Ethics and Policy

Eggciting News: Scientists developed fertilized eggs from mouse stem cells

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

A really eggciting science story came out early this week that’s received a lot of attention. Scientists in Japan reported in the journal Nature that they’ve generated egg cells from mouse stem cells, and these eggs could be fertilized and developed into living, breathing mice.

This is the first time that scientists have reported the successful development of egg cells in the lab outside of an animal. Many implications emerge from this research like gaining a better understanding of human development, generating egg cells from other types of mammals and even helping infertile women become pregnant.

Making eggs from pluripotent stem cells

The egg cells, also known as oocytes, were generated from mouse embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells derived from mouse skin cells in a culture dish. Both stem cell types are pluripotent, meaning that they can generate almost any cell type in the human body.

After generating the egg cells, the scientists fertilized the eggs through in vitro fertilization (IVF) using sperm from a healthy male mouse. They allowed the fertilized eggs to grow into two cell embryos which they then transplanted into female mice. 11 out of 316 embryos (or 3.5%) produced offspring, which were then able to reproduce after they matured into adults.

mice

These mice were born from artificial eggs that were made from stem cells in a dish. (K. Hayashi, Kyushu University)

Not perfect science

While impressive, this study did identify major issues with its egg-making technique. First, less than 5% of the embryos made from the stem-cell derived eggs developed into viable mice. Second, the scientists discovered that some of their lab-grown eggs (~18%) had abnormal numbers of chromosomes – an event that can prevent an embryo from developing or can cause genetic disorders in offspring.

Lastly, to generate mature egg cells, the scientists had to add cells taken from mouse embryos in pregnant mice to the culture dish. These outside cells acted as a support environment that helped the egg cells mature and were essential for their development. The scientists are working around this issue by developing artificial reagents that could hopefully replace the need for these cells.

Egg cells made from embryonic stem cells in a dish. (K. Hayashi, Kyushu University)

Egg cells made from embryonic stem cells in a dish. (K. Hayashi, Kyushu University)

Will human eggs be next?

A big discovery such as this one immediately raises ethical questions and concerns about whether scientists will attempt to generate artificial human egg cells in a dish. Such technology would be extremely valuable to women who do not have eggs or have problems getting pregnant. However, in the wrong hands, a lot could go wrong with this technology including the creation of genetically abnormal embryos.

In a Nature news release, Azim Surani who is well known in this area of research, said that these ethical issues should be discussed now and include the general public. “This is the right time to involve the wider public in these discussions, long before and in case the procedure becomes feasible in humans.”

In an interview with Phys.org , James Adjaye, another expert from Heinrich Heine University in Germany, raised the point that even if we did generate artificial human eggs, “the final and ultimate test for fully functional human ‘eggs in a dish’ would be the fertilization using IVF, which is also ethically not allowed.”

Looking forward, senior author on the Nature study, Katsuhiko Hayashi, predicted that in a decade, lab-grown “oocyte-like” human eggs will be available but probably not at a scale for fertility treatments. Because of the technical issues his study revealed, he commented, “It is too preliminary to use artificial oocytes in the clinic.”

Trash talking and creating a stem cell community

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

imilce2

Imilce Rodriguez-Fernandez likes to talk trash. No, really, she does. In her case it’s cellular trash, the kind that builds up in our cells and has to be removed to ensure the cells don’t become sick.

Imilce was one of several stem cell researchers who took part in a couple of public events over the weekend, on either side of San Francisco Bay, that served to span both a geographical and generational divide and create a common sense of community.

The first event was at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Marin County, near San Francisco. It was titled “Stem Cell Celebration” and that’s pretty much what it was. It featured some extraordinary young scientists from the Buck talking about the work they are doing in uncovering some of the connections between aging and chronic diseases, and coming up with solutions to stop or even reverse some of those changes.

One of those scientists was Imilce. She explained that just as it is important for people to get rid of their trash so they can have a clean, healthy home, so it is important for our cells to do the same. Cells that fail to get rid of their protein trash become sick, unhealthy and ultimately stop working.

Imilce is exploring the cellular janitorial services our bodies have developed to deal with trash, and trying to find ways to enhance them so they are more effective, particularly as we age and those janitorial services aren’t as efficient as they were in our youth.

Unlocking the secrets of premature aging

Chris Wiley, another postdoctoral researcher at the Buck, showed that some medications that are used to treat HIV may be life-saving on one level, preventing the onset of full-blown AIDS, but that those benefits come with a cost, namely premature aging. Chris said the impact of aging doesn’t just affect one cell or one part of the body, but ripples out affecting other cells and other parts of the body. By studying the impact those medications have on our bodies he’s hoping to find ways to maintain the benefits of those drugs, but get rid of the downside.

Creating a Community

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Across the Bay, the U.C. Berkeley Student Society for Stem Cell Research held it’s 4th annual conference and the theme was “Culturing a Stem Cell Community.”

The list of speakers was a Who’s Who of CIRM-funded scientists from U.C. Davis’ Jan Nolta and Paul Knoepfler, to U.C. Irvine’s Henry Klassen and U.C. Berkeley’s David Schaffer. The talks ranged from progress in fighting blindness, to how advances in stem cell gene editing are cause for celebration, and concern.

What struck me most about both meetings was the age divide. At the Buck those presenting were young scientists, millennials; the audience was considerably older, baby boomers. At UC Berkeley it was the reverse; the presenters were experienced scientists of the baby boom generation, and the audience were keen young students representing the next generation of scientists.

Bridging the divide

But regardless of the age differences there was a shared sense of involvement, a feeling that regardless of which side of the audience we are on we all have something in common, we are all part of the stem cell community.

All communities have a story, something that helps bind them together and gives them a sense of common purpose. For the stem cell community there is not one single story, there are many. But while those stories all start from a different place, they end up with a common theme; inspiration, determination and hope.

 

Stem cell stories that caught our eye: Designer bags from human skin, large-scale stem cell production, new look at fat stem cells

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun.

Designer bags from human skin? I had to share a bizarre story I read this week about a UK fashion designer who is making a collection of luxury handbags from lab-grown human skin called Pure Human. What’s even weirder is that the human skin used was engineered to contain the genetic material or DNA of the famous fashion designer Alexander McQueen who passed away in 2010.

A prototype bag, made with pig skin, from Tina Gorjanc’s Pure Human collection (Credit: Tina Gorjanc)

A prototype bag, made with pig skin, from Tina Gorjanc’s Pure Human collection (Credit: Tina Gorjanc & Signals blog for caption)

I had to admit I cringed when I first read about it in CCRM’s Signals Blog, but now I am fascinated that someone is actually doing this and intrigued about the ethical conversations that this story will undoubtedly stir up.

While it isn’t possible to patent a person’s DNA, it is possible to patent a technology that uses human DNA and products made from that technology. According to Signals, “the aim of the collection is to highlight existing legal loopholes around ownership of a person’s DNA and to open the doors for tissue bioengineering into the world of fashion.”

The collection’s designer, Tina Gorjanc, explained her motivation behind Pure Human:

Tina

Tina Gorjanc

“My main goal was to show that it is possible to patent a process using human genetic information in a domain other than medicine. Biotechnology is happening at a really rapid pace and legislation has not kept up with it.”

 

She also sees her bags as an untapped resource in the global luxury goods market which is now apparently worth $1 trillion dollars.

“When it comes to bioengineering, people tend to skip the luxury goods market because they think it’s too shallow and not important, but if you look at it, it’s one of the biggest markets that we have – and one that is open to new technology.”

Imagine having the option to bypass animal leather products for engineered human skin-based products? But on the flip side, the author of the Signals blog, Jovana Drinjakovic, makes a great point at the end of her piece by saying: just because we can do this, does it mean we should?

Drinjakovic finishes her piece with a reality-check quote from Dr. Marc Jeschke, the leader of a burn research and skin regeneration lab in Toronto:

“We are trying to find a way to make skin that is functional and won’t be rejected after a transplant. But just to grow skin for fashion – I don’t think that’s very useful.”

 

Large-Scale Stem Cell Production in Texas. A nonprofit company in San Antonio, Texas, called BioBridge, has big plans to produce large amounts of clinical-grade stem cells for regenerative medicine purposes. The company recently received $7.8 million in funding from the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium to pursue this effort.

BioBridge will work with GenCure, a subsidiary company, to develop the technology to manufacture different types of stem cells at a large scale. These stem cells will be clinical-grade, meaning that they can be used for cell therapy applications in patients. BioBridge’s goal is to provide enough stem cells for both academic researchers and companies who need more than their current lab resources can generate.

The CEO of GenCure, Becky Cap, explained the need for this type of large-scale stem cell manufacturing technology in an interview with Xconomy:

“The capabilities in this sector right now are at a scale that’s appropriate for bench research and some clinical research, depending on the indication and volume of cells we need. We’re talking about moving from hundreds of millions of cells to billions of cells. You need billions of cells to do tissue regeneration and scaffold reengineering.”

Two other companies with expertise in cell manufacturing, StemBioSys from San Antonio and RoosterBio in Maryland, will be working with BioBridge and GenCure over the next three years on specific projects. StemBioSys plans to develop materials that will be used to promote stem cell growth. RoosterBio will take stem cell culturing from small-scale petri dishes to large-scale bioreactors that can produce billions of cells.

It will be interesting to see how the BioBridge collaboration works out. Xconomy concluded:

“This sort of large-scale manufacturing is still years out. The results that come from the work will be incorporated into a contract manufacturing operation that BioBridge is opening within GenCure.”

 

A new way to look at fat stem cells. (By Todd Dubnicoff)

Human fat stem cells, scientifically known as human adipose stem cells (hASC), are an attractive cell source for regenerative medicine. Their low tendency to cause tissue rejection and their ability to transform into bone cells make them particularly well-suited for developing cell-based treatments for osteoporosis, a disease that weakens bones and makes them susceptible to fractures. And thanks to the numerous liposuction procedures performed in the U.S. each year, hASCs are readily available to researchers.

Electron microscope image showing the eroded, inner structure of a back bone in an 89 year old woman with osteoposis. Image courtesy the Bone Research Society

Electron microscope image showing the eroded, inner structure of a back bone in an 89 year old woman with osteoposis. Image courtesy the Bone Research Society.

But a lingering problem with hASCs as a reliable cell source for future therapies is their extreme patient-to-patient variability. Studies have shown that all sorts of factors like gender, body mass index (BMI) and age can have profound effects on the ability of hASCs to multiply and to specialize into bone cells.

Now, University of Missouri researchers describe the novel use of a measuring device to make more quantitative comparisons of different sets of donor hASCs. The instrument, called an electrical cell-substrate impedance spectroscopy (ECIS) – try saying that three times fast! – sends a very weak, noninvasive current through the cells and can measure changes in the cells’ shape in real-time. Other studies had shown that ECIS can quantitatively detect differences between hASCs and human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells as they mature into their respective cell types.

In the current Stem Cells Translational Medicine study, picked up this week by Health Canal, hASCs were obtained from young (24–36 years old), middle-aged (48–55 years old), and elderly (60–81 years old) donors. The ECIS results showed that stem cells from older donors matured into bone cells much quicker (~ 1day) than the younger cell of cells (~10 day). You might have intuitively thought the youngest stem cells would mature the fastest. But the end result of the difference is that the young set of stem cells multiplied much more than the cells from older donor and they accumulated more calcium over time.

This noninvasive, quantitative tool for predicting a fat stem cell’s potential to specialize into bone has the promise to improve quality control for manufacturing cell therapies, and it also provides researchers a means to better observe the underlying biological basis for this patient-to-patient variability in human fat cells.

Stem Cell Experts Discuss the Ethical Implications of Translating iPSCs to the Clinic

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Part of The Stem Cellar blog series on 10 years of iPSCs.

This year, scientists are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Shinya Yamanaka’s Nobel Prize winning discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These are cells that are very similar biologically to embryonic stem cells and can develop into any cell in the body. iPSCs are very useful in scientific research for disease modeling, drug screening, and for potential cell therapy applications.

However, with any therapy that involves testing in human patients, there are ethical questions that scientists, companies, and policy makers must consider. Yesterday, a panel of stem cell and bioethics experts at the Cell Symposium 10 Years of iPSCs conference in Berkeley discussed the ethical issues surrounding the translation of iPSC research from the lab bench to clinical trials in patients.

The panel included Shinya Yamanaka (Gladstone Institutes), George Daley (Harvard University), Christine Mummery (Leiden University Medical Centre), Lorenz Studer (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), Deepak Srivastava (Gladstone Institutes), and Bioethicist Hank Greely (Stanford University).

iPSC Ethics Panel

iPSC Ethics Panel at the 10 Years of iPSCs Conference

Below is a summary of what these experts had to say about questions ranging from the ethics of patient and donor consent, genetic modification of iPSCs, designer organs, and whether patients should pay to participate in clinical trials.

How should we address patient or donor consent regarding iPSC banking?

Multiple institutes including CIRM are developing iPSC banks that store thousands of patient-derived iPSC lines, which scientists can use to study disease and develop new therapies. These important cell lines wouldn’t exist without patients who consent to donate their cells or tissue. The first question posed to the panel was how to regulate the consent process.

Christine Mummery began by emphasizing that it’s essential that companies are able to license patient-derived iPSC lines so they don’t have to go back to the patient and inconvenience them by asking for additional samples to make new cell lines.

George Daley and Hank Greely discussed different options for improving the informed consent process. Daley mentioned that the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) recently updated their informed consent guidelines and now provide adaptable informed consent templates that can be used for obtaining many type of materials for human stem cell research.  Daley also mentioned the move towards standardizing the informed consent process through a single video shared by multiple institutions.

Greely agreed that video could be a powerful way to connect with patients by using talented “explainers” to educate patients. But both Daley and Greely cautioned that it’s essential to make sure that patients understand what they are getting involved in when they donate their tissue.

Greely rounded up the conversation by reminding the audience that patients are giving the research field invaluable information so we should consider giving back in return. While we can’t and shouldn’t promise a cure, we can give back in other ways like recognizing the contributions of specific patients or disease communities.

Greely mentioned the resolution with Henrietta Lack’s family as a good example. For more than 60 years, scientists have used a cancer cell line called HeLa cells that were derived from the cervical cancer cells of a woman named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta never gave consent for her cells to be used and her family had no clue that pieces of Henrietta were being studied around the world until years later.

In 2013, the NIH finally rectified this issue by requiring that researchers ask for permission to access Henrietta’s genomic data and to include the Lacks family in their publication acknowledgements.

Hank Greely, Stanford University

Hank Greely, Stanford University

“The Lacks family are quite proud and pleased that their mother, grandmother and great grandmother is being remembered, that they are consulted on various things,” said Hank Greely. “They aren’t making any direct money out of it but they are taking a great deal of pride in the recognition that their family is getting. I think that returning something to patients is a nice thing, and a human thing.”

What are the ethical issues surrounding genome editing of iPSCs?

The conversation quickly focused on the ongoing CRISPR patent battle between the Broad Institute, MIT and UC Berkeley. For those unfamiliar with the technique, CRISPR is a gene editing technology that allows you to cut and paste DNA at precise locations in the genome. CRISPR has many uses in research, but in the context of iPSCs, scientists are using CRISPR to remove disease-causing mutations in patient iPSCs.

George Daley expressed his worry about a potential fallout if the CRISPR battle goes a certain way. He commented, “It’s deeply concerning when such a fundamentally enabling platform technology could be restricted for future gene editing applications.”

The CRISPR patent battle began in 2012 and millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent since then. Hank Greely said that he can’t understand why the Institutes haven’t settled this case already as the costs will only continue to rise, but that it might not matter how the case turns out in the end:

“My guess is that this isn’t ultimately going to be important because people will quickly figure out ways to invent around the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. People have already done it around the Cas9 part and there will probably be ways to do the same thing for the CRISPR part.”

 Christine Mummery finished off with a final point about the potential risk of trying to correct disease causing mutations in patient iPSCs using CRISPR technology. She noted that it’s possible the correction may not lead to an improvement because of other disease-causing genetic mutations in the cells that the patient and their family are unaware of.

 Should patients or donors be paid for their cells and tissue?

Lorenz Studer said he would support patients being paid for donating samples as long as the payment is reasonable, the consent form is clear, and patients aren’t trying to make money off of the process.

Hank Greely said the big issue is with inducement and whether you are paying enough money to convince people to do something they shouldn’t or wouldn’t want to do. He said this issue comes up mainly around reproductive egg donation but not with obtaining simpler tissue samples like skin biopsies. Egg donors are given money because it’s an invasive procedure, but also because a political decision was made to compensate egg donors. Greely predicts the same thing is unlikely to happen with other cell and tissue types.

Christine Mummery’s opinion was that if a patient’s iPSCs are used by a drug company to produce new successful drugs, the patient should receive some form of compensation. But she said it’s hard to know how much to pay patients, and this question was left unanswered by the panel.

Should patients pay to participate in clinical trials?

George Daley said it’s hard to justify charging patients to participate in a Phase 1 clinical trial where the focus is on testing the safety of a therapy without any guarantee that there will be beneficial outcome to the patient. In this case, charging a patient money could raise their expectations and mislead them into thinking they will benefit from the treatment. It would also be unfair because only patients who can afford to pay would have access to trials. Ultimately, he concluded that making patients pay for an early stage trial would corrupt the informed consent process. However, he did say that there are certain, rare contexts that would be highly regulated where patients could pay to participate in trials in an ethical way.

Lorenz Studer said the issue is very challenging. He knows of patients who want to pay to be in trials for treatments they hope will work, but he also doesn’t think that patients should have to pay to be in early stage trials where their participation helps the progress of the therapy. He said the focus should be on enrolling the right patient groups in clinical trials and making sure patients are properly educated about the trial they are participating.

Thoughts on the ethics behind making designer organs from iPSCs?

Deepak Srivastava said that he thinks about this question all the time in reference to the heart:

Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes

Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes

“The heart is basically a pump. When we traditionally thought about whether we could make a human heart, we asked if we could make the same thing with the same shape and design. But in fact, that’s not necessarily the best design – it’s what evolution gave us. What we really need is a pump that’s electrically active. I think going forward, we should remove the constraint of the current design and just think about what would be the best functional structure to do it. But it is definitely messing with nature and what evolution has given us.”

Deepak also said that because every organ is different, different strategies should be used. In the case of the heart, it might be beneficial to convert existing heart tissue into beating heart cells using drugs rather than transplant iPSC-derived heart cells or tissue. For other organs like the pancreas, it is beneficial to transplant stem cell-derived cells. For diabetes, scientists have shown that injecting insulin secreting cells in multiple areas of the body is beneficial to Diabetes patients.

Hank Greely concluded that the big ethical issue of creating stem cell-derived organs is safety. “Biology isn’t the same as design,” Greely said. “It’s really, really complicated. When you put something into a biological organism, the chances that something odd will happen are extremely high. We have to be very careful to avoid making matters worse.”

For more on the 10 years of iPSCs conference, check out the #CSStemCell16 hashtag on twitter.

CIRM’s Randy Mills: New FDA rules for stem cells won’t fix the problem

/ Kevin McCormack / 6 Comments

For the last two days the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been holding a hearing in Bethesda, Maryland on new regulations that would tighten control over stem cell treatments. The FDA invited public testimony during the hearing on the regulations that would impact many of the clinics that currently offer unproven therapies

The testimony has been impassioned to say the least. Supporters of the clinics say they offer a valuable service and that patients should be allowed to decide for themselves how they want their own cells to be used. Opponents say the clinics are little more than snake oil sales people, offering bogus, unproven treatments.

One of those presenting was Randy Mills, CIRM’s President and CEO. Randy has been very vocal in the past about the need for the FDA to change the way it regulates stem cell therapies.

In California Healthline Randy explained why he thinks the rules the FDA is proposing will not fix the problem, and may even make it worse:

FDA Must Find A Middle Ground For Sake Of Patients

randy

Randy Mills

We aren’t happy, as a lot of people aren’t happy, with the proliferation of these stem cell clinics — some of which are probably doing good work. But some are clearly making rather outlandish claims for which there’s no real data. 

There are a couple of conditions coming together to create this storm.

One is that the need is very real. These patients are really struggling. They don’t have alternatives. They’re desperate and they need help. It’s not in the realm of possibility to talk to somebody who is suffering as badly as these patients are and to say, ‘You have to wait a few more decades for the science to catch up.’

On the other hand, we have a regulatory paradigm that only provides two pathways to put a cell therapy onto the market. One pathway is the most intense regulatory requirement anywhere in the world for any product — the biologics license application through the FDA, which takes 10 to 20 years and costs over $1 billion.

The other is through the exemptions the FDA has made, which require absolutely no pre-market approval whatsoever. You can be on the market in days, with no data.

The regulatory burden associated with one is massive and the other is almost nonexistent.

So it’s not at all surprising that we’re seeing a proliferation of these stem cell clinics popping up that are operating under the assumption that they fall under the exemption.

What the FDA is doing now is saying, ‘We’re not happy with this. We’re going to define some terms more narrowly than in the past … and make it more difficult to legally be on the market under the less burdensome regulatory pathway.’

That’s what this meeting is about.

The problem with their strategy is twofold. It doesn’t address the patients, or the need side of the equation. And I don’t think it has a chance of actually working because the FDA will acknowledge that they do not have the resources to enforce these types of regulations at the clinic level.

They would have to be essentially regulating the practice of physicians, which is well beyond their capabilities. Even if they were able to enforce it, it would just drive these patients somewhere else.

We’re advocating for the creation of some middle pathway that would bring essentially unregulated therapies into the regulatory fold, but in a manner which could be complied with.

I would rather know these clinics are being regulated and collecting data than have them operating under the radar screen of the FDA. I would like there to be a formal pre-market review of these therapies before they’re put on the market. I would like there to be safety and efficacy data.

I’m going to try hard to get the FDA to see that just plugging this hole won’t make the problem go away.

Thinking that they’re going to strengthen the regulation and that patients are going to be satisfied that there’s absolutely no chance for help is naive.

There isn’t a lot of evidence to suggest these types of procedures are overly risky. It’s not that they don’t have risk, but everything in medicine does. If you’re a patient who has absolutely no alternative, you’re probably willing to take the chance.

Women in Bio on The Influential Paths of Great Visionary Leaders

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

Powerful women made powerful statements last week at the Women in Bio (WIB) Plenary Event during the 2016 BIO International Convention. A panel of influential women leaders discussed difficult yet critical topics, such as how to brand yourself as a woman in a male-dominated industry, the importance of side hustles, and how to close the gender gap. It was a dynamic and inspiring event that engaged both men and women in the audience in productive conversation about how we can all work together to support women in the life sciences industry.

The panel was moderated by Nicole Fisher, the Founder and CEO of HHR Strategies and Forbes Contributer, and the speakers included Renee Compton Ryan, VP of Venture Investments at Johnson & Johnson and Frances Colón, Deputy Science and Technology Adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry.

Frances Colon, Renee Ryan, Nicole Fisher.

Frances Colon, Renee Ryan, Nicole Fisher.

The panel was more of a fire-side chat with the three woman talking intimately at a small coffee table, first sharing stories about their career paths and the road blocks along the way, and then delving into the controversial topics that women in the life sciences face.

Career Paths of Influential Women

Nicole told her story about how she got into the healthcare space. She started by ghostwriting about healthcare, innovation, and politics for the Congressional Budget Office director. Her passion turned into an opportunity with Forbes where she now runs the Health Innovation and Policy page and eventually into her company HHR Strategies which focuses on healthcare and human rights.

Renee discussed how she started as an investment banker in healthcare and made an investment in a company that benefitted patients. This experience made her want to be a part of the solution for patients, which she described as “a calling we are all fortunate to have,” and ultimately brought her to her current position at J&J.

After completing a Ph.D. in developmental neurobiology, Frances switched gears and found her strengths and assets in science policy and communications. She wanted to bring science into international affairs and shared that her mission now is to “make science cool to political scientists and diplomats to the point where my job becomes irrelevant.”

Other Panel Highlights

Branding

Renee’s advice on branding was, “challenge yourself to know your brand, and revisit your brand”. Everyone builds a resume chronologically, but she forces herself to revisit her resume every two years. Her trick is to flip the resume over to the blank side and list all her skills but do it through a different lens so you can have perspective. This process helps her decide where she wants to grow and learn.

Having Side Hustles

Frances mentioned the importance of having “side hustles”. These are things that you are really passionate about that will also build on your strengths, raise your visibility and help you take your brand to the next level. She mentioned two side hustles in particular, a non-profit she founded that supports the Puerto Rican Diaspora Network and a group she organized called the Science Technology Table, which brings together government and the private sector to discuss trending topics in science, tech and innovation. Nicole chimed in and said that all three of her side hustles have turned into companies or big opportunities that have significantly advanced her career.

Closing the Gender Gap, No More Manels!

The panelists had much to say about closing the gender gap. Renee encouraged women in high-up positions to mentor other women that show promise and to be a hands-on mentor. She also said that everyone in the biotech and pharma industries should be studying the data to see why there are less women in the life sciences and what can be done about it.

Frances said that the gender policies at companies need to change, and that people at companies have to hold each other accountable and have the conversations that can create change. One of her key points that got a laugh from the crowd was getting rid of “manels”, or all men panels, which are prevalent at major conferences in the biotech and healthcare space. She also spoke about how we need to strive for 50/50 representation on boards and executive management.

What the audience had to say

The panel was a hit with the Women in Bio audience. Dr. Leah Makley, a WIB member and Founder and CSO of ViewPoint Therapeutics, had this to say about the event,

Leah Makley

Leah Makley

“The panelists shared candid wisdom from their own career trajectories, passions, and ‘side hustles’ that far surpassed the typical depth of career panels.  Moreover, I thought Nicole Fisher did an exceptional job of framing the conversation and asking provocative questions.”

She also spoke about the importance of the WIB community and the resources they offer:

“WIB is a supportive community of powerful, inspiring women. Both the members and the events tend to be action- and solution-oriented, and I’ve walked away from each event I’ve attended with new insights, perspectives, and energy. I’m so grateful that this resource exists.”

Marco Chacon

Marco Chacon

A moment that really stood out in my mind was a moving speech by Marco Chacon, Founder of Paragon Bioservices, and a WIB sponsor. Marco shared that he recently attended a meeting in Boston and listened in on a few diversity forums. He was appalled to hear the statistics on gender diversity in the executive suite and boards of directors in biotech and pharma. Passionately he said, “This has got to change, and to the degree that I can affect this in some way, I can assure you I will do so.”

Final Thoughts

Influential leaders like Nicole, Renee, Frances, and Marco and organizations like Women in Bio, are laying the groundwork for the career advancement of women in science. This event was a great reminder that the issues facing women in the life sciences industry can be addressed in the immediate future if we continue the conversation and challenge one another to create change.

Brave new world or dark threatening future: a clear-eyed look at genome editing and what it means for humanity

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

Frankenstein

   Is this the face of the future?

“Have you ever wished that there were something different about yourself? Maybe you imagined yourself taller, thinner or stronger? Smarter? More attractive? Healthier?”

That’s the question posed by UC Davis stem cell researcher (and CIRM grantee) Paul Knoepfler at the start of his intriguing new book ‘GMO Sapiens: The Life-Changing Science of Designer Babies’.

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You can find GMO Sapiens on Amazon.com

The book is a fascinating, and highly readable, and takes a unique look at the dramatic advances in technology that allow us to edit the human genome in ways that could allow us to do more than just create “designer babies”, it could ultimately help us change the definition of what it means to be human.

Paul begins by looking at the temptation to use technologies like CRISPR (we have blogged about this here), to genetically edit or alter human embryos so that the resulting child is enhanced in some ways. It could be that the editing is used to remove a genetic mutation that could cause a deadly disease (such as the BRCA1 gene that puts women at increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer) or it could be that the technique is used to give a baby blue eyes, to make it taller, more athletic, or to simply eliminate male pattern baldness later in life.

Paul says those latter examples are not as ridiculous as they sound:

Paul Knoepfler

Paul Knoepfler

“If you think these ideas sound far-fetched, consider that Americans alone spend tens of billions of dollars each year on plastic surgery procedures and creams to try to achieve these kinds of goals. Some of the time elective cosmetic surgery is done on children. In the future, we might have “cosmetic genetic surgeons” who do “surgery” on our family’s genes for cosmetic reasons. In other countries the sensibilities and cultural expectations could lead to other kinds of genetic modifications of humans for “enhancements”.

While the technology that enables us to do this is new, the ideas behind why we would want to do this are far from new. Paul delves into those ideas including a look at the growth of the eugenics movement in the late 19th and early 20th century advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through higher reproductive rates for people considered “superior”. And there was a darker side to the movement:

“Indiana had instituted the first law for sterilization of “inferior” people in the world in 1907. Astonishingly this state law and then similar laws (the original was revoked, but a new law was passed later) stayed on the books in that state until 1974.

This led to approximately 2,500 governmentally forced sterilizations. The poor, uneducated, people of color, Native Americans, and people with disabilities were disproportionately targeted.”

Paul explores the ethical and moral implications of changing our genetic code, changes that can then be passed on to future generations. While he understands the desire to use these technologies to create positive changes, he is also very clear in his concerns that we don’t yet have enough knowledge to be able to use them in a safe manner.

“CRISPR can literally re-write the genomic book inside of us. However, it remains unknown how often it might go to the wrong page or paragraph, so to speak, or stay on the right page, but make an undesired edit there.”

Tiny errors in editing the genome, particularly at such an early stage in an embryo’s development, could have profound and unintended consequences years down the road, resulting in physical or developmental problems we can’t anticipate or predict. For example, you might remove the susceptibility to one disease only to create an even larger problem, one that is now embedded in that person’s DNA and ready to be passed on to subsequent generations.

The book includes interviews with key figures in the field – scientists, bioethicists etc. – and covers a wide range of views of what we should do. For example, the Director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, said that designer babies “make good Hollywood — and bad science,” while the Center for Genetics and Society has advocated for a moratorium on human genetic modification in the US.

In contrast, scientists such as Harvard professor George Church and CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley, say we need to carefully explore how to harness the potential for these technologies.

For Church it is a matter of choice:

“The new technology enables parents to make choices about their children just as they might with Ritalin or cleft palate surgery to ‘improve’ behavior or appearance.”

For Doudna it’s acknowledging the fact that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle:

“There’s no way to unlearn what is learned. We can’t put this technology to bed. If a person has basic knowledge of molecular biology they can do it. It’s not realistic to think we can block it…We want to put out there the information that people would need to make an informed decision, to encourage appropriate research and discourage forging ahead with clinical applications that could be dangerous or raise ethical issues.”

The power of Paul’s book is that while it does not offer any easy answers, it does raise many important questions.

It’s a wonderfully well-written book that anyone can read, even someone like me who doesn’t have a science background. He does a good job of leading the reader through the development of these technologies (from the basic idea of genetically altering plants to make them disease resistant) to the portrayal of these concepts in literature (Frankenstein and Brave New World) to movies (Gattaca – 4 stars on Rotten Tomatoes  a great film if you haven’t already seen it).

It’s clear where Paul stands on the issue; he believes there should be a moratorium on human genetic modification until we have a much deeper understanding of the science behind it, and the ethics and morality underpinning it:

“This is a very exciting time to be alive and we should be open to embracing change, but not blindly or in a rush. Armed with information and passion, we can have a major, positive impact on how this biotech revolution unfolds and impacts humanity.”

By the way, Paul also has one of the most widely read blogs about stem cells, where you can read more about his thoughts on CRISPR and other topics.

 

How to handle CRISPR: Formulating a responsible approach to gene-editing

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

shutterstock_367760708

In February 2016, CIRM sponsored a workshop to discuss the impact of CRISPR, a gene-editing tool that is transforming stem cell research. The workshop was designed to enable the Standards Working Group  (SWG) to reflect on policies governing the review and oversight of embryo research support by CIRM.

After the workshop, we wrote a blog about some of the important questions that came up during the discussion. There is also a written and audio transcript of the meeting here.

Since then, the CIRM Team has been working with the co-chairs of the Standards Working Group to develop draft recommendations for how CIRM could address the workshop questions. The draft recommendations may be found here.

As we noted in June 2015, these deliberations and subsequent recommendations are designed to inform the responsible uses of genome editing technologies with CIRM funds. In particular, CIRM continues to place a priority on funding research that does not receive timely or sufficient federal funding – for example research involving human embryos.

As was discussed at the workshop, donors indicated strong support for embryo research for:

  1. Understanding human development and
  2. Creating stem cell lines.

Genome editing may be applied to both types of research.

The draft recommendations are intended to ensure such work may occur under high ethical standards. After the Standards Working Group review, the final recommendations will be forwarded to CIRM’s governing Board, the ICOC, for approval. We hope that will happen this summer.

Timing is everything: could CRISPR gene editing push CIRM to change its rules on funding stem cell research?

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

CRISPR

Talk about timely. When we decided, several months ago, to hold a Standards Working Group (SWG) meeting to talk about the impact of CRISPR, a tool that is transforming the field of human gene editing, we had no idea that our meeting would fall smack in the midst of a flurry of news stories about the potential, but also the controversy, surrounding this approach.

Within a few days of our meeting lawmakers in the UK had approved the use of CRISPR for gene editing in human embryos for fertility research —a controversial first step toward what some see as a future of designer babies. And a U.S. Food and Drug Advisory report said conducting mitochondrial therapy research on human embryos is “ethically permissible”, under very limited conditions.

So it was clear from the outset that the SWG meeting was going to be touching on some fascinating and fast moving science that was loaded with ethical, social and moral questions.

Reviewing the rules

The goal of the meeting was to see if, in the light of advances with tools like CRISPR, we at CIRM needed to make any changes to our rules and regulations regarding the funding of this kind of work. We already have some strong guidelines in place to help us determine if we should fund work that involves editing human embryos, but are they strong enough?

There were some terrific speakers – including Nobel Prize winner Dr. David Baltimore; Alta Charo, a professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison  ; and Charis Thompson, chair of the Center for the Science, Technology, and Medicine in Society at the University of California, Berkeley – who gave some thought-provoking presentations. And there was also a truly engaged audience who offered some equally thought provoking questions.

CIRM Board member Jeff Sheehy highlighted how complex and broad ranging the issues are when he posed this question:

“Do we need to think about the rights of the embryo donor? If they have a severe inheritable disease and the embryo they donated for research has been edited, with CRISPR or other tools, to remove that potential do they have a right to know about that or even access to that technology for their own use?”

Alta Charo said this is not just a question for scientists, but something that could potentially affect everyone and so there is a real need to engage as many groups as possible in discussing it:

“How and to what extent do you involve patient advocates, members of the disability rights community and social justice community – racial or economic or geographic.  This is why we need these broader conversations, so we include all perspectives as we attempt to draw up guidelines and rules and regulations.”

It quickly became clear that the discussion was going to be even more robust than we imagined, and the issues raised were too many and too complex for us to hope to reach any conclusions or produce any recommendations in one day.

As Bernie Lo, President of the Greenwall Foundation in New York, who chaired the meeting said:

“We are not going to resolve these issues today, in fact what we have done is uncover a lot more issues and complexity.”

Time to ask tough questions

In the end it was decided that the most productive use of the day was not to limit the discussion at the workshop but to get those present to highlight the issues and questions that were most important and leave it to the SWG to then work through those and develop a series of recommendations that would eventually be presented to the CIRM Board.

The questions to be answered included but were not limited to:

1) Do we need to reconsider the language used in getting informed consent from donors in light of the ability of CRISPR and other technologies to do things that we previously couldn’t easily do?

2) Can we use CRISPR on previously donated materials/samples where general consent was given without knowing that these technologies could be available or can we only use it on biomaterials to be collected going forward?

3) Clarify whether the language we use about genetic modification should also include mitochondrial DNA as well as nuclear DNA.

4) What is the possibility that somatic or adult cell gene editing may lead to inadvertent germ line editing (altering the genomes of eggs and sperm will pass on these genetic modifications to the next generation).

5) How do we engage with patient advocates and other community groups such as the social justice and equity movements to get their input on these topics? Do we need to do more outreach and education among the public or specific groups and try to get more input from them (after all we are a taxpayer created and funded organization so we clearly have some responsibility to the wider California community and not just to researchers and patients)?

6) As CIRM already funds human embryo research should we now consider funding the use of CRISPR and other technologies that can modify the human embryo provided those embryos are not going to be implanted in a human uterus, as is the case with the recently approved research in the UK.

Stay tuned, more to come!

This was a really detailed dive into a subject that is clearly getting a lot of scientific attention around the world, and is no longer an abstract idea but is rapidly becoming a scientific reality. The next step is for a subgroup of the SWG to put together the key issues at stake here and place them in a framework for another discussion with the full SWG at some future date.

Once the SWG has reached consensus their recommendations will then go to the CIRM Board for its consideration.

We will be sure to update you on this as things progress.

To modify, or not to modify: Experts discuss human germline modification at WSCS15

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

The question of whether human germline modification, or the genetic modification of human reproductive cells, should be allowed or banned was discussed by a panel of experts in the Ethics, Law and Society session during Day 1 of the World Stem Cell Summit.

On the panel were Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation, Paul Knoepfler, Associate Professor at the UC Davis school of medicine (and a CIRM grantee), and Aaron Levine, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.

Aubrey de Grey, Paul Knoepfler, Aaron Levine

Aubrey de Grey, Paul Knoepfler, Aaron Levine

What Paul Knoepfler said…

On the basic research side, Paul discussed how CRISPR has revolutionized the way germline modification is being done from the older, costly, time-consuming method using homologous recombination to the faster, more efficient, and cheaper gene editing technology that is CRISPR.

In the big picture, he said that, “people will pursue germline modification with a variety of different goals.” He further explained that because this will likely happen in the future, scientists need to consider the risks (off target effects to name one) and the societal and ethical impacts of this technology. Another question he said we should consider is, whether as a society, we support the modification of the germline for health or enhancement reasons.

He concluded with a recap of last week’s International Summit on Human Gene Editing saying that while the organizers didn’t put forth a definitive statement on whether there should be a moratorium on editing the human germline, he himself believes that there should be a temporary moratorium on the clinical use of this technology since the idea is still very controversial and there is no overall consensus within the scientific community.

What Aubrey de Grey said…

Aubrey began by saying that as a gerontologist, he is interested in all potential therapies that could postpone the effects of old age, many of which could involve genetic modification. He went on to say that it might not seem intuitive that editing the human germline would be applicable to fighting aging, but that:

“Even though the medical imperative to engaging genetic germline modification may seem to be less clear in the case of aging than it is for inherited diseases, which people are unequivocally agreed on that is a bad thing, never-the-less, the potential application to aging may actually play a significant role in the debate, because we’ve all got aging.”

He gave an example of the ApoE4 gene. If you have two copies of this form of the gene instead of the normal ApoE3 gene, then you have a very high risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease and atherosclerosis. He posed the question to the audience, asking them whether if they knew that they had this disease causing gene, would they consider genetically altering their fertilized eggs back into the safe ApoE3 version to prevent their offspring from inheriting disease even if the therapy wasn’t approved by the FDA. It’s a hard question to answer and Aubrey further commented that if we begin using genetic modification to prevent one disease, where would we draw the line and where would modification end?

He ended with saying that the real question we need to consider is “whether people will want to do germline modification against aging, even though the modifications may really be more in the way of enhancements than genuine therapies.”

What Aaron Levine said…

Aaron Levine began with saying that the question of human germline modification is an old question with new twists. By new twists he meant the recent advances in gene editing technologies like CRISPR and Zinc Finger Nucleases. He further commented that the baseline question of this debate is whether we should modify the DNA of the germline, and that how we do it isn’t as significant.

He played devil’s advocate by saying that germline editing would greatly benefit single gene disorders, but that we should think of the full spectrum. Many traits that we might want, we don’t know enough about and attempting to add or remove these traits using gene editing would be like shooting in the dark.

On policy side, Aaron commented that international policy harmonization would be nice, but that we should treat it skeptically. He said that not everyone is going to agree or follow the same rules and we need to consider this going forward. As for the FDA, he said that its role and regulations regarding germline editing aren’t clear and that these need to be defined.

One really interesting point he made was the issue of unproven stem cell clinics. They exist and pose a huge risk to human health. The real question, he said, is could this turn into unproven CRISPR clinics around the world? He ended with saying that someone will claim to offer this technology soon and asked what we should do about it.

From the peanut gallery…

One of the questions asked by the audience was whether it’s just a matter of time that one of the world’s governments might go forward with human germline modification because of the huge medical implications.

Paul responded first saying that there was a consensus at the gene editing summit that it’s more of a question of when, rather than if this would happen. Aaron agreed and said that he believed it would happen but wasn’t sure when, and followed with saying that the more important question is how it will be done, overseen, and what reasons the editing will be done for.

Bernie Siegel, who is the co-Chair of the World Stem Cell Summit, spoke at the end and said that the panel delivered exactly what he hoped it would. He emphasized a theme that I didn’t mention in this blog but that was brought up by each of the panelists: the voice of patients.

“One of the things missing from the [International Summit on Gene Editing] meeting was the voice of the patient community. Do they understand the concepts of CRISPR technology? Patients are a major stake holder group, and they have the most influence on creating change in policy. When we talk about a moratorium, the patients see it as a five-alarm fire. All they want is to see a few drips of water, and they can’t get it. From a societal and popular culture standpoint, these are a whole group of people that will be experiencing the sweeping changes of biotech today. When those voices that are receiving these technologies enter the conversation, it will be a full debate.”