Highlights
The Grafix story
Japanese ambitions
California's Alpha Clinics
Hundreds of representatives of the world’s stem cell
community are meeting today and tomorrow in California mulling over everything from
pricing to the possibilities of commercial cures.
The occasion is the Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa 2015 in La Jolla, Ca., and
if you are not there, it is still possible to see some of the presentations live
and later on video.
Some can be dramatic, including one
from Lode Debrabandere, CEO of Osiris Therapeutics of Maryland. This afternoon
he pulled up a slide involving an Osiris product called Grafix, which is “a
cryopreserved placental membrane that is designed for direct application to
acute and chronic wounds.”
The photographs on the slide showed an open wound with an
exposed tendon before and after
 |
| Osiris/Meeting on Mesa graphic |
Osiris is the firm once headed by Randy Mills, president of the $3 billion California stem cell agency, known officially as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). Mills speaks
tomorrow morning to the conclave. The agency is one of the major organizers of
the three-day session and contributed $50,000 to the program. Other organizers are the Alliance for Regenerative
Medicine and the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which has
received $43 million from CIRM.
The conference has received little attention in the
mainstream media with the exception of the San Diego Union Tribune. The
newspaper's biotech reporter, Bradley Fikes, has filed two major stories tied to
the conference.
One dealt with the burgeoning number of stem cell clinical trials. The other explored the ambitious stem cell research effort in Japan.
Fikes wrote,
“In the second half of the 20th century, Japan emerged as a world leader in automobiles and consumer electronics. In the first half of this century, the country plans to do the same with stem cells and regenerative medicine.”
Fikes said the Japanese stem cell market “was estimated at
$90 million in 2012, projected to reach $950 million in 2020, $10 billion by
2030 and $25 billion by 2050.”
Fikes also pointed out how the Japanese have streamlined the
regulatory process, something that CIRM President Mills thinks the United
States should emulate. Last week, Mills was in Washngton, D.C., talking to
regulators and others, presumably advancing his case for faster action on stem
cell therapies.
On the agenda tomorrow morning is a panel dealing with
clinical trials at the Sanford Consortium. The effort is tied to the Alpha stem cell clinic effort at UC San Diego (see here ), which is funded by $8 million from CIRM.
The agency initiated the Alpha program, which totals $24 million, in an effort to develop a world-leading, one-stop program for stem
cell treatment.
The Mesa meeting program said, “The CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic at UC San Diego provides
infrastructural strength to enable the complex interaction required for success”
in stem cell treatments.
