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August 22, 2004
Firms see promise in adult stem cells
Current clinical trials may result in therapies for treating variety of diseases and disorders
BY MICHAEL S. ROSENWALD
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON--Biotech executive C. Randal Mills flies a lot, and he's learned what to expect. Almost as likely as getting those tiny bags of peanuts or pretzels, someone in a neighboring seat will ask, "So what do you do for a living?"
Mills says his answer -- that he's chief executive of a stem-cell research company -- is met with comebacks that fluctuate between "you must be having a really hard time" to "you must really hate President Bush."
Mills' company, Osiris Therapeutics Inc. of Baltimore, is one of about a dozen firms developing therapies using adult cells, not cells from embryos. That puts Osiris both outside and inside the national debate over stem-cell research.
It isn't directly affected by the limits placed on federal funding of embryonic-cell research by the Bush administration. But in another sense it is in the thick of the scientific and political controver-sy: If life-saving treatments can be developed with adult cells, it probably would ease pressure on the administration to reverse its stand.
Three years ago, Bush limited federal spending for research using embryonic stem cells to a number of cell "lines" already derived from 5-day-old human embryos. Some conservatives liken research on embryos to abortion, while critics of Bush's policy say he has hobbled studies that could lead to cures of a broad range of diseases.
Stem cells differ from other cells because they can divide and regenerate. Embryonic stem cells, which first were isolated in 1998, are prized by scientists for their "plasticity," the potential to grow into many other cells or tissues. Scientists have for many years theorized that adult stem cells can regenerate only as cells of the tissue from which they are drawn.
But many of the companies working with adult stem cells are staking their efforts on a series of provocative and controversial scientific studies they claim show that adult stem cells can convert into other cell types -- that cells drawn from bone marrow can grow into cardiac muscle cells, for example.
None of the companies working with adult stem cells has brought a drug to market yet, but several have treatments in clinical trials. Some struggle for funding, while a few are traded publicly. Others keep going with investments from biotech giants such as Amgen Inc. and Boston Scientific Corp. Like other biotech start-ups, all face skepticism as they try to show that their research can work as medicine and as a business.
The debate over adult stem cells, including among patients and investors, concerns whether they ever will approach the potential of embryonic stem cells, proponents of which predict revolutionary therapies to cure diseases such as Parkinson's.
That question prompts impassioned disagreements between those who favor and those who oppose expanded research on embryonic cells.
"Adult stem cells are really where the real progress is being made," said Jay Lefkowitz, a former Bush adviser on stem-cell policy.
"This is voodoo science," said Steve Brozak, a New York biotechnology investment banker who is running for Congress in New Jersey as a Democrat. "This is only a political sidestep. Adult stem-cell research holds no real promise that I can see. It's not usable."
Executives and academics who work with adult stem cells note that last year the National Institutes of Health spent $190 million on adult stem-cell research and that there are hundreds of clinical trials in progress using such cells. In comparison, the NIH spent $24.8 million on embryonic stem-cell research last year, though that may be in part a gauge of the political challenges to doing such research. There are no clinical trials in progress using embryonic stem cells, according to the NIH.
Adult stem cells are used in bone-marrow transplants and to treat certain cases of blood disorders and leukemia. Companies say they are in the early stages of devising treatments for heart attacks, liver disease, bone and cartilage diseases and brain disorders.
"It is mind-blowing stuff," said Johns Hopkins University professor Saul Sharkis, who recently published a study maintaining that his lab converted bone-marrow stem cells from animal donors into healthy liver cells. "I never would have thought this would be possible."
Osiris, which grew out of research by scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, is using stem cells from bone-marrow donors to target, among other maladies, heart disease, specifically heart attacks. It is in early-stage human testing of a therapy in which heart-attack patients are injected intravenously with stem cells that are said to migrate to the heart and replace damaged cells.
Mills said the company has patented technology that allows it to take a small amount of bone marrow, extract the stem cells, and grow them into thousands of stem-cell doses. "We've developed a process to find the needle in the haystack and grow it thousands and thousands of times over," he said.
But even some advocates of adult stem-cell research are skeptical that technology has yet been developed to isolate enough adult stem cells from donor samples for therapeutic use, let alone reproduce them in large quantities.
The other obstacle for adult stem-cell companies is funding. Only a few are publicly held -- StemCells Inc. in California, Aastrom Biosciences Inc. in Michigan, Curis Inc. in Massachusetts among them -- and investors haven't shown much enthusiasm for them lately.
Most others, like Osiris, are privately held and only now are changing from university spinoffs to profit-conscious companies, using a combination of grants and the capital markets. Mills declined to disclose who has invested in the company, which has 50 employees, though he said it has received several multimillion-dollar grants from the Defense Department and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Landing investors is tricky for companies that are early in the clinical process, especially with unproven adult stem cells.
The key, said Mills and other executives, is corporate partnerships. Osiris is partnering, under undisclosed financial terms, with Boston Scientific in developing cardiac treatments. Mills said he hopes to take Osiris public, perhaps by the end of 2005.
The partnerships provide not only cash but also validation, the message that a well-financed, established firm thinks that the research might lead to useful, profitable medicines.
Posted by Nealus at August 22, 2004 11:29 PM
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