Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute stem cell meeting report

Posted on June 16, 2015 by admin

Last week I attended and spoke at a stem cell meeting at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). It was entitled, “Bioengineering and Stem Cell Research”.

It was a great meeting with many interesting talks. Below I write about some of the talks and themes of the meeting. Still to come later this week I will do a second post entirely focused on the exciting RPE work of Sally Temple, who spoke at the meeting.

One of the major themes of this meeting was, as Mark Noble put it during his talk, the urgent need for greater precision in defining our cells, whether they are stem cells or derivatives of stem cells. A lack of precise cellular identification interferes, Noble said, with comparing data within labs and between labs, patent evaluation, and therapy development.

Noble also asked how we are going to pay for stem cell therapy development, which is a huge often overlooked issue (see slide above from his talk). One of Noble’s innovative ideas is to focus on already FDA approved drugs, providing an effective shortcut to the bedside. This is a potentially very powerful approach if you can find molecules amongst the already approved ones that do what you want.

Mike West of BioTime also spoke at the meeting. He presented about their neat clonal derivative research from ESCs. The numerous determined stem and progenitor derived in this way have more focused differentiation potential that proves very useful and addresses the concern of heterogeneity of cell populations made directly from human ESCs.

The talk of another speaker, Ron Hart from Rutgers, was somewhat of a cautionary tale. His team was working on IPSC made from patients with Ataxia Telangiectasia (A-T). The IPSC had with compound heterozygous mutations in the ATM gene. At some point in the process of studying these cells they found that a certain mutation was lost. It seemed to become WT and the team’s sense is that a spontaneous gene correction event occurred via the otherwise WT sequences of the mutant ATM alleles. It never occurred to me that a heterozygous line could essentially lose a mutation via gene correction. Another possibility that we should all be on the look out for is contamination of one IPSC line with another.

Overall this was an exciting meeting and I don’t even include in that the tornado watch on the second day. Again, stay tuned for an upcoming blog post on Sally’s work on adult RPEs.

Stem Cell Person of the Year Award: Only 2 Days Left To Vote

Posted on October 20, 2014 by admin

In two days the voting will end to pick the top 12 finalists for Stem Cell Person of the Year 2014 Award.

You can vote here.

From the finalists I will have the tough decision of picking the winner.

Check out who’s in the top 12 now and who the top few vote getters are. Will someone surge ahead in the last two days?

The nominees have a great mix of backgrounds from all parts of the stem cell world both in terms of their missions and geographic locations.

Stem Cell Person of the Year Award 2014 Voting: Who Will Be Top 12 Finalists?

Posted on October 15, 2014 by admin

With one week left to vote to pick the top 12 finalists for the Stem Cell Person of the Year 2014 Award, we have more than 2,800 votes in so far. From the top 12 vote-getters, I will choose the winner. This is the third year of this award.

I self-fund this award out of my own pocket with the winner receiving $2,000.

Voting closes at midnight on October 22nd.

You can vote once per day here and see the evolving results.

We have a tight 3-way race at this point for the top vote getter between Chris Fasano, Malin Parmar, and Robert Lanza. You can read more about these and the other candidates below where they are listed alphabetically. If you click on the names you will be taken to key websites about the candidates.

Nominees

Bernard Siegel. Bernie is a long-time stem cell advocate who runs the yearly World Stem Cell Summit. “Has any one single person done more for the stem cell field?”

Chris Fasano. A principal investigator at the Neural Stem Cell Institute where he uses stem cells to study early nervous system development. “Chris stands out for his energy, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, creativity and accomplishments.”

Diana DeGette. Rep. DeGette is a politician who has been working to pass important stem cell legislation. “Long time supporter of legislation to support stem cell research and regenerative medicine.”

Don C. Reed. Long-time stem cell research advocate who played a key role in the success of Prop 71 and the creation of CIRM. “A tireless stem cell advocate always there to make a positive difference.”

Emmanuel (Ed) Baetge. Head of Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences at Nestlé Health Science and formerly CSO of Novocell/ViaCyte. “…Novocell (Viacyte’s) diabetes program using hESCs has huge potential and Ed deserves the credit for his leadership and development of the technology as well as the company.”

Ellen Feigal. Senior Vice President, Research and Development at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). “At CIRM Dr. Feigal makes the Development Program happen.”

Ian McNiece. Professor, Department of Stem Cell Transplantation,
Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson
Cancer Center.

Janet Rossant. Professor, University of Toronto. Stem Cell Researcher and Past President, ISSCR. “She works tirelessly to create new opportunities and collaborations…globally respected for her work in early development and embryonic stem cells”

Jeanne Loring. Stem cell researcher and scholar, leading iPS cell clinical work in the pipeline for Parkinson’s Disease, and patient advocate. “Supportive to the advocacy community. Courage in supporting the challenge to WARF patents. Excellent scientist engaged in policy discussions.”

John Sinden. The co-founder of ReNeuron, a biotech company based in UK. “Thanks to his determination and drive, ReNeuron has a clinical approved stem cell product currently tested in two clinical trials.”

Judy Roberson. Long-time Huntington’s Disease patient advocate. “She makes concrete positive developments happen such as millions of dollars in research funding for HD.”

JuuichiJigen. Japanese blogger who investigates scientific misconduct and played a key role in revealing the STAP scandal. “He was the first to investigate and bring to the public of problems with STAP papers. His investigations demonstrated the role of social media and post-publication peer review in rapid self-correction of science.”

Leigh Turner. Associate Professor, Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota. Outspoken advocate of evidence-based medicine in the stem cell field. “Gave an inspiringly frank talk about for-profit stem cell clinics that do not FDA regulations at ISSCR 2014.”

Malin Parmar. Associate Professor, Developmental and Regenerative Neurobiology, Lund University. Top neural regeneration scientist. “Young, hard worker who is doing very well”.

Masayo Takahashi. Stem cell researcher leading the team that is doing the first ever clinical study based on human iPS cells. “Creative and courageous clinical stem cell researcher.”

Mike West. CEO of BioTime. He also founded Geron and was CSO of Advanced Cell Technology. “He has been a leader in our regen field for many years but he made a bold decision to resurrect Geron’s cell therapy for spinal cord injury this year and hopefully confirm the promise of hESC technology clinically.”

Patricia Olson. Executive Director of Scientific Activities at CIRM and active in CIRM scientific leadership from day 1. “A driving force in the stem cell field. CIRM could not function half as well without her.“

Peter Zandstra. Professor at University of Toronto. Stem cell researcher. Canada Research Chair of Stem Cell Bioengineering. “Peter is a recognized pioneer and respected world leader at bringing concepts of scale-up, regulation, and industrialization to stem cell-derived cell therapy technologies.”

Pope Francis. Leader of Worldwide Catholic Church. “Strong supporter of adult stem cell biotechs and research”.

Richard M. Cohen. An MS patient in a clinical trial who has chronicled his experiences. An author and Meredith Vieira’s husband, father of three children. “Mr. Cohen is an inspiration to me and others because he’s very honest and doesn’t sugar-coat his struggles, loses, frustrations, anger, embarrassments, and he also shares his gains.”

Richard Garr. CEO of Neuralstem, conducting work on using stem cells for ALS and advocate of Right To Try laws. “Richard does two excellent things at once: making a treatment for ALS and connecting with ALS patients.”

Robert Lanza. CSO of Advanced Cell Technology, which has multiple ES cell-based clinical trials ongoing. “Visionary and practical so makes the impossible possible with stem cells”.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov. Stem cell researcher who first successfully made nuclear transfer human ES cells by therapeutic cloning and developing oocyte transfer-based therapies for mitochondrial disorders. “Gutsy pioneer of new, game changing technologies.”

Susan Solomon. Co-Founder and CEO of The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF). Remarkably effective advocate for stem cell research. “Not many leaders have created their own research laboratories and raised $100 million plus. Seriously, what an accomplishment!”

Takaho Endo. Senior Researcher at the Riken Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Yokohama who published key genetic work on possible origin of STAP cells. “Courage to publish the genetic data challenging origin of STAP while also being a scientist at RIKEN.”

Ted Harada. Leading stem cell research advocate and very effective ALS patient advocate. “An Energizer Bunny for the ALS community and stem cell advocate”

Tory Williams. Stem cell advocate and author of the 2014 book, Inevitable Collision. Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Alabama Institute of Medicine (AIM). “A true hero who inspires and makes real things happen like AIM”.

Stem Cell Person of the Year 2014 Award: Vote To Choose Top 12 Finalists

Posted on October 8, 2014 by admin

Happy Stem Cell Day!

Nominations have closed and we have more than two dozen nominations for Stem Cell Person of the Year 2014. It’s an exciting, diverse group including some news faces as well as nominees from years past as well.

You can now vote for your choice for the top finalists in the poll below. One vote per IP address is allowed per day. Voting will end on October 22 at midnight. The winner of the voting may not be the overall winner of the 2014 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award, but more votes sure cannot hurt. This voting will pick the top 12 finalists from whom I will choose the winner.

A short bio of each nominee is included below the poll with the nominees listed in alphabetical order by first name. Their names have links to pages about them. In addition, I have included a quote from the nominator(s) in green. I encourage you to learn more about these amazing people.