Monthly Archives: November 2020

When the Language of Cells is Interrupted – UC San Diego Health

Posted: November 13, 2020 at 4:54 am

New Cell Signaling Center supports research on the most fundamental of cellular functionand development of therapeutics that target them

As Alexandra Newton took the stage late last year to give an invited lecture at the University of Dundee in Scotland, the event host introduced her as hailing from San Diego, the other top cell signaling community in the world.

Alexandra Newton (right) and members of her lab at UC San Diego School of Medicine (pictured pre-COVID-19 pandemic.

Until that moment, Newton hadnt thought of it that way. Yet it struck her as true.

We probably dont fully appreciate our own depth of expertise because its our normal, said Newton, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. So, I figured if this university has a center dedicated to cell signaling, surely UC San Diego should as well.

And so Newton, with colleague Jin Zhang, professor of pharmacology, launched the Cell Signaling Center at UC San Diego. Their goal is to unite researchers passionate about understanding cell signaling, and leveraging it to treat disease.

Newton describes cell signaling as the language cells use to communicate among themselves and with the outside world. Say, a signal knocks on a cells outer door, so to speakinsulin, for example. The signal first needs to get the message inside the cell, then trigger a change in behavior, such as taking up glucose in this example, or growing, dividing or secreting.

That cascade of events is known as cell signaling, and its a language many scientists want to speak so that they can better understand the many ways it can go awry.

If I talked super-fast or way too slowly, youd have trouble understanding me, Newton said. Similarly, a change in cell signaling can lead to miscommunication, and ultimately to disease.

Within the complex language of cells, there are a few commonly used phrasesphosphorylation is one key example. In phosphorylation, enzymes called kinases add phosphate groups to proteins and other enzymes called phosphatases remove them, changing protein conformation or activity back and forth like a switch. Whether or not a phosphate group is present in a particular place and time can drastically change cell behavior.

Cell signaling malfunctions can lead to a variety of diseases. For example, a sped-up kinase in one pathway might allow cells to divide out of control, leading to cancer. A slowdown of the same kinase may contribute to untimely cell death, as might occur in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimers.

If we know what has gone wrong, we are in a better position to fix it, Newton said.

Lets say you are repeatedly inserting a wrong word in your sentences, Newton said. We need to find the wrong word and replace it with the correct wordthats what were doing with targeted therapeutics.

Often, very small changes are sufficient to disrupt the normal balance of cell signaling. If just a few atoms in one amino acid, the building block of proteins, are off in a kinase, it could cause the enzyme to start spitting out phosphate groups 30 percent faster, changing the behavior of the cell, causing Alzheimers or some other disease, and we need therapeutic drugs to slow it down.

Graduate students in Alexandra Newtons lab hold a model of Protein Kinase C (pictured pre-COVID-19 pandemic).

There are more than 500 protein kinases operating in our cells, and many current and experimental drugs work by inhibiting these enzymes. One example is the drug imatinib (brand name Gleevec), a kinase inhibitor that has been a game-changer in treating some types of leukemia.

For decades, many researchers had also attempted to develop drugs that inhibit Protein Kinase C (PKC), Newtons favorite cell signaling molecule, as a means to treat cancer. But in 2015, Newtons team reversed this 30-year paradigm when they reported evidence that PKC actually suppresses, rather than promotes, tumors. Their work implied that anti-cancer drugs would actually need to do the oppositeboost PKC activity.

PKC enzymes are the perfect example of the need to understand the complex biochemistry of our target molecules before we start targeting them in therapies, Newton said.

UC San Diegos global reputation as a leader in cell signaling research grew out of decades of discoveries.

Susan Taylor, professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is best known for solving the first crystal structure of a protein kinase (PKA, a relative of PKC) in 1991. The structure revealed how kinases are shaped, how their various pieces come together and how they perform their enzymatic reactions.

Ill never forget sitting as a group in the San Diego Supercomputer Center one afternoon, looking at a screen together and seeing PKA in 3Dit was so amazing to realize that we were the only people in the world to see the structure, and to know it was just the beginning of a big family of enzymes, Taylor said.

PKA is still considered the poster child for kinases today.

The crystal structure of Protein Kinase A (PKA), shown here, was first solved by Susan Taylor and team in 1991. Its still considered the gold standard for kinase structures today.

Taylor originally came to UC San Diego as a postdoctoral researcher in 1971, training in the lab of biochemist Nathan Kaplan. There, she worked alongside a number of talented, eager scientists, including graduate student J. Craig Venter and fellow postdoc Jack Dixon.

Venter went on to lead the effort to sequence the human genome. He is currently CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute.

Dixon became the first to clone, express and characterize a number of phosphatases (the enzymes that do the opposite of kinasesremove phosphate groups). He also discovered the substrate of the tumor-suppressing enzyme PTEN, which shares some structural similarities with the phosphatases he studied. Dixons work suggested cell signaling pathways that could be targeted to treat cancers lacking PTEN. He is now Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego, where his team is studying a largely overlooked family of secreted kinases.

In the late 1970s, Taylor also taught Dr. Brian Druker when he was an undergraduate and then a medical student at UC San Diegobefore he went on to help develop the kinase-inhibitor drug Gleevec, the first FDA-approved therapeutic that works by specifically targeting a molecular defect unique to cancer cells, making it more effective and less damaging to healthy cells.

In addition to kinases and phosphatases, UC San Diego School of Medicine is home to many experts on G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), molecules that span cell membranes, where they transmit messages between cells and their environments.

Like kinases, many therapeutic drugs work by influencing GPCRs. Joan Heller Brown, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, for example, is known for fundamental contributions to the understanding of GPCRs and how they regulate cell growth and survival in healthy and various disease states, while Dr. Paul Insel, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Medicine, is an expert in the genomics of GPCRs. Silvio Gutkind, who recently succeeded Heller Brown as chair of the Department of Pharmacology, and team are developing innovative anti-cancer prevention and treatment options that work by targeting GPCRs.

Much of todays cell signaling research relies heavily on leading-edge tools that have grown out of the work of late Nobel Laureate and UC San Diego Professor Roger Tsientools that allow researchers to eavesdrop on cellular conversations.

Tsien, recruited to UC San Diego in 1989, shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and application of green fluorescent protein (GFP), which allows some jellyfish to glow. While colleagues discovered and isolated the GFP gene, Tsien found ways to tweak its makeup, making it glow more brightly and consistently. Then, he created a full color palette of fluorescent proteins that scientists could use to track the molecular goings-on within a cell.

GFP and its many colorful cousins (with names like mCherry and mOrange) quickly became indispensable tools in life sciences labs around the world. Tsien, who died in 2016, often called these fluorescent tags molecular spies because they allow researchers to listen in on cellular communications, to watch molecules interact in real-time and ask questions once thought impossible.

With support from Bristol Meyers Squibb, the new Cell Signaling Center is proud to offer an Annual Roger Tsien Cell Signaling Distinguished Lecture Series in his honor.

Today, several of Tsiens trainees, including Zhang, Nathan Shaner, associate professor of neurosciences, and others are carrying on his legacy at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Shaner, original developer of the GFP-related fruit series, continues to engineer and optimize fluorescent proteins for use with newer imaging techniques. Zhang has devised a new set of fluorescent biosensors.

Our biosensors are unique in that we put in the DNA and cells assemble them for us, Zhang said. They allow us to follow a molecule of interest in a live cell, and see what it does, how, when and where.

Ultrasensitive biosensors developed by Jin Zhang and team help scientists track kinase activity in live mice.

Hardly a week goes by in which there isnt a new cell signaling study by UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers published in top scientific journals. In just the last few months:

When thinking about the future of the cell signaling field, Taylor said shes perhaps most excited about recent leaps in imaging capabilities in the past few years, especially when combined with computational and engineering expertise.

For example, researchers were (virtually) lining up to collaborate with new assistant professor Johannes Schneberg after he presented his work in quantitative 4D imaging at a recent meeting. His technology can, for example, fly viewers through the mitochondria in a live human brain organoid grown in a lab.

People across disciplines have always worked together well here at UC San Diego, even from the very beginning, and that has been enhanced by many cross-campus joint appointmentslike both Johannes Schneberg and Roger Tsien, who held faculty appointments in both the School of Medicines Department of Pharmacology and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry on the main campus, Taylor said.

That collaborative spirit is the basis for the new Cell Signaling Center. According to Zhang, the center will act as a hub for researchers in the field to better connect with each other, as well as a one-stop-shop for local biopharmaceutical companies and colleagues around the world looking for the types of experts and resources that UC San Diego can provide.

Together, we are taking not a sledgehammer approach to treating disease, but a precise fine-tuning of cell signaling processes to correct their mis-regulation in disease, Zhang said. Thats the basis of precision, or personalized, pharmacology, and it starts with the kind of work were doing here at UC San Diego.

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Researchers discover two key events that turn normal cells into cancer – Penn Today

Posted: November 13, 2020 at 4:54 am

More than 100 different cancers can arise all over the body, but two universal metabolic pathways may tie them all together, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine report in a new study published online in Cell Metabolism. Researchers have long believed all cancers are governed by a common set of fundamental processes. Exactly what those were, however, has remained elusive.

Having a unifying mechanism could inform new therapeutic approaches to prevent normal cells from transforming into any type of tumor, be it breast, prostate, or colon, for example.

The team discovered how the transformation from a phenotypically normal cell to a cancerous one involves the enhancement of two key elements: antioxidant defense and nucleotide synthesis. Genes associated with cancer, they found, are super charging some cells to fight off oxidative stress and synthesize nucleotides, which cells need to survive and rapidly grow, respectively.

Since the early 1980s, numerous cancer genes have been identified. However, they often affect multiple cellular processes, which makes it very hard to really summarize what exactly turns cells cancerous, says senior author Xiaolu Yang, a professor of cancer biology in the Perelman School of Medicine. We took a unique approach and looked at the cellular changes driven by a particular metabolic enzyme, which turned out to be the key here. Strikingly, we found that for a phenotypically normal cell to become a cancer cell, all it needs to do is to be equipped with the extra capacity to endure oxidative stress and produce nucleotides.

Shut down these metabolic pathways, the study suggests, and the cells dont become cancerous.

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Common Cold Coronaviruses Tied to Less Severe COVID-19 Cases – The Scientist

Posted: November 13, 2020 at 4:54 am

There are four common cold coronaviruses that we all catch at some stage. We generate antibodies to them, but our immune memory of them fades over time, and we get re-infected.

Their names are all too easily forgottenOC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63but our immune systems may nevertheless remember them for a time. There have been hints that exposure to these common coronaviruses might offer some protection from COVID-19, mostly by looking at signs of immune memory in blood samples taken from before the pandemic. A study in the Journal of Clinical Investigationreports the first clinical evidence linking recent endemic coronavirus infections to less severe COVID-19 and even a reduced death rate in patients.

The COVID-19 disease is actually much less severe in those patients who had documented endemic coronavirus infections.

Manish Sagar, Boston Medical Center

The authors at Boston University School of Medicine found evidence for this by poring over the medical records of thousands of patients who had visited Boston Medical Center as inpatients or outpatients, most probably for respiratory illnesses, between 2015 and 2020. Each person had been assessed for infection using a PCR test that screens for bacteria and viruses, including the four endemic coronaviruses.

In total, 15,928 patients had at least one such PCR test. Of them, 875 tested positive for an endemic coronavirus (this group was called eCoV+), while the remaining 15,053 people never had a documented coronavirus infection (termed eCoV-).

Of the entire cohort, a total of 1,812 (11.4 percent) later returned for a SARS-CoV-2 test during the initial COVID-19 surge in Boston between March 12 and June 12.

Our study is the first to examine people with known endemic coronavirus infections, and compare them to people who, as far as we know, dont have any recent documented coronavirus infections, says Manish Sagar, the lead author of the study and a virologist at Boston Medical Center.

The infection rate for SARS-CoV-2 was no different between those who had a recently recorded endemic coronavirus infection (eCoV+) and those who did not have a positive test (eCoV-). This led the authors to conclude that a recent infection with endemic coronaviruses did not keep SARS-CoV-2 at bayboth groups were just as likely to become infected with the pandemic virus.

When the researchers peered closer at the data, they observed an important difference between the two groups. The COVID-19 disease is actually much less severe in those patients who had documented endemic coronavirus infections, says Sagar. The odds of intensive care unit (ICU) admission were significantly lower in eCoV+ than in eCoV- patients, and there was a trend towards lower odds of mechanical ventilation, the authors write in their report.

The data also show that among hospitalized patients who had previous positive test results for endemic coronavirus, 4.8 percent of them died compared with 17.7 percent among those in the group without such a test result.

Local immune memory may help explain these results. Such heterotypic immunity, says immunologist Joseph Mizgerd, director of the pulmonary center at Boston University School of Medicine, occurs when immune memory is etched into the lungs and/or nose. Its common after other types of respiratory infections and might offer protection against SARS-CoV-2 if elicited by endemic coronaviruses. Although the Boston group did not measure this type of immunity in patients, they now hypothesize that local immunity gained from endemic coronaviruses helps limit lung injury during COVID-19. We are testing that in ongoing experiments, Mizgerd says by email. He adds that such cross-reactive immunity is often mediated by memory T cells, which can localize in the lung, and he notes that lung-localized heterotypic T cells can prevent severe lung infection during pneumonias caused by other types of respiratory pathogens.

If indeed prior infection does ramp up protection against SARS-CoV-2, the study could not answer how long it takes for any such benefit to taper off. Nor did the work shed light on which of the four endemic coronaviruses in particular might be offering protection against the pandemic virus. The scientists are seeking funding to expand their research and include data from other institutions.

Mizgerd and his team did not look into which immune components may be responsible for an endemic coronavirus influencing a persons immune response to SARS-CoV-2. This is something that immunologist Dennis Burton at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues have investigated.

Since the start of the pandemic, they have been interested in whether pre-existing immune responses to seasonal coronaviruses could influence antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2. In a study published in September as a preprint on bioRxiv, Burton and colleagues compared serum antibodies and antibody-producing B cells from 36 donors sampled prior to the pandemic to see whether those antibodies reacted with the spike protein from the new pandemic virus. Very few antibodies from before the pandemic reacted to SARS-CoV-2, the team found. The vast majority did not bind strongly to the new virus, although they did identify one antibody that could neutralize SARS-CoV-2.

The group also detected memory B cells in blood samples from before the pandemic that were turned on by the presence of SARS-CoV-2. This activation triggered them to make antibodies that reacted against some proteins made by SARS-CoV-2. That would suggest that there is some cross reactivity there, says Burton.

A cross-protective vaccine that protects against SARS-CoV-2 plus the endemic coronaviruses would be a really great boon.

Manish Sagar, Boston Medical Center

A recent Sciencestudy reported that 5 percent of 302 adults and 43 percent of 48 children had antibodies that reacted against certain proteins produced by SARS-CoV-2. Children are more prone to common cold coronavirus infections, perhaps explaining why they might harbor such antibodies, and why they suffer less severe COVID-19 symptoms.

We do not know yet if the presence of such antibodies modifies the risk of becoming infected or the severity of disease, senior author George Kassiotis at the Francis Crick Institute in London explains by email. There are conserved parts of the S2 peptide of the spike protein, such as the fusion peptide, in most coronaviruses that are targeted by such cross-reactive and potentially cross-protective antibodies, Kassiotis notes. This may hold promise for a universal vaccine protecting against current, as well as future CoVs, the authors write in their Sciencepaper.

Kassiotis says that concerns that antibody immunity might be short-lived have now been allayed by recent studies and adds that even if antibodies fell below detectable levels, the cells that made them will still be there and will respond faster and better to re-infection.

Antibodies and B cells are part of only one aspect of our immune memory to viruses. Multiple investigations since the beginning of the pandemic have suggested that between 20 percent and 50 percent of people who had never encountered SARS-CoV-2 had T cells that nevertheless seemed to react against peptides from this virus, as noted recently in a Sciencepaper.

In another study in Nature, researchers in Singapore identified memory T cells in patients who had recovered from SARS back in 2003. These were reactive to proteins from SARS-CoV-2, supporting the idea that T cell memory from infections with human coronaviruses may play a role in the response to an infection with the new pandemic virus.

An additional study recently published in Scienceused human blood samples from before the pandemic to locate parts of SARS-CoV-2 that stimulated existing T cells. The study found a range of memory T cells that could react to both the new virus but also to the four common cold coronaviruses, again suggesting that existing T cells against common coronaviruses could play a role in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in some patients.

Immunologist Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa who was not involved in any of these studies says that everybody should have memory B cells against common cold coronaviruses. We may also have memory T cells that remember these viruses and perhaps help with fighting SAR-CoV-2. However, Perlman emphasized that the implications of this for COVID-19 is still a work in progress.

Burton says he hopes to dig into a molecular understanding of the cross-reactivity of antibodies, which might help design a vaccine against not just SARS-CoV-2, but common cold coronaviruses too. These viruses usually cause mild symptoms, but not always.

A cross-protective vaccine that protects against SARS-CoV-2 plus the endemic coronaviruses would be a really great boon, says Sagar. These coronaviruses are causes of the common cold, but they are also really important causes of pneumonia, pneumonia hospitalizations, and pneumonia deaths.

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Expert poses new theory on what really killed woman in Harper Woods jail – Detroit Free Press

Posted: November 13, 2020 at 4:54 am

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The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office will ask an outsidemedical examiner to review the autopsy report of a woman who died earlier this year in the Harper Woods jail.

Priscilla Slater, 38, of Detroit, died inthe Harper Woods jail on June 10. Her deathprompted protests, the firing of two police officers for altering the police report detailing the discovery of her body, and the resignation of the city's longtimemayor after he told a meeting that he understood how someone could become a white supremacist.

Priscilla Slater, 38, of Detroit, died in the Harper Woods jail on June 10.(Photo: LaTasha Slater)

Slater was arrested about 1:30 a.m. on June 9 at the Parkcrest Inn in Harper Woods, after her boyfriend, Lewis Nichols, 27, also of Detroit, allegedly fired 18 shots into the parking lot.She died the next day.

The Michigan State Police investigated Slater's death. Their findings have been turned over to Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office, which is conducting its own investigation.

A Wayne County Medical Examiner's report reached no certain conclusion about the cause of Slater's death. In the absence of pathological findings, the report speculated that an irregular heartbeat caused by abnormally angled coronary arteriescould have resulted in Slater's sudden death.

Protesters gather outside of Harper Wood Police Department while marching through Harper Woods for Priscilla Slater on July 24, 2020. Slater was found unresponsive in a Harper Woods Police Department holding cell in June 2020.(Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)

But Oakland County ChiefMedical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic, M.D., who reviewed the autopsy report at the Free Press' request, calledthat theory "nonsense."

Because of the condition of Slater's liver, Dragovic said in an interview this week, "the most likely diagnosis that one can propose, without being able to see the details ofthe microscopic slides, is that she died from alcoholwithdrawal.If she was not monitored in the cell, thatis a big problem."

The autopsy report notes that video of the jail cell appears to show Slater having a seizure about 5:10 a.m. Her body was discovered in the cellmore than seven hourslater,at12:30 p.m.,

Oakland County (Mich.) Medical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic.(Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The report does not state a time of death,but says the seizure may have occurred as Slater died.

Dragovic saidSlater's apparent seizure was not consistentwith the heart condition the Wayne County report says killed her.

"The presenting terminal events are not in concordance with a sudden onset of arrhythmia," he said.

Worthy said Wednesday that her office had not previouslybeen aware of the possibility that Slater died of alcohol withdrawal. Alcohol withdrawal is not mentioned in the Wayne County Medical Examiner's report.

"This information was not part of any investigation," she said. "Because of this new information, we feel we need to get an independent medical examinerto review the report."

Worthy added that the need to enlist an additional expert would delay the completion of her own office's report.

Edward Jouney, an addiction specialist and assistant clinical professor in the psychiatry department at Michigan Medicine, said jails should screen people who are in custody at intake to identify substance abuse and the risk of withdrawal. He noted he was speaking generally ofjail practices.

Demonstrators march down the streets of Harper Woods on July 15, 2020, demanding to know what happened to Priscilla Slater while she was in police custody. Slater was arrested by Harper Woods police and taken into custody on June 9, 2020.(Photo: Rodney Coleman-Robinson, Detroit Free Press)

"The first thing that should be done is to take a history to see if the individual has been using any alcoholor drugs, then quantify to see how much they're using," he said. "The body acclimates to drugs or alcohol, and experiences a change in physiology. When you go into jail, you're obviously not provided with alcohol. Thebody is going to react, and go into whats called alcohol withdrawal syndrome."

Most people, he said, will survive alcohol withdrawal with a minimum of care. But some will require medical treatment, and the condition can be life-threatening.

"Some people may necessitate admission to an ICU, and can experience severe problems. If they have a history of regular alcohol use, they (jailofficials)need to regularly assess them for symptoms of alcohol withdrawal."

It's unclear whether Slater was screened for drug or alcohol use, or whether she was offered any treatment while in custody. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office denied a Freedom of Information Act request for police reports related to Slater's arrest and time in custody, citing the ongoing investigation.

LaTasha Slater, Priscilla Slater's sister, said Wednesday that Dragovic'sexplanation makes sense. Priscilla Slater worked hard, but she played hard, LaTasha said and that often meant drinking hard.

LaTasha had rejected the idea that her sister died of a previously undetected heart abnormality. But she said Dragovic's theory provides amore plausible explanation for her sister's death.

"That makes more sense to me thananything Ive heard about the whole situation," LaTasha said.

Nancy Kaffer is a columnist and member of the Free Press editorial board. She has covered local, state and national politics for two decades. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com. Become a subscriber.

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Predicting the risk of pT3a stage in cT1 clear cell renal cell carcinoma. – UroToday

Posted: November 13, 2020 at 4:54 am

We hypothesized that pT3a stage at nephrectomy can be accurately predicted in cT1N0M0 clear cell-renal cell carcinoma (cc-RCC) patients. Of 236 patients, treated with either partial or radical nephrectomy (2005-2019), 25 (10. 6%) harbored pT3a stage. Multivariable logistic regression models predicting pT3a were fitted using age, tumor size, tumor location and exophytic rate. The new model was 81% accurate. In calibration plots, minimal departures from ideal prediction were recorded. In decision curve analyses, a net-benefit throughout all threshold probabilities was recorded relative to the treat-all or treat-none strategies. Using a probability cut-off of 21% for presence of pT3a stage, 38 patients (16.1%) were identified, in whom pT3a rate was 36.8%. Conversely, in 198 patients (83.9%) below that cut-off, the rate of pT3a was 5.6%. Alternative user-defined cut-offs may be selected. The new model more accurately identifies a subgroup of cT1N0M0 cc-RCC patients with substantially higher risk of pT3a stage than average.

European journal of surgical oncology : the journal of the European Society of Surgical Oncology and the British Association of Surgical Oncology. 2020 Nov 05 [Epub ahead of print]

Luigi Nocera, Lara F Stolzenbach, Claudia Coll Ruvolo, Mike Wenzel, Zhe Tian, Giuseppe Rosiello, Carlo A Bravi, Luigi Candela, Giuseppe Basile, Alessandro Larcher, Shahrokh F Shariat, Roberto Bertini, Umberto Capitanio, Andrea Salonia, Francesco Montorsi, Alberto Briganti, Pierre I Karakiewicz

Cancer Prognostics and Health Outcomes Unit, Division of Urology, University of Montreal Health Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Division of Experimental Oncology/Unit of Urology, URI, Urological Research Institute, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy. Electronic address: ., Cancer Prognostics and Health Outcomes Unit, Division of Urology, University of Montreal Health Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Martini-Klinik Prostate Cancer Center, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany., Cancer Prognostics and Health Outcomes Unit, Division of Urology, University of Montreal Health Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Department of Neurosciences, Reproductive Sciences and Odontostomatology, University of Naples Federico II, Italy., Cancer Prognostics and Health Outcomes Unit, Division of Urology, University of Montreal Health Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Department of Urology, University Hospital Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany., Cancer Prognostics and Health Outcomes Unit, Division of Urology, University of Montreal Health Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada., Division of Experimental Oncology/Unit of Urology, URI, Urological Research Institute, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy., Department of Urology, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; Departments of Urology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA; Department of Urology, University of Texas Southwestern, Dallas, TX, USA; Department of Urology, Second Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prag, Czech Republic; Institute for Urology and Reproductive Health, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Moscow, Russia; Division of Urology, Department of Special Surgery, Jordan University Hospital, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33168336

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The story of mRNA: From a loose idea to a tool that may help curb Covid – STAT

Posted: November 11, 2020 at 1:57 pm

ANDOVER, Mass. The liquid that many hope could help end the Covid-19 pandemic is stored in a nondescript metal tank in a manufacturing complex owned by Pfizer, one of the worlds biggest drug companies. There is nothing remarkable about the container, which could fit in a walk-in closet, except that its contents could end up in the worlds first authorized Covid-19 vaccine.

Pfizer, a 171-year-old Fortune 500 powerhouse, has made a billion-dollar bet on that dream. So has a brash, young rival just 23 miles away in Cambridge, Mass. Moderna, a 10-year-old biotech company with billions in market valuation but no approved products, is racing forward with a vaccine of its own. Its new sprawling drug-making facility nearby is hiring workers at a fast clip in the hopes of making history and a lot of money.

In many ways, the companies and their leaders couldnt be more different. Pfizer, working with a little-known German biotech called BioNTech, has taken pains for much of the year to manage expectations. Moderna has made nearly as much news for its stream of upbeat press releases, executives stock sales, and spectacular rounds of funding as for its science.

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Each is well-aware of the other in the race to be first.

But what the companies share may be bigger than their differences: Both are banking on a genetic technology that has long held huge promise but has so far run into biological roadblocks. It is called synthetic messenger RNA, an ingenious variation on the natural substance that directs protein production in cells throughout the body. Its prospects have swung billions of dollars on the stock market, made and imperiled scientific careers, and fueled hopes that it could be a breakthrough that allows society to return to normalcy after months living in fear.

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Both companies have been frequently name-checked by President Trump. Pfizer reported strong, but preliminary, data on Monday, and Moderna is expected to follow suit soon with a glimpse of its data. Both firms hope these preliminary results will allow an emergency deployment of their vaccines millions of doses likely targeted to frontline medical workers and others most at risk of Covid-19.

There are about a dozen experimental vaccines in late-stage clinical trials globally, but the ones being tested by Pfizer and Moderna are the only two that rely on messenger RNA.

For decades, scientists have dreamed about the seemingly endless possibilities of custom-made messenger RNA, or mRNA.

Researchers understood its role as a recipe book for the bodys trillions of cells, but their efforts to expand the menu have come in fits and starts. The concept: By making precise tweaks to synthetic mRNA and injecting people with it, any cell in the body could be transformed into an on-demand drug factory.

But turning scientific promise into medical reality has been more difficult than many assumed. Although relatively easy and quick to produce compared to traditional vaccine-making, no mRNA vaccine or drug has ever won approval.

Even now, as Moderna and Pfizer test their vaccines on roughly 74,000 volunteers in pivotal vaccine studies, many experts question whether the technology is ready for prime time.

I worry about innovation at the expense of practicality, Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and an authority on vaccines, said recently. The U.S. governments Operation Warp Speed program, which has underwritten the development of Modernas vaccine and pledged to buy Pfizers vaccine if it works, is weighted toward technology platforms that have never made it to licensure before.

Whether mRNA vaccines succeed or not, their path from a gleam in a scientists eye to the brink of government approval has been a tale of personal perseverance, eureka moments in the lab, soaring expectations and an unprecedented flow of cash into the biotech industry.

It is a story that began three decades ago, with a little-known scientist who refused to quit.

Before messenger RNA was a multibillion-dollar idea, it was a scientific backwater. And for the Hungarian-born scientist behind a key mRNA discovery, it was a career dead-end.

Katalin Karik spent the 1990s collecting rejections. Her work, attempting to harness the power of mRNA to fight disease, was too far-fetched for government grants, corporate funding, and even support from her own colleagues.

It all made sense on paper. In the natural world, the body relies on millions of tiny proteins to keep itself alive and healthy, and it uses mRNA to tell cells which proteins to make. If you could design your own mRNA, you could, in theory, hijack that process and create any protein you might desire antibodies to vaccinate against infection, enzymes to reverse a rare disease, or growth agents to mend damaged heart tissue.

In 1990, researchers at the University of Wisconsin managed to make it work in mice. Karik wanted to go further.

The problem, she knew, was that synthetic RNA was notoriously vulnerable to the bodys natural defenses, meaning it would likely be destroyed before reaching its target cells. And, worse, the resulting biological havoc might stir up an immune response that could make the therapy a health risk for some patients.

It was a real obstacle, and still may be, but Karik was convinced it was one she could work around. Few shared her confidence.

Every night I was working: grant, grant, grant, Karik remembered, referring to her efforts to obtain funding. And it came back always no, no, no.

By 1995, after six years on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, Karik got demoted. She had been on the path to full professorship, but with no money coming in to support her work on mRNA, her bosses saw no point in pressing on.

She was back to the lower rungs of the scientific academy.

Usually, at that point, people just say goodbye and leave because its so horrible, Karik said.

Theres no opportune time for demotion, but 1995 had already been uncommonly difficult. Karik had recently endured a cancer scare, and her husband was stuck in Hungary sorting out a visa issue. Now the work to which shed devoted countless hours was slipping through her fingers.

I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else, Karik said. I also thought maybe Im not good enough, not smart enough. I tried to imagine: Everything is here, and I just have to do better experiments.

In time, those better experiments came together. After a decade of trial and error, Karik and her longtime collaborator at Penn Drew Weissman, an immunologist with a medical degree and Ph.D. from Boston University discovered a remedy for mRNAs Achilles heel.

The stumbling block, as Kariks many grant rejections pointed out, was that injecting synthetic mRNA typically led to that vexing immune response; the body sensed a chemical intruder, and went to war. The solution, Karik and Weissman discovered, was the biological equivalent of swapping out a tire.

Every strand of mRNA is made up of four molecular building blocks called nucleosides. But in its altered, synthetic form, one of those building blocks, like a misaligned wheel on a car, was throwing everything off by signaling the immune system. So Karik and Weissman simply subbed it out for a slightly tweaked version, creating a hybrid mRNA that could sneak its way into cells without alerting the bodys defenses.

That was a key discovery, said Norbert Pardi, an assistant professor of medicine at Penn and frequent collaborator. Karik and Weissman figured out that if you incorporate modified nucleosides into mRNA, you can kill two birds with one stone.

That discovery, described in a series of scientific papers starting in 2005, largely flew under the radar at first, said Weissman, but it offered absolution to the mRNA researchers who had kept the faith during the technologys lean years. And it was the starter pistol for the vaccine sprint to come.

And even though the studies by Karik and Weissman went unnoticed by some, they caught the attention of two key scientists one in the United States, another abroad who would later help found Moderna and Pfizers future partner, BioNTech.

Derrick Rossi, a native of Toronto who rooted for the Maple Leafs and sported a soul patch, was a 39-year-old postdoctoral fellow in stem cell biology at Stanford University in 2005 when he read the first paper. Not only did he recognize it as groundbreaking, he now says Karik and Weissman deserve the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

If anyone asks me whom to vote for some day down the line, I would put them front and center, he said. That fundamental discovery is going to go into medicines that help the world.

But Rossi didnt have vaccines on his mind when he set out to build on their findings in 2007 as a new assistant professor at Harvard Medical School running his own lab.

He wondered whether modified messenger RNA might hold the key to obtaining something else researchers desperately wanted: a new source of embryonic stem cells.

In a feat of biological alchemy, embryonic stem cells can turn into any type of cell in the body. That gives them the potential to treat a dizzying array of conditions, from Parkinsons disease to spinal cord injuries.

But using those cells for research had created an ethical firestorm because they are harvested from discarded embryos.

Rossi thought he might be able to sidestep the controversy. He would use modified messenger molecules to reprogram adult cells so that they acted like embryonic stem cells.

He asked a postdoctoral fellow in his lab to explore the idea. In 2009, after more than a year of work, the postdoc waved Rossi over to a microscope. Rossi peered through the lens and saw something extraordinary: a plate full of the very cells he had hoped to create.

Rossi excitedly informed his colleague Timothy Springer, another professor at Harvard Medical School and a biotech entrepreneur. Recognizing the commercial potential, Springer contacted Robert Langer, the prolific inventor and biomedical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On a May afternoon in 2010, Rossi and Springer visited Langer at his laboratory in Cambridge. What happened at the two-hour meeting and in the days that followed has become the stuff of legend and an ego-bruising squabble.

Langer is a towering figure in biotechnology and an expert on drug-delivery technology. At least 400 drug and medical device companies have licensed his patents. His office walls display many of his 250 major awards, including the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers.

As he listened to Rossi describe his use of modified mRNA, Langer recalled, he realized the young professor had discovered something far bigger than a novel way to create stem cells. Cloaking mRNA so it could slip into cells to produce proteins had a staggering number of applications, Langer thought, and might even save millions of lives.

I think you can do a lot better than that, Langer recalled telling Rossi, referring to stem cells. I think you could make new drugs, new vaccines everything.

Langer could barely contain his excitement when he got home to his wife.

This could be the most successful company in history, he remembered telling her, even though no company existed yet.

Three days later Rossi made another presentation, to the leaders of Flagship Ventures. Founded and run by Noubar Afeyan, a swaggering entrepreneur, the Cambridge venture capital firm has created dozens of biotech startups. Afeyan had the same enthusiastic reaction as Langer, saying in a 2015 article in Nature that Rossis innovation was intriguing instantaneously.

Within several months, Rossi, Langer, Afeyan, and another physician-researcher at Harvard formed the firm Moderna a new word combining modified and RNA.

Springer was the first investor to pledge money, Rossi said. In a 2012 Moderna news release, Afeyan said the firms promise rivals that of the earliest biotechnology companies over 30 years ago adding an entirely new drug category to the pharmaceutical arsenal.

But although Moderna has made each of the founders hundreds of millions of dollars even before the company had produced a single product Rossis account is marked by bitterness. In interviews with the Globe in October, he accused Langer and Afeyan of propagating a condescending myth that he didnt understand his discoverys full potential until they pointed it out to him.

Its total malarkey, said Rossi, who ended his affiliation with Moderna in 2014. Im embarrassed for them. Everybody in the know actually just shakes their heads.

Rossi said that the slide decks he used in his presentation to Flagship noted that his discovery could lead to new medicines. Thats the thing Noubar has used to turn Flagship into a big company, and he says it was totally his idea, Rossi said.

Afeyan, the chair of Moderna, recently credited Rossi with advancing the work of the Penn scientists. But, he said, that only spurred Afeyan and Langer to ask the question, Could you think of a code molecule that helps you make anything you want within the body?

Langer, for his part, told STAT and the Globe that Rossi made an important finding but had focused almost entirely on the stem cell thing.

Despite the squabbling that followed the birth of Moderna, other scientists also saw messenger RNA as potentially revolutionary.

In Mainz, Germany, situated on the left bank of the Rhine, another new company was being formed by a married team of researchers who would also see the vast potential for the technology, though vaccines for infectious diseases werent on top of their list then.

A native of Turkey, Ugur Sahin moved to Germany after his father got a job at a Ford factory in Cologne. His wife, zlem Treci had, as a child, followed her father, a surgeon, on his rounds at a Catholic hospital. She and Sahin are physicians who met in 1990 working at a hospital in Saarland.

The couple have long been interested in immunotherapy, which harnesses the immune system to fight cancer and has become one of the most exciting innovations in medicine in recent decades. In particular, they were tantalized by the possibility of creating personalized vaccines that teach the immune system to eliminate cancer cells.

Both see themselves as scientists first and foremost. But they are also formidable entrepreneurs. After they co-founded another biotech, the couple persuaded twin brothers who had invested in that firm, Thomas and Andreas Strungmann, to spin out a new company that would develop cancer vaccines that relied on mRNA.

That became BioNTech, another blended name, derived from Biopharmaceutical New Technologies. Its U.S. headquarters is in Cambridge. Sahin is the CEO, Treci the chief medical officer.

We are one of the leaders in messenger RNA, but we dont consider ourselves a messenger RNA company, said Sahin, also a professor at the Mainz University Medical Center. We consider ourselves an immunotherapy company.

Like Moderna, BioNTech licensed technology developed by the Pennsylvania scientist whose work was long ignored, Karik, and her collaborator, Weissman. In fact, in 2013, the company hired Karik as senior vice president to help oversee its mRNA work.

But in their early years, the two biotechs operated in very different ways.

In 2011, Moderna hired the CEO who would personify its brash approach to the business of biotech.

Stphane Bancel was a rising star in the life sciences, a chemical engineer with a Harvard MBA who was known as a businessman, not a scientist. At just 34, he became CEO of the French diagnostics firm BioMrieux in 2007 but was wooed away to Moderna four years later by Afeyan.

Moderna made a splash in 2012 with the announcement that it had raised $40 million from venture capitalists despite being years away from testing its science in humans. Four months later, the British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca agreed to pay Moderna a staggering $240 million for the rights to dozens of mRNA drugs that did not yet exist.

The biotech had no scientific publications to its name and hadnt shared a shred of data publicly. Yet it somehow convinced investors and multinational drug makers that its scientific findings and expertise were destined to change the world. Under Bancels leadership, Moderna would raise more than $1 billion in investments and partnership funds over the next five years.

Modernas promise and the more than $2 billion it raised before going public in 2018 hinged on creating a fleet of mRNA medicines that could be safely dosed over and over. But behind the scenes the companys scientists were running into a familiar problem. In animal studies, the ideal dose of their leading mRNA therapy was triggering dangerous immune reactions the kind for which Karik had improvised a major workaround under some conditions but a lower dose had proved too weak to show any benefits.

Moderna had to pivot. If repeated doses of mRNA were too toxic to test in human beings, the company would have to rely on something that takes only one or two injections to show an effect. Gradually, biotechs self-proclaimed disruptor became a vaccines company, putting its experimental drugs on the back burner and talking up the potential of a field long considered a loss-leader by the drug industry.

Meanwhile BioNTech has often acted like the anti-Moderna, garnering far less attention.

In part, that was by design, said Sahin. For the first five years, the firm operated in what Sahin called submarine mode, issuing no news releases, and focusing on scientific research, much of it originating in his university lab. Unlike Moderna, the firm has published its research from the start, including about 150 scientific papers in just the past eight years.

In 2013, the firm began disclosing its ambitions to transform the treatment of cancer and soon announced a series of eight partnerships with major drug makers. BioNTech has 13 compounds in clinical trials for a variety of illnesses but, like Moderna, has yet to get a product approved.

When BioNTech went public last October, it raised $150 million, and closed with a market value of $3.4 billion less than half of Modernas when it went public in 2018.

Despite his role as CEO, Sahin has largely maintained the air of an academic. He still uses his university email address and rides a 20-year-old mountain bicycle from his home to the office because he doesnt have a drivers license.

Then, late last year, the world changed.

Shortly before midnight, on Dec. 30, the International Society for Infectious Diseases, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit, posted an alarming report online. A number of people in Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million people in central China, had been diagnosed with unexplained pneumonia.

Chinese researchers soon identified 41 hospitalized patients with the disease. Most had visited the Wuhan South China Seafood Market. Vendors sold live wild animals, from bamboo rats to ostriches, in crowded stalls. That raised concerns that the virus might have leaped from an animal, possibly a bat, to humans.

After isolating the virus from patients, Chinese scientists on Jan. 10 posted online its genetic sequence. Because companies that work with messenger RNA dont need the virus itself to create a vaccine, just a computer that tells scientists what chemicals to put together and in what order, researchers at Moderna, BioNTech, and other companies got to work.

A pandemic loomed. The companies focus on vaccines could not have been more fortuitous.

Moderna and BioNTech each designed a tiny snip of genetic code that could be deployed into cells to stimulate a coronavirus immune response. The two vaccines differ in their chemical structures, how the substances are made, and how they deliver mRNA into cells. Both vaccines require two shots a few weeks apart.

The biotechs were competing against dozens of other groups that employed varying vaccine-making approaches, including the traditional, more time-consuming method of using an inactivated virus to produce an immune response.

Moderna was especially well-positioned for this moment.

Forty-two days after the genetic code was released, Modernas CEO Bancel opened an email on Feb. 24 on his cellphone and smiled, as he recalled to the Globe. Up popped a photograph of a box placed inside a refrigerated truck at the Norwood plant and bound for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. The package held a few hundred vials, each containing the experimental vaccine.

Moderna was the first drug maker to deliver a potential vaccine for clinical trials. Soon, its vaccine became the first to undergo testing on humans, in a small early-stage trial. And on July 28, it became the first to start getting tested in a late-stage trial in a scene that reflected the firms receptiveness to press coverage.

The first volunteer to get a shot in Modernas late-stage trial was a television anchor at the CNN affiliate in Savannah, Ga., a move that raised eyebrows at rival vaccine makers.

Along with those achievements, Moderna has repeatedly stirred controversy.

On May 18, Moderna issued a press release trumpeting positive interim clinical data. The firm said its vaccine had generated neutralizing antibodies in the first eight volunteers in the early-phase study, a tiny sample.

But Moderna didnt provide any backup data, making it hard to assess how encouraging the results were. Nonetheless, Modernas share price rose 20% that day.

Some top Moderna executives also drew criticism for selling shares worth millions, including Bancel and the firms chief medical officer, Tal Zaks.

In addition, some critics have said the government has given Moderna a sweetheart deal by bankrolling the costs for developing the vaccine and pledging to buy at least 100 million doses, all for $2.48 billion.

That works out to roughly $25 a dose, which Moderna acknowledges includes a profit.

In contrast, the government has pledged more than $1 billion to Johnson & Johnson to manufacture and provide at least 100 million doses of its vaccine, which uses different technology than mRNA. But J&J, which collaborated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centers Center for Virology and Vaccine Research and is also in a late-stage trial, has promised not to profit off sales of the vaccine during the pandemic.

Over in Germany, Sahin, the head of BioNTech, said a Lancet article in January about the outbreak in Wuhan, an international hub, galvanized him.

We understood that this would become a pandemic, he said.

The next day, he met with his leadership team.

I told them that we have to deal with a pandemic which is coming to Germany, Sahin recalled.

He also realized he needed a strong partner to manufacture the vaccine and thought of Pfizer. The two companies had worked together before to try to develop mRNA influenza vaccines. In March, he called Pfizers top vaccine expert, Kathrin Jansen.

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It’s time for Kentucky to talk to expectant parents about benefits of cord blood banking – Courier Journal

Posted: November 11, 2020 at 1:53 pm

Paula Grisanti, Opinion contributor Published 6:20 a.m. ET Nov. 9, 2020

This year, Nov.17 has been designated World Cord Blood Day, an annual event to raise awareness for the life-saving benefits of cord blood transplants while educating parents, health professionals and the general public about the need to preserve these precious cells.

Cord blood transplants are being used to treat more than 80 different diseases and conditions including blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, neuroblastoma (the most common cancer in infants), bone-marrow failure disorders, inherited blood disorders and rare immune system disorders. They are also showing new promise for conditions that have never had treatment options, like autism and brain injury.

The first cord blood stem cell transplant, an international effort between physicians in the U.S. and Europe, was performed in France in 1988. Stem cells collected from a newborns umbilical cord blood were used to save the life of her brother, a 5-year-old with Fanconi Anemia. Since then, there have been more than 40,000 cord blood transplants performed worldwide.

Now standard of care for cancers of the blood and a host of other life-threatening diseases, blood forming stem cells for transplantation can be collected from bone marrow, circulating bloodor a newborn babys umbilical cord blood. Some experts believe cord blood contains nearly 10 times the number of stem cells found in bone marrow.

Because umbilical cord stem cells are less mature than adult bone marrow stem cells, they are also less likely to be rejected and can be used when there isnt a perfect match.

Between these threeoptions, the easiest collection by far is from umbilical cord and placental tissue after a baby is born and the umbilical cord has been cut, at no risk to mother or child, in a process that typically takes 5 to 10 minutes. The cells are then frozen in liquid nitrogen and can be stored indefinitely in private or public cord blood banks.

To store your babys cord blood for use by your child and your family only, you make arrangements with a private cord blood bank ahead of delivery to collect and store the cells; the cost to you includes a collection fee of $1,500 to $2,000 and an annual storage fee of $100 to $125.

If you cant afford or dont wish to save your babys cord blood stem cells, you can donate them to a public cord blood bank at no cost to you or your family.

Its the equivalent of registering these potentially life-saving cells with the national bone marrow registry; they will be available to the families of other children who need to find a bone marrow match after a devastating diagnosis. Without information and education, however, 95% of all cord blood is discarded as medical waste.

Right now, there is no public cord banking option in Kentucky, although public cord blood banking is highly recommended by both the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Medical Association (AMA). There are fewer than 25 public or hybrid cord blood banks in the U.S., many limited to a specific geographic area. None of them include Kentucky.

The chances of finding a bone marrow match in your family are only about 25%, making the bone marrow and umbilical cord blood registries a lifeline in desperate situations. Odds are worse for African Americans and other ethnic minorities who are underrepresented on the registry and ethnicity matters in a bone marrow transplant.

Donating cord blood cells to a public bank adds to the library of cells that may save someones life and increases the chance of a match for all of us. Who benefits most? Children, patients with rare human leukocyte antigen (HLA) types and ethnic minorities.

We need to do two things: Make public cord blood banking an option in the commonwealth of Kentucky, and then encourage conversations between health care providers and expectant parents about preserving these life-saving cells.

There are 28 states with legislation that ask or mandates physicians to talk to expectant parents about cord blood banking. Kentucky is not one of them, but most of our surrounding states have such legislation in place.

Through a long-standing relationship between the National Stem Cell Foundationand world-renowned cord blood expert Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, we have a path forward for training hospitals and collecting cells for storage at the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank (CCBB), one of the largest public cord blood banks in the world. Dr. Kurtzberg directs both the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant (PBMT) program at Duke University and the CCBB.

She performed the worlds first unrelated cord blood transplant in 1993, paving the way for this now routine source of donor cells for children who need a bone marrow transplant and dont have a matched donor. She established the CCBB in 1998.

Paula Grisanti is CEO of the National Stem Cell Foundation.(Photo: provided)

While weve initiated discussions between Louisville hospital systems and the CCBB, we need to begin the process of education for parents, nursing and medical school students, residents, midwives, practicing OB-GYNs and the general public.

What a waste to discard these life-saving cells the future of current and developing therapies for disabling and life-threatening diseases depends on our ability to make sure that doesnt happen.

Dr. Paula Grisanti is CEO and a founding member of the National Stem Cell Foundation, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. She holds a D.M.D. and MBA from the University of Louisville and has been actively involved in new venture start-ups for most of her career.

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Does Talaris’ Investigational Cell Therapy Have Potential to Be a ‘Pipeline in a Product’? – BioSpace

Posted: November 11, 2020 at 1:53 pm

Photo courtesy of Talaris.

Talaris Chief Executive Officer Scott Requadt sees FCR001, the companys investigational cell therapy, as a potential pipeline in a product (an experimental treatment that could have multiple uses across a number of indications).

In fact, it was that versatility of the products potential that caused Requadt to join the company as CEO in 2018 after the company, known then as Regenerex, secured $100 million in financing. At the time, Requadt helmed the venture capital group Claris that backed the Series A.

I was really enthusiastic about the company and FCR001, Requadt told BioSpace in an interview.

FCR001, an investigational, allogeneic cell therapy, was previously part of Novartis gene and cell therapy unit, until it was dissolved in 2016. When that unit dissolved, rights to FCR001 reverted to Regenerex. With the return of those rights came multiple opportunities in organ transplant and severe autoimmune disorders. Cell therapies can address complex, multi-pathway diseases and Talaris has big plans for the future of FCR001 to help patients acquire or restore immune tolerance.

Our goal is to basically do for immune tolerance what CAR-T has done for oncology, Requadt said. The same product and the same basic biology will be used. We can treat organ transplant and autoimmune diseases in the same manner.

Through FCR001, Talaris will be able to change the underlying pathology of the disease so the immune system no longer sees it as a threat, Requadt said. The companys lead program is in kidney donor transplant, but FCR001, a one-time stem cell therapy, is also being explored as a treatment for scleroderma, a multi-system autoimmune disease. If FCR001 is effective in these areas, Requadt said those successes will pave the way for use in other indications.

This is a pipeline from a single product, Requadt said of FCR001, which has received a Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In July, Kentucky-based Talaris dosed the first patient in its Phase III FREEDOM-1 study of FCR001 in living donor kidney transplant (LDKT) recipients. The trial is expected to enroll 120 adult patients who will receive kidney donations from living donors. The primary endpoint of the study will be the proportion of FCR001 recipients who are free from necessary drugs to maintain immunosuppression without biopsy proven acute rejection at 24 months post-transplant.

Organ transplant patients are required to continue taking drugs to suppress their immune systems to protect the new organ from immune system responses. However, those immunosuppressant treatments drugs are toxic to the kidney and can ultimately kill the transplanted organ in 10 to 15 years. The drugs can also lead to metabolic disorders and cardiovascular issues, Requadt said.

In 2018, Talaris posted positive Phase II data in LDKT recipients, with 70% of patients who received the treatment able to discontinue the use of immunosuppressant drugs. The Phase II data showed that every tolerized patient has been able to remain free of the use of chronic immunosuppressants for up to 10 years. The median follow-up following transplant was five years, with the longest case being a decade. Additionally, Requadt said the company has also seen better kidney functions in recipients who received FCR100 due to the lack of toxicity issues.

While there are other companies exploring similar approaches, Requadt said to his knowledge, no other group has a 10-year data set that demonstrates the safety and efficacy of a treatment like FRC001.

Not only has Talaris seen the impressive results in removing patients from the anchor of immunosuppressant drugs, Requadt said the use of FCR001 decreased the risk of rejection in patients whose biomarkers did not have as high a match with the kidney donors.

In addition to the Phase III study in LDKT patients, Talaris also has plans to conduct a Phase II study in LDKT Delayed Tolerance Induction and will begin research in Deceased Donor Kidney Transplant patients.

Talaris will also use FCR001 in the treatment of diffuse systemic sclerosis (SSc), a severe form of the rare autoimmune disease scleroderma, a rare and potentially fatal chronic autoimmune disease which causes progressive scarring, or fibrosis, of the bodys connective tissues. Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant has been shown to halt organ damage and induce remission of the disease. However, with the use of a patients own stem cells, there is a risk of disease recurrence. Also, some patients must undergo full myeloablative conditioning with or without total body irradiation, which is associated with direct organ toxicity and increased risk of future cancers. Talaris aims to harness the power of FCR001 and use stem cells from donors to lower those risks and provide an opportunity for these patients, Requadt said.

For all of these indications were using the same product and were using the same protocols with patients and were treating the patients in the same way. This has the potential to be paradigm shifting, Requadt said.

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Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy Market: Expansion Strategies Set to Generate Substantial Revenue in the near Future – Eurowire

Posted: November 10, 2020 at 7:57 am

Market Overview of Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy Market

The Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market report provides a detailed analysis of global market size, regional and country-level market size, segmentation market growth, market share, competitive Landscape, sales analysis, impact of domestic and global market players, value chain optimization, trade regulations, recent developments, opportunities analysis, strategic market growth analysis, product launches, area marketplace expanding, and technological innovations.

The global Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market size is expected to gain market growth in the forecast period of 2020 to 2025, with a CAGR of xx%% in the forecast period of 2020 to 2025 and will expected to reach USD xx million by 2025, from USD xx million in 2019.

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Market segmentation

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Segment by Type, the Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market is segmented intoCreamsInjectionsImplanted pelletsPatchesGels

Segment by Application, the Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market is segmented intoMenWomen

Regional and Country-level AnalysisThe Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market is analysed and market size information is provided by regions (countries).The key regions covered in the Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market report are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. It also covers key regions (countries), viz, U.S., Canada, Germany, France, U.K., Italy, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, etc.The report includes country-wise and region-wise market size for the period 2015-2026. It also includes market size and forecast by Type, and by Application segment in terms of sales and revenue for the period 2015-2026.

Regional analysis is another highly comprehensive part of the research and analysis study of the global Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market presented in the report. This section sheds light on the sales growth of different regional and country-level Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy markets. For the historical and forecast period 2015 to 2025, it provides detailed and accurate country-wise volume analysis and region-wise market size analysis of the global Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market.

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The report offers in-depth assessment of the growth and other aspects of the Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market in important countries (regions), including:

North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)

Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)

Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)

South America (Brazil, Argentina, etc.)

Middle East & Africa (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy competitive landscape provides details by vendors, including company overview, company total revenue (financials), market potential, global presence, Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy sales and revenue generated, market share, price, production sites and facilities, SWOT analysis, product launch. For the period 2015-2020, this study provides the Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy sales, revenue and market share for each player covered in this report.

Competitive Landscape and Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy Market Share AnalysisBio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market competitive landscape provides details and data information by players. The report offers comprehensive analysis and accurate statistics on revenue by the player for the period 2015-2020. It also offers detailed analysis supported by reliable statistics on revenue (global and regional level) by players for the period 2015-2020. Details included are company description, major business, company total revenue and the sales, revenue generated in Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy business, the date to enter into the Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market, Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy product introduction, recent developments, etc.The major vendors covered:RevitaLifeUS CompoundingAesthetics&Wellness

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The content of the study subjects, includes a total of 15 chapters:

Chapter 1, to describe Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market driving force and market risks.

Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy , with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy in 2018 and 2019.

Chapter 3, the Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy competitive situation, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast.

Chapter 4, the Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales, revenue and growth by regions, from 2015 to 2020.

Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales, revenue and market share for key countries in the world, from 2015 to 2020.

Chapter 10 and 11, to segment the sales by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2015 to 2020.

Chapter 12, Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2020 to 2025.

Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion, appendix and data source.

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Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy Market: Expansion Strategies Set to Generate Substantial Revenue in the near Future - Eurowire

Posted in Hormone Replacement Therapy | Comments Off on Japan Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy Market: Expansion Strategies Set to Generate Substantial Revenue in the near Future – Eurowire

Global Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Tablets Market Will Experience A Noticeable Growth During The Forecast Period 2019-2026||ALLERGAN, Novo…

Posted: November 10, 2020 at 7:57 am

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) tablets marketis expected to rise with a substantial CAGR in the forecast period of 2019-2026. This rise in market value can be attributed to the increased development of drugs with better therapeutic profiles. The report contains data of the base year 2018 and historic year 2017.

The universal Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Tablets market report is produced by performing high level market research analysis of key marketplace segments to identify opportunities, challenges, drivers, and market structures for our clients. This market report potentially presents with the numerous insights and business solutions that will help to stay ahead of the competition. Being a wide-ranging market research report, it is sure to help grow business in several ways. An influential Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Tablets market report assists in determining and optimizing each stage in the lifecycle of industrial process that includes engagement, acquisition, retention, and monetization.

Get Sample Copy Of This Report @https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-hormone-replacement-therapy-hrt-tablets-market

Few of the major competitors currently working in the global hormone replacement therapy (HRT) tablets market areALLERGAN, Novo Nordisk A/S, Sanofi, Abbott, TherapeuticsMD, Inc., Mithra Pharmaceuticals among others.

Key Development in the Market:

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Market Segmentation3. Market Overview4. Executive Summary5. Premium Insights6. Global, By Component7. Product Type8. Delivery9. Industry Type10. Geography

Get Full Table Of content @https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-hormone-replacement-therapy-hrt-tablets-market

Segmentation: Global Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Tablets Market

By Type of Disease

By Treatment Type

By End-User

By Distribution Channel

By Geography

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AboutData Bridge Market Research

An absolute way to forecast what future holds is to comprehend the trend today!

Data Bridge set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.

Data bridge is an aftermath of sheer wisdom and experience which was formulated and framed in the year 2015 in Pune. We ponder into the heterogeneous markets in accord with our clients needs and scoop out the best possible solutions and detailed information about the market trends. Data Bridge delve into the markets across Asia, North America, South America, Africa to name few.

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Global Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Tablets Market Will Experience A Noticeable Growth During The Forecast Period 2019-2026||ALLERGAN, Novo...

Posted in Hormone Replacement Therapy | Comments Off on Global Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Tablets Market Will Experience A Noticeable Growth During The Forecast Period 2019-2026||ALLERGAN, Novo…