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

do on spinal cord injury, and they started a clinical trial on Batten’s disease.

Again, it has nothing to do with the stem cell field. It has more to do with business and the patient population. Geron, a very well-funded company in the Bay Area, was in the midst of a clinical trial to use stem cell-derived products for repairing spinal cord injury. They had gotten an infusion of money from VCs, they had gotten an infusion of money from CIRM (the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine), and Geron abruptly terminated their trial.

They terminated it after they got a new CEO. What he said was that it had nothing to do with any complications. It had nothing to do with producing the cells. But they did a quick calculation, and saw how much it was going to be to do a full Phase I trial, recognized how much money it would take to do a Phase II and a Phase III trial. And they said there are not enough patients with spinal cord injuries to warrant a return on the investment. So it had nothing to do with stem cells.

A company doesn’t make a decision based on humanitarian indications or intellectual stimulation. They decided to turn the company completely [to focus] on cancer. They decided not to do anything neurologic at all.

Childhood diseases don’t have a chance. These are orphan diseases. Most neurological diseases are not money-makers. The diseases are horrible. The patients suffer. The families suffer, but it’s not a money-maker for companies. Maybe this is the reason you don’t go to the private sector and why the government does need to be involved in these diseases.

People won’t often talk about this, but a company would much rather sell a product that you’re going to need every day than something that’s going to [permanently] cure a disease. When we talk about stem cells, we talk about eradicating a disease. The goal in diabetes is not to continue taking insulin, it’s to give you back your insulin-producing cells so you don’t need anything at all. That’s not a money-maker, unless you’re charging a

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

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.