the trial."

Thomas also minimized the importance of Geron to CIRM. He said,

"CIRM’s award to Geron was just one of the 44 projects in 26 disease areas that are in various stages of working toward clinical trials."

It was a somewhat different story last May when former stem cell agency chairman Robert Klein said in a widely distributed CIRM news release,

"Supporting the Geron trial is a landmark step for CIRM."

Regardless of the spin on Geron from either CIRM or others who are more skeptical, Thomas' entry into the world of electronic media is to be applauded as is what appears to be a new direction in the research blog.

The CIRM blog is now newsier, more lively with more variety and more voices. All of which should redound, albeit modestly, to CIRM efforts to improve its communications with the public and opinion makers. The difficult thing about blogs, however, is the time and effort required to sustain them, and the task could be something of a communications test for CIRM. Blogs constantly need to be fed. Indeed, blogs are voracious, sort of like the carnivorous plant called Seymour in "The Little Shop of Horrors." As many of you may recall, Seymour had a simple but insistent refrain, "Feed me, feed me, feed me."

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Just a few days ago, the California Stem Cell Report carried an item about the state's stem cell agency and its supporters' mantra that the agency has a mandate from voters albeit one that is seven years old.

We mentioned that Robert Klein, the former chairman of the agency and head of the 2004 ballot campaign that launched CIRM, is one of those fond of citing voter mandates with great regularity.

Indeed, Klein found shelter again this week under a voter mandate, but this time it was a moral one.

Klein popped up in a San Jose Mercury story about the status of the stem cell agency. Writer Steve Johnson said that Klein declared that he quit as chairman last June in part because he wants to raise money for a campaign for another multibillion bond measure for CIRM. Johnson quoted Klein as saying,

"It would be a huge failing in meeting our moral mandate" to let CIRM die. "We can't afford to break the momentum."

As we noted on Dec. 6, mandates come and go, as another multibillion California bond program, high speed rail, has discovered.

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In an overview of the $3 billion California stem cell agency, the San Jose Mercury News says that CIRM "still has no treatments on the market and is at a critical juncture that could determine how much longer it stays in operation. "

The story is the second significant piece about CIRM this week in a major California newspaper, which has not received much coverage in the mainstream media in the state in the last year or so. The Los Angeles Times earlier this week carried a column that raised questions about the "Geron fiasco" involving CIRM and the conduct of the agency's business.

The San Jose article yesterday by Steve Johnson said that voters "may not be as enthusiastic" about providing several billion dollars more to finance the agency as they were when they created it seven years ago.

The newspaper, located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, quoted John Simpson, stem cell project director of Consumer Watchdog of Santa Monica, Ca., as saying,

"I think it's crazy. The state's economy is in a far different position now. We're not even able to provide adequate funding for education."

Johnson also reported that former CIRM Chairman Robert Klein, who led the 2004 Prop. 71 campaign, is raising or intends to raise funds for another bond issue, perhaps in 2014. The agency will run out of cash in about 2017, according to its projections.

The article noted that CIRM has awarded only $83.4 million to 15 businesses, which are the key to pushing research into the clinic,  out of the $1.3 billion it has handed out. Johnson wrote,

"Many businesses have been deterred from even trying to make stem-cell treatments because of how long it might take.

"'It's a challenge,' said Rodney Young, chief financial officer at Newark-based StemCells, which hopes early next year to obtain a $20 million institute grant to determine if a type of adult stem cell can slow the loss of cognitive function in Alzheimer's patients. 'It's an expensive, uncertain and long process.'"

Johnson additionally noted that CIRM has received criticism for the high salaries it pays its top executives and for conflicts of interests.

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Directors of the California stem cell agency today approved a $30 million program that could generate "disease-in-a-dish models" that "have the potential to make drug discovery faster, more efficient and more personalized to individual patients."

The "human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) initiative" is aimed at generating high quality stem cell-based tools for use by the researchers and drug developers.

The proposal includes four elements, one of which is a $300,000 collaboration with the NIH to develop cell lines from patients with Huntington’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. The plan includes a $4 million disease line award round, a $16 million core hiPSC derivation round and a $10 million stem cell bank round. The RFAs would go out in May of next year with funding expected early in 2013.

The initial staff memo on the initiative did not mention human embryonic stem cells, but a spokeswoman for the agency said they were not excluded from the effort.

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