Jamie Thomson and Panel: iPS Cells: How they change everything, and nothing

Clive Svendsen is moderating; he introduces Jamie Thomson.

I'm wowed.

Thomson: in the early embryo there are cells that don't know what they want to be . . . if you take these cells out of an intact embryo, they will not become anything but more of themselves.

I got into this deal in the early 90's. I was trained as a mouse embryologist; he shows a picture of a mouse embryo next to a human embryo--the point being that they're very different.

So, moved to primates, including our close relative the rhesus monkey.

If you take a skin cell and put it into a growth culture, it will divide a few times and then stop. A cancer cell will just keep going. An embryonic stem cell will also just keep going.

The iPS cells would NOT have been derived successfully if we had not had 10 years of working with embryonic stem cells.

We know now how to take a cell from your body and reprogram it to become like an embryonic stem cell . . . it will have that magic property of being able to keep reproducing itself forever, and of being able to turn into any other kind of cell.

Describing how they pulled this off in the lab, giving credit to his post-docs, talking too fast (and kind of mumbling) for me to write down how exactly it worked. Check the webcast, because the audio there may be better than what we're getting in this room.

Okay, he just said something important--there's less variation in the reprogammed cells than there was in the cells they originally made back in 1998.

3 things that make iPS matter:

1. They provide a tissue culture model for understanding processes at the cellular level
2. They will provide a purified population of specific differentiated cells for drug discovery and testing
3. Could provide a source for therapies eventually

He believes that the central nervous system will not be repaired by cell transplantation-- but that the cells will make it possible to understand how to make therapies that don't depend on transplantation.

He thinks it may be possible to make blood cells cheaply enough to use them for transfusion. He thinks that they'll be able to make cells that will help leukemia patients within the next 5 years.

So, what's the agenda?

Make the cell types that interest us most
Address safety concerns, including resolving question of cancer
Address immune rejection -- using iPS would work, but it's expensive
Preventing the process that killed the cells in the first place
Integration in a physiologically useful form

How to end this little talk on a positive note? I realize that I sound pessimistic here, but I'm really not. It's just that we have so much work to do and we need to roll up our sleeves.

Ends by saying that it would be a very bad idea to stop working with embryonic stem cells while gearing up to work iPS cells.

Question: From the university of Sydney . . .
How long until broad therapeutic application might be possible? We're not good at predicing timelines. Sometimes we get things done in 5 years that we thought would take 25. In 1998, I said that it would take 10 years to get to therapeutic applications . . .that was obviously wrong. My expectation is that there will be setbacks and challenges. We're a very risk-averse culture, which makes things go more slowly.

Up comes Hideyuki Okano from Keio University in Japan

Talking about iPS historical development; they did it with mice in Japan in 2006, and then along with Thomson in 2007

Japan established a system of comprehensive strategies to speed this research in their country. They want to be the world center . . . they're mostly interested in regeneration of the brain and central nervous system.

Kyoto University owns the iPS cell patent to make the cells and

Regeneration of the injured spinal cord; here's a little news about a new study.

if 5 - 10% of axons can be regenerated, there will be a lot of functional return-- new that

Take skin cells, reprogram them to become iPS cells, differentiate them into nerve cells, and then put the nerve cels back into the patient. That's the agenda and the goal.

Talking now about differentiating cells into neural cells, including

They did a mouse 9 days post and transplanted neural stem ccells andtested for functional recovery.

Which they got, though the slide is too dim to see the actual numbers.

Tested for teratomas 6 months post transplant, and found no evidence of them at all.

Agenda:

Make iPS cells (3 months) Induce to grow into neural progenitors, (4 months) Do a safety check (at lest a year)

They will do a primate study.

New speaker: Amy Comstock Rock, from CAMR, the coalition of advancement for medical research

iPS cells . . . how they change everything and nothing

She's got a picture of George Bush up with the countdown clock under his face. 120 days to go. People clap and laugh.

She says that one side benefit of Bush's policy has been huge growth in individual states.

When the iPS breakthroughs were announced in November, CAMR was very fearful that we would lose congressional support for hESc-- not because the members individually felt troubled about hESc, but because they represent districts where constituents are vocal and passionate opponents.

During the August political conventions, the case was made to leave hESc behind and move on "along with science" -- Jamie Thomson is quoted out of context to make that case.

Picture up of McCain and Obama . . . McCain has voted twice for funding of hESc research, but has been making noise about how "one day" there won't be a need for it. The problem is that iPS research will be misused for political purposes. No, really??!!

Obama has promised to issue an immediate executive order changing the no funding policy upon taking office.

She encourges all of us to be very active in advocating for continuing support for hESc research. We can't afford to be quiet about this; CAMR is doing background work drafting white papers for congressmembers, and is depending on us out in the world to carry the message.

Svendsen asks Jamie Thomson to comment on the patent issue; Japan has filed for iPS patents in the USA . . . Thomson says that he thinks it's not going to slow anything down.

Break time!