Weekly reads: Chinese CRISPR biotechs, cultured meat war, MSCs for Alzheimer’s

Chinese CRISPR research continues to grow and this includes interesting CRISPR biotech firms. Some here in the U.S. worry that American gene editing firms could be lagging behind. Especially over the past year, investors and even some scientists have voiced frustration.

U.S. gene editing firms like Editas have been struggling for years. Its stock is down 93% over the past 5 years. CRISPR Therapeutics has had a pretty solid past 5 years but is substantially down more recently. Can they turn things around? What other CRISPR biotechs or stocks are you following?

What’s going on in China with gene editing?

Chinese CRISPR biotechs

STAT News recently published: These 12 Chinese companies are poised to transform CRISPR gene-editing. Are regulations or research investments in China substantially different for gene editing than in the U.S.?

Hui Yang, a leader of one of the 12 firms, HuidaGene Therapeutics, is a name that rang a bell for me. I think it’s the same person I remember from the past. He was someone who at one point seemed potentially interested in doing human germline CRISPR. Maybe the article quoting him five years ago was incorrect.

The dynamic between U.S. and Chinese CRISPR biotechs is on people’s minds. From STAT:

“In many areas, Chinese companies have been more aggressive, pushing into diseases that their U.S. counterparts have shied away from, including in Duchenne muscular dystrophy and herpes virus. That willingness has raised eyebrows among some executives and academics in the U.S., while exciting others who fear the American regulators and companies have been too conservative.

However, in other areas, the U.S. remains ahead, as is the case with beta thalassemia, for which Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics secured the first approval of a treatment. Nonetheless, Chinese companies like Yoltech Therapeutics are pioneering in vivo gene-editing therapies for beta thalassemia, hoping to offer a cost-effective and quicker alternative to existing treatments.”

More regenerative reads

• Who’s Afraid of Lab-Grown Meat? NYT. There has been some conservative push against cultured meat recently. There has been political pressure on the Trump Administration to favor regular meat over that grown in a lab.
• MIT engineers turn skin cells directly into neurons for cell therapy, MIT News. This is a story about direct reprogramming or what used to be called transdifferentiation. Here’s the recent research article on this work in Cell Systems: Compact transcription factor cassettes generate functional, engraftable motor neurons by direct conversion. I still see direct reprogramming as very promising.
• Orca’s cell therapy trounces traditional care in blood cancer phase 3, swimming into space’s ‘holy grail’ Fierce Biotech. A doubling of survival is nothing to sneeze at and a BLA is planned soon, but holy grail?
• Allogeneic mesenchymal stem cell therapy with laromestrocel in mild Alzheimer’s disease: a randomized controlled phase 2a trial, Nature Medicine.  Joshua Hare of the University of Miami led the study, which reported solid safety and suggestions of some positive effects. Why would infusions of MSCs help Alzheimer’s disease? Do the cells even get into the brain? If not, are they supposed to mediate a benefit indirectly such as through immunomodulation? Another issue related to mechanism is that the cells would likely only hang around for a matter of hours or days. Could they have some lasting benefit despite that transience? I’m relatively skeptical about the idea of MSCs for Alzheimer’s. What could be more promising on the MSC front is designer MSCs that secrete growth factors and are intended to engraft.

Blast from the past: 2013 stem cell stocks

This blast from the past is not an article but an image of a stem cell stock ticker from late 2013. How many of these are still around and go by the same name? StemCells Inc. is long gone. Geron doesn’t have an ES cell program these days. Pluristem is now Pluri. Athersys is gone. Aastrom became Vericel.

I’ve got a more recent list of stem cell stocks I’ve been following. I’m following them for various non-investment-related reasons. I don’t have any investments in them or others right now.