Another week and more great papers and interesting news in the regenerative medicine sphere including COVID-19 updates, stem cells for vision, and more.
Rebuilding Corneas With Stem Cells
Stem cell-based regenerative medicine arguably has shown the most promise for vision loss. A PR from Massachusetts Eye and Ear says: Doctors rebuild damaged corneas using patients’ own own stem cells for first time in US.
This is interesting work.
The autologous transplant method is called “‘cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cell transplantation’ (CALEC).” It involves taking a biopsy, culturing a mixture of the cells including stem cells, and then a transplant back. Here is the Clinicaltrials.gov listing if you want to learn more.
COVID updates
1. Mesoblast DSMB gives nod to continue trial; how much does this mean?
Mesoblast is upbeat in PR Data Safety Monitoring Board Recommends Continuation of Remestemcel-L Phase 3 Trial in COVID-19 Patients With Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. I’m not clear how much to read into this news on stem cells for COVID-19. Is the data safety monitoring board just saying the safety has been OK so far or do they see any hint of efficacy?
In either case, it’s encouraging to some extent that this work will continue.
2. IPS cells to model COVID infection reveals cardiac phenotypes
A preprint from the UW ISCRM from Chuck Murry‘s group: SARS-CoV-2 infects human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes, impairing electrical and mechanical function. This highlights the power of human IPS cells for disease modeling. It’s still sort of a neck and neck race as to whether IPS cells will have greater clinical impact directly (e.g. via transplant of differentiated cells made from IPS cells) or by disease modeling.
I asked first author Silvia Marchiano of the UW ISCRM for the main takeaways from the study:
” I think that the most important take-home messages are: 1) the cardiac effects seen with COVID19 patients could be directly mediated by the virus, independently from inflammation or coagulation disorders 2) since the heart is a non regenerative organ, we should consider the potential long term effects of this infection. Of course, more studies are needed to confirm the cardiac tropism of nCoV2 but the evidence so far suggests that nCoV2 could be a cardiac virus and understanding which patients are at higher risk and what are the potential consequences are definitely the next steps.”
3. UCSF Stem Cells for COVID trial
From UCSF PR: Stem Cell Trial Tests Treatment for Often-Fatal COVID-19 Lung Damage
“Researchers are studying whether cells drawn from deep inside our bones may hold hope for the sickest of COVID-19 patients who have severe lung injury called acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS.”
The trial will include multiple sites including here at UC Davis School of Medicine.
4. Mice catching COVID
Studies show that a common mouse can catch and spread the coronavirus in labs
More on Cryo negatively impacting stem cells
From ASH, Study: Cryopreservation Associated with Loss of Quality in Donor Stem Cell Products. I also had a recent piece on the effects of freeze-thaw on stem cells here.
Childhood Cancer Fundraiser
My lab here at UC Davis and our colleagues at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center have a fundraising team for Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. We raising money by walking, jogging and/or biking. The money gets matched 1:1 by the foundation and goes to our work on childhood brain tumors. Please consider joining our team or making a contribution. Everything helps! Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation is an amazing organization.
Recommended stem cell and regenerative medicine pubs, preprints
- Scientific Reports on stem cell-based drug delivery, A highly efficient non-viral process for programming mesenchymal stem cells for gene directed enzyme prodrug cancer therapy
- Current Opinion in Cell Biology, The intrinsic proteostasis network of stem cells
- From a team led by my colleagues Anna La Torre and Sergio Simó in PNAS, CRL5-dependent regulation of the small GTPases ARL4C and ARF6 controls hippocampal morphogenesis. See Figure 7A screenshot above with really striking data.
- In Development, Pou2f1 and Pou2f2 cooperate to control the timing of cone photoreceptor production in the developing mouse retina
- G&D, p53 tetramerization: at the center of the dominant-negative effect of mutant p53
- G&D, Functional loss of a noncanonical BCOR–PRC1.1 complex accelerates SHH-driven medulloblastoma formation
Blast from the Past: contagious cancer
From January 2011: Contagious cancer: the allograft your dog doesn’t want