2009 Annual Report: International Partnerships

High-throughput data
analysis robot

Sanford-Burnham
Medical Research Institute

	CIRM International Partners
	Victoria, Australia Cancer Stem Cell Consortium, Canada Medical Research Council, UK Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany Maryland Technology Development Corporation, Maryland, US Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), China

News at CIRM:

International Partnerships

CIRM is reaching across the continent and across oceans to bring together the world’s leading stem cell investigators.

This year, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research each laid the foundation for collaborations with California researchers under new agreements brokered by CIRM. Those four join the Japan Science & Technology Agency, Canada’s Cancer Stem Cell Consortium, the state of Victoria in Australia and the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom in signing agreements that make it easier for researchers in California to collaborate with leaders in stem cell research around the world.

“One of CIRM’s primary goals is to accelerate the field of stem cell research as a whole,” said Dr. Alan Trounson, Ph.D., president of CIRM. “In some instances, we can do this more effectively through collaborations that involve the best scientific endeavors, regardless of geography.”

The agreements will ease collaborations between California scientists and other researchers. With this broader pool of expertise, teams submit joint applications for funding in specific research areas. When an application is approved, CIRM funds the California team members, and the other sponsoring institution funds scientists from their locales.

Already Canada has committed approximately $35 million (U.S.), the state of Victoria, Australia has committed $5.4 million (U.S.) and the United Kingdom has committed roughly $8 million to fund those portions of research taking place in the United Kingdom as part of jointly collaborative teams.

Canada

Two teams of California and Canadian researchers are on a search-and-destroy mission. Their target: the cells that give rise to cancer.

Canada is a leader in cancer stem cell research, with researchers who were at the forefront in identifying cancer stem cells in blood cancers.

In October CIRM approved two U.S.-Canadian collaborations worth approximately $75 million (U.S.) with one common theme: the belief that cancer grows from aberrant stem cells. Researchers hypothesize that chemotherapy fails and disease recurs because current treatments are scattershot, killing many cells but missing the stem cell source of disease.

One team will focus on adult leukemia, which kills half of all adults diagnosed with it. Investigators have identified possible targets on leukemia stem cells where the cancers are vulnerable, as well as candidate drugs that may be capable of striking those targets. They hope to bring new therapies to trial in four years. The second team studies solid tumors affecting the brain, colon and ovaries, looking for drugs that attack cancer stem cells. The group hopes to develop two to three investigational drugs through a novel drug-development approach that relies on distinguishing the cancer-initiating cells from the rest of the tumor cells for targeted therapy.

The leukemia cancer team includes Dennis Carson, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego, and John Dick, Ph.D., of the University Health Network in Toronto, Ontario. Dennis Slamon, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of California, Los Angeles, along with Tak Mak, Ph.D., at University Health Network, lead the solid tumor work.

Australia

Every promising stem cell treatment faces the same hurdle: assuring the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that the cells cannot run amok. Developing tools to eliminate any undifferentiated stem cells that are capable of going astray is at the heart of one of four new collaborations between California investigators and researchers in Australia.

The collaborations announced in May grew from an agreement signed last year by CIRM and the state of Victoria, the heart of Australia’s stem cell research community.

Jeanne Loring, Ph.D., of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, in partnership with Andrew Laslett, Ph.D., of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, aims to design a way to rigorously select and destroy unwanted cells before stem cell transplantation.

The other partnerships are: Evan Snyder, M.D., Ph.D., of Burnham Institute of Medical Research in La Jolla with Clare Parish, Ph.D., of Florey Neurosciences Institutes and Colin Pouton, Ph.D., of Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Victoria, for research into Parkinson’s disease; Justine Cunningham, Ph.D., of Novocell Inc. in San Diego, in partnership with Andrew Elefanty, M.D., Ph.D., and Ed Stanley, Ph.D., both of the Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories, to develop tools for diabetes treatment that recognize and eliminate undifferentiated stem cells that may form benign growths; and Frank LaFerla, Ph.D., of the University of California, Irvine, in cooperation with Richard Boyd, Ph.D., of Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories, to study a stem cell therapy for Alzheimer’s disease and find ways to prevent immune rejection of the new cells without the prolonged use of immunosuppressants.

United Kingdom
A research team composed of California and United Kingdom scientists hope to make cellular patches to repair the fabric of the eye that degrades in age-related macular degeneration. The collaboration will take a promising model for the treatment of the dry form of macular degeneration into clinical trials.

In a roughly $24 million program, funded by both CIRM and the United Kingdom, Mark Humayun, M.D., Ph.D., and David Hinton, M.D., both of the University of Southern California, as well as Dennis Clegg, Ph.D., of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and British researcher Peter Coffey, Ph.D., of University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, will build from earlier work in which researchers successfully induced human embryonic stem cells to form retinal pigment epithelium cells — the cells that degrade in the dry form of macular degeneration. (Read Sights on a Cure, featuring this collaboration.)

In earlier research, the California investigators showed that such cell patches can be placed in the eye through minimally invasive surgical procedures. There, they can engraft with existing cells and rescue photoreceptors.

A therapy for this disease will help the estimated 450,000 Californians — and nearly 3 million across the country — who will lose vision due to age-related macular degeneration by 2020.

This project is one of two disease teams with international collaborators funded by the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom. The other team, led by Irving Weissman , M.D., at Stanford University, seeks to develop an antibody-based therapy that targets leukemia stem cells. Together, the MRC is contributing approximately $8 million.