The $8M grant was one of three awarded today by CIRM as part of the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinics (CASC) Network Initiative. The joint UCLA/UCI award under the direction of Dr. John Adams, a member of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center and professor in the department of orthopaedic surgery, will accelerate the implementation of clinical trials and delivery of stem cell therapies by providing world-class, state-of-the-art infrastructure to support clinical research.
CIRM grant reviewers lauded the UCLA/UCI Consortium’s “impressive and multidimensional team of experienced personnel” that will expand “access to patients, attracting national and international clinical trials and accelerating future trials in the pipeline.”
The initial stem cell trials supported by the UCLA/UCI Alpha Stem Cell Clinic will be two UCLA projects using blood forming stem cells. The first trial will test a stem cell-based gene therapy for patients with “bubble baby disease,” also called severe combined immune deficiency (SCID), in which babies are born without an immune system. Under the direction of Dr. Donald Kohn, the clinical trial will use the baby’s own stem cells with an inserted gene modification to correct the defect and promote the creation of an immune system. The second clinical trial, under the direction of Dr. Antoni Ribas, will use patient’s own genetically modified blood-forming stem cells to engineer and promote an immune response to melanoma and sarcomas.
“This CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic grant is an important acknowledgement of our cutting-edge research and will help us to advance the design, testing and delivery of effective and safe stem cell-based therapies,” said Dr. Owen Witte, professor and director of the Broad Stem Cell Research Center. “The implementation of a standard of excellence in clinical research will improve healthcare and the lives of patients far beyond the longevity of individual trials.”
Operating as part of the larger state-wide CIRM supported network, Alpha Stem Cell Clinics provide critical operational support to conduct clinical trials, with focused resources and expertise in stem cell-based clinical research including clinical operations support and patient care coordination personnel.
“UCI has established a strong preclinical stem cell research program, and it’s vital to move ahead to the clinical testing phase,” said Sidney Golub, director of UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. “To advance treatments in this field, we all have to work together, and that’s what the UCLA-UCI Alpha Stem Cell Clinic program represents.”
About the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research
The stem cell center was launched in 2005 with a UCLA commitment of $20 million over five years. A $20 million gift from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation in 2007 resulted in the renaming of the center. With more than 200 members, the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research is committed to a multi-disciplinary, integrated collaboration of scientific, academic and medical disciplines for the purpose of understanding adult and human embryonic stem cells. The center supports innovation, excellence and the highest ethical standards focused on stem cell research with the intent of facilitating basic scientific inquiry directed towards future clinical applications to treat disease. The center is a collaboration of the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the UCLA College of Letters and Science.
To learn more about the center, visit http://www.stemcell.ucla.edu
About the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UC Irvine
The Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UC Irvine is one of the largest and most technologically advanced stem cell research facilities in the world. The center was established in 2010, in part through a $10 million gift from Bill & Sue Gross. For more than 40 years, its team of scientists and multiple research and graduate assistants have worked to unlock the potential of stem cells for treating and curing an estimated 70 major diseases and disorders. Advances have led to the world’s first clinical trial of a human neural stem cell-based therapy for chronic spinal cord injury and the first FDA-approved clinical trial using human embryonic stem cells.
For more information, visit http://www.stemcell.uci.edu
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