By Robin Shepherd
Imagine a one-time cancer drug therapy smart enough to kill a tumor’s stem cells so the tumor could no longer generate new cells. Or a treatment for Parkinson’s that would introduce neural stem cells into the brain to continually replace vital cells destroyed by the disease.
Stem cells hold the key to regenerative medicine because of their unique properties. They can divide and renew themselves for long periods. While stem cells are unspecialized, they can give rise to specialized cell types. A single stem cell can both self-renew and produce all the functional specialized cells of the organ from which it was derived.
Only human embryonic stem cells are pluri-potent: They can develop and differentiate into all
the cells and tissues in the human body. They are the best potential source for the manufacture of replacement cells and tissues for organ-repair applications in chronic diseases. Medical experts and research scientists long frustrated by the expense, side effects and inefficacy of many disease therapies see the potential of stem-cell-based therapeutics to revolutionize treatment of chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, leukemia, arthritis, diabetes and Parkinson’s that debilitate or kill millions of people every year. They see stem-cell research as a key to the future success of regenerative medicine.
At a July 13 meeting co-hosted by the Churchill Club and the Commonwealth Club, stem cell research and regenerative medicine went under the microscope.
“Regenerative medicine is the next wave,” said Brook Byers, a biotech venture capitalist and board member of the UCSF Medical Foundation and Stanford’s Bio-X-BioEngineering Advisory Council. “We are looking at what needs to be done and talking to doctors at length every year, asking them: ‘What do you need? And what’s not working?’”
Byers helped land the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco. Established this year with the passage of Proposition 71, the institute was provided $3 billion to fund stem cell research. Its 29-member governing board has already adopted research guidelines, secured facilities and begun allocating research fellowships.
“It’s an amazing bipartisan effort to fill the void left by the federal government to fund stem cell research,” said Michael Goldberg, an institute board member and general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park.
“Human embryonic stem cells are nature’s way of achieving tissue renewal and repair,” said Dr. Thomas Okarma, CEO of Geron Corp. Okarma has frequently presented testimony on Capitol Hill to support stem cell research. Geron is a Menlo Park-based biopharmaceutical company creating cell-based therapies from its human embryonic stem-cell platform for treating spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, diabetes and other diseases.
“In cases of auto-immune diseases … we want the ability to transplant blood-forming stem cells from a healthy person to cure the patient. These are one-time therapies based on self-renewal. The stem cells then become regulated by the body,” said Dr. Irving L. Weissman, a director of three stem-cell research groups at Stanford University School of Medicine. Weissman was first to isolate an adult stem cell in 1969, using a blood-forming stem cell in mice. He went on to isolate the human neuronal stem cell and the
leukemia stem cell for myeloid leukemia.
In the eyes of Dr. Weissman, with continued progress of stem-cell research and regenerative medicine, “In 10 years, we’ll all practice medicine this way.”
