Xconomist of the Week: Evan Snyder—Stem Cell Reality Check

stem cells really are just a part of fundamental development.

An even more vexing problem has nothing to do with stem cell biology. It has to do with people’s knowledge of the disease state. That’s where probably the biggest obstacle is. It’s with the people studying the disease who don’t know [precisely] what needs to be fixed. As an example, a mother might want us to use stem cells to fix her child’s autism. What’s wrong in autism? What do you want me to fix? I’m ready. I’m here. Just tell me what cell type you want. Tell me what connection you want. Nobody knows.

So I would say the stem cell field is doing really amazingly well, considering how young a field it is. It certainly is if you put it in perspective with other therapies that we now take for granted. For example, everybody does bone marrow transplantation now. We take it for granted. It’s taken us 50 years to be able to make bone marrow transplantation routine. I was an intern in the 1980s, and bone marrow transplantation for kids was still an experimental therapy, and most of the patients died.

X. I guess I was thinking of the enthusiasm surrounding some ventures that were founded to develop gene therapy, where they were using an engineered virus to insert a gene into cells.

ES: There already are ongoing clinical trials that are using stem cells that way. They’re taking a gene and putting it into a stem cell and having it go to areas of injury. There’s a clinical trial to treat brain tumors like that.

When most people think about stem cell research, they think about replacing missing cells—cells that are missing because of a stroke, a spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s, or ALS. You’ve had a heart attack and you want the dead cells replaced. Or you’ve got arthritis and you want your normal joint back.

As a business model, it really depends I suppose on the timeline for the company. It kind of depends on what your VCs are asking of you in terms of how much time you have to get moving and what your target is.

There are some companies that are based on stem cell research that seem to be doing OK. There’s Advanced Cell Technology [in Santa Monica, CA]. They have a clinical trial going for macular degeneration. Stem Cells [based in Newark, CA] has a trial that they’re going to try to

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.