Weekly reads: Gattaca stack, animal sacks, custom iPS cells, ImmunityBio FDA warning, mouse cloning limit

You’ve probably heard of the film Gattaca, but what is a Gattaca stack? The first thing that came to mind was a peptide stack (oh no!). That is where people take groups of unproven peptides together, usually by injection. Yeah, not a great idea.

So, what’s the Gattaca stack?

As someone following the area of embryo models, artificial wombs, and gene editing closely, it was helpful when someone pointed out the Gattaca Stack to me. This is a resource that tracks firms and labs working in this next-gen reproductive space. Readers may recall that I wrote a piece over at STAT just a few weeks ago about stem cell-based human embryo models or SCBEM including their possible applications. Along this same thread, let’s talk about the so-called human sacks.

Animal and human sacks: R3 Bio

A Billionaire-Backed Startup Wants to Grow ‘Organ Sacks’ to Replace Animal Testing, Wired. This is a wild read about R3 Bio by the wonderful science journalist Emily Mullin. We’re talking about stem cell-based clumps of organs that bear some resemblance to parts of embryos/fetuses.

What the title doesn’t get into but the test does is that the same “sack” technology could be used to make human organ bags. These bags would bear some resemblance to SCBEM. No heads, no pain, but one or likely more parts of the developing human body.

Those parts could be used as spare parts for us actual humans if we have something like liver failure. Or just an aging organ. Longevity fans are enthused about this kind of stuff. It feels somewhat Brave New World-esque.

Returning just to the aspirational idea of using these envisioned animal sacks for lab research, that approach perhaps could reduce the number of actual animals used, it’s admittedly interesting.

Still, as I wrote in my STAT piece on human embryo models, the ethics here are complex, particularly with the human work, and can easily get into dicey territory if you just start asking a few thoughtful questions.

What do you all think of the corporate terminology of “animal sacks” here? “Human sacks”? There’s a definite gross factor here.

There are other biotechs in this space including Renewal Bio, which also invoked headless/brainless human embryo models as a potential tissue transplantation source.

Keep in mind that R3 Bio should not be confused with the stem cell clinic firm R3 Stem Cell.

Recommended reads

• Decoding the spatiotemporal development of the blood-brain barrier in human cortex, Cell Stem Cell.
• Kyoto medical firm to launch personal iPS cell storage service, Kyodo News. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more of this custom iPS cell production and storage. Many people could theoretically benefit from having their own high-quality iPS cells produced and stored, but it won’t come cheap. From the firm here, IPS Portal, Inc. the price tag is likely to start around $63,000 and go up.
• FDA slams Soon-Shiong and ImmunityBio for making ‘false and misleading’ claims about a drug, STAT.  Here’s the ImmunityBio warning letter. Soon-Shiong, also the publisher of the LA Times, has stirred controversies over the years.
• Can a mouse be cloned indefinitely? Decades-long experiment has answers Repeated cloning from a single mouse failed after 58 generations. Researchers say harmful DNA changes are to blame, Nature. Talk about a long experiment. At some point after maybe 7-8 generations, it seems like there’s a concern here of potentially diminishing return on research funding investment after decades of costs. Still, it’s interesting and after you do this for awhile, it’s likely hard to stop after having already invested so much time, etc.