Stem Cell Clinic

Asymmetrex Receives $0.42 Million Award from the NIH-National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to Develop the AlphaSTEM Test for Stem Cell Therapies and…

Asymmetrex Receives $0.42 Million R&D Award from NIH-NHLBI

BOSTON (PRWEB) September 22, 2020

On the heals of Asymmetrexs recently published peer-reviewed report describing its development of a method for quantifying therapeutic tissue stem cells, on Saturday September 19, the company received a Notice of Award of its first Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Sponsored by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the $0.42 million 1 year award recognizes the potential major impact of Asymmetrexs first-in-kind technology in the stem cell medicine and drug development industries.

Asymmetrex founder and director James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D. spent most of Saturday contacting collaborators, contract service providers involved in the project, corporate partners, and industry colleagues who endorsed the grant application to share the news of the award. I couldnt wait until Monday to share this news. No one does biotechnology development and commercialization successfully alone; and Asymmetrex is fortunate to have the kind of support that gets a company to important milestones like this one.

The new funds will accelerate the technical and business development of two applications of the companys AlphaSTEM Test tissue stem cell counting technology. One goal is to evaluate in a head-to-head comparison how the companys computational counting technology relates to the only existing method for specific estimation of the dosage of a therapeutic tissue stem cell.

Human blood stem cells can be estimated specifically by transplanting cells into mice. This test method is expensive, slow (taking 12-16 weeks), and variable. Asymmetrex already established reported in the recent publication that its technology compares well to the published literature for the mouse test, but has significantly less variability. The direct comparison will increase industry confidence and pave the way to raising more financing for advancing the AlphaSTEM Test to clinical evaluations. The companys first clinical application target is determining the dose of stem cells in umbilical cord blood to identify which units will be lifesaving for children after leukemia treatment. In current clinical practice, 15-18% of children receive an ineffective transplant, because the stem cell dose was not known.

The second major milestone accomplished with award funding will be measurement of how well the AlphaSTEM Test identifies drug candidates that are toxic to tissue stem cells, like those in the liver and bone marrow. Drugs that are toxic to tissue stem cells cause chronic organ failure, a life-threatening event for clinical trial patients and a financial catastrophe for a drug development program. Such failures in Phase II and Phase III clinical trials cost the U.S. pharmaceutical industry $4-5 billion in losses each year. Currently, besides these late costly failures, the only way to identify tissue stem cell-toxic drug candidates is with expensive animal toxicology evaluations. Animal evaluations are notorious for their poor ability to predict human toxicities.

The companys seminal report contains preliminary evidence of the AlphaSTEM Tests ability to identify either tissue stem cell-toxic or tissue stem cell-activating compounds inexpensively in cell culture. The latter ability has application for discovery of new compounds that accelerate wound healing and combat effects of aging, including cosmetics. With the new award, Asymmetrex will extend the preliminary studies to the full-scale analyses needed by pharmaceutical companies for their evaluations.

About Asymmetrex

Asymmetrex, LLC is a Massachusetts life sciences company with a focus on developing technologies to advance stem cell medicine. The companys U.S. and U.K. patent portfolio contains biotechnologies that solve the two main technical problems production and quantification that have stood in the way of effective use of human adult tissue stem cells for regenerative medicine and drug development. Asymmetrex markets the first technology for determination of the dose and quality of tissue stem cell preparations (the AlphaSTEM Test) for use in stem cell transplantation therapies and pre-clinical drug evaluations. Asymmetrex is a member company of the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute BioFabUSA and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.

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Asymmetrex Receives $0.42 Million Award from the NIH-National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to Develop the AlphaSTEM Test for Stem Cell Therapies and...

City of Hope Enters Licensing Agreement With Chimeric to Develop Its Pioneering Chlorotoxin CAR T Cell Therapy | DNA RNA and Cells | News Channels -…

Details Category: DNA RNA and Cells Published on Tuesday, 22 September 2020 10:38 Hits: 317

The comprehensive cancer center has also dosed its first patient in chlorotoxin CAR T cell therapy trial

DUARTE, CA, USA I September 21, 2020 I City of Hope, a world-renowned independent research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases, today announced that it has licensed intellectual property relating to its pioneering chlorotoxin chimeric antigen receptor (CLTX-CAR) T cell therapy to Chimeric Therapeutics Limited, an Australian biotechnology company.

The therapy is currently being used in a phase 1 clinical trial at City of Hope to treat glioblastoma (GBM), a type of brain tumor. The first patient in the trial was recently dosed; Behnam Badie, M.D., chief of City of Hopes Division of Neurosurgery and The Heritage Provider Network Professor in Gene Therapy, is leading this innovative, first-of-its-kind trial.

Chimeric has acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize certain patents relating to City of Hopes CLTX-CAR T cells, as well as to further develop the therapy for other cancers.

City of Hope is excited to enter into this agreement with Chimeric as it supports our innovative research in CAR T cell therapy and our commitment to extend these therapies to more patients, particularly those with GBM and other solid tumors that are difficult to treat, said Christine Brown, Ph.D., The Heritage Provider Network Professor in Immunotherapy and deputy director of City of Hopes T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratory. Chimeric shares our goal of providing effective CAR T cell therapies to more patients with current unmet medical needs.

Led by Brown and Michael Barish, Ph.D., chair of City of Hopes Department of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, and Dongrui Wang, Ph.D., a recent graduate of City of Hopes Irell & Manella Graduate School of Biological Sciences, the team developed and tested the first CAR T cell therapy using CLTX, a component of scorpion venom, to direct T cells to target brain tumor cells. The research was published this past March in Science Translational Medicine.

Chimeric is excited to join City of Hope in its quest to find more effective cancer therapies. This is an exceedingly rare opportunity to acquire a promising technology in one of the most exciting areas of immuno-oncology today, said Paul Hopper, executive chairman of Chimeric. Furthermore, the CLTX-CAR T cell therapy has completed years of preclinical research and development, and recently enrolled its first patient in a phase 1 clinical trial for brain cancer.

CARs commonly incorporate a monoclonal antibody sequence in their targeting domain, enabling CAR T cells to recognize antigens and kill tumor cells. In contrast, the CLTX-CAR uses a synthetic 36-amino acid peptide sequence first isolated from death stalker scorpion venom and now engineered to serve as the CAR recognition domain.

In this recent study, City of Hope researchers used tumor cells in resection samples from a cohort of patients with GBM to compare CLTX binding with expression of antigens currently under investigation as CAR T cell targets. They found that CLTX bound to a greater proportion of patient tumors, and cells within these tumors.

CLTX binding included the GBM stem-like cells thought to seed tumor recurrence. Consistent with these observations, CLTX-CAR T cells recognized and killed broad populations of GBM cells while ignoring nontumor cells in the brain and other organs. The study team demonstrated that CLTX-directed CAR T cells are highly effective at selectively killing human GBM cells without off-tumor targeting and toxicity in cell-based assays and in animal models.

City of Hope, a recognized leader in CAR T cell therapies for GBM and other cancers, has treated more than 500 patients since its CAR T program started in the late 1990s. The institution continues to have one of the most comprehensive CAR T cell clinical research programs in the world it currently has 30 ongoing CAR T cell clinical trials, including CAR T cell trials for HER-2 positive breast cancer that has spread to the brain, and PSCA-positive bone metastatic prostate cancer. It was the first and only cancer center to treat GBM patients with CAR T cells targeting IL13R2, and the first to administer CAR T cell therapy locally in the brain, either by direct injection at the tumor site, through intraventricular infusion into the cerebrospinal fluid, or both. In late 2019, City of Hope opened a first-in-human clinical trial for patients with recurrent GBM, combining IL13R2-CAR T cells with checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab, an anti-PD1 antibody, and ipilimumab, blocking the CTLA-4 protein.

Both an academic medical center and a drug development powerhouse, City of Hope is known for creating the technology used in the development of human synthetic insulin and numerous breakthrough cancer drugs. Its unique research and development hybrid of the academic and commercial creates an infrastructure that enables City of Hope researchers to submit an average of 50 investigational new drug applications to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration each year. The institution currently holds more than 450 patent families.

"City of Hope is delighted to license this technology to Chimeric, said Sangeeta Bardhan Cook, Ph.D., City of Hope director of the Office of Technology Licensing. We are impressed with the ability of their executive team to push and bring therapies to market expeditiously. At City of Hope, our mission is to transform the future of health care. We believe Chimeric has the vision to offer innovative therapies to cancer patients.

About City of Hope

City of Hope is an independent biomedical research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a leader in bone marrow transplantation and immunotherapy such as CAR T cell therapy. City of Hopes translational research and personalized treatment protocols advance care throughout the world. Human synthetic insulin and numerous breakthrough cancer drugs are based on technology developed at the institution. A National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, City of Hope has been ranked among the nations Best Hospitals in cancer by U.S. News & World Report for 14 consecutive years. Its main campus is located near Los Angeles, with additional locations throughout Southern California. For more information about City of Hope, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

SOURCE: City of Hope

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City of Hope Enters Licensing Agreement With Chimeric to Develop Its Pioneering Chlorotoxin CAR T Cell Therapy | DNA RNA and Cells | News Channels -...

Voting while God is watching does having churches as polling stations sway the ballot? – Huron Daily Tribune

Eds: This story was supplied by The Conversation for AP customers. The Associated Press does not guarantee the content.

Jordan LaBouff, University of Maine

(THE CONVERSATION) Houses of worship may be busier than usual come Election Day as Americans head to the polls rather than the pews.

A 2010 census of religious congregations identified nearly 350,000 churches, mosques, temples and other religious establishments attended by more than 150 million Americans, primarily for spiritual needs and social relationships.

But during elections, such places double as centers of civic life serving as community polling places. In some electoral districts, houses of worship make up a significant number of all voting places, raising important issues about whether voting in a place of worship influences how people cast their ballots.

Church and state

Voting in religious spaces is nothing new.

Americans have long been casting their ballots in the same place where they or their neighbors worship. In early America, the town meeting house often served both religious and secular functions with the same space housing prayer meetings, schooling and town business.

Although the separation of church and state has largely moved the practice of religious and secular life into separate spheres, churches have continued to house voting booths.

As urban population densities have grown more than 500% from 1910 to 2010 election boards have been asked to identify polling sites that are large and empty enough to accommodate voters. They also need to be accessible and rent-free. Since government buildings can rarely accommodate these needs indeed, less than 1% of polling sites in 2018 were specifically election offices religious leaders have often offered their buildings as polling sites as a public service.

Although no national data on religious spaces as polling places exists, this arrangement appears to be very common.

For example, 22% of polling sites for the 2020 general election in Minneapolis are houses of worship. In St. Louis, 27% of precincts vote in religious spaces and, in one ward, all eight of the polling places are churches.

Priming voters

As a scholar who studies how social situations can influence attitudes, I believe where someone votes can subtly but significantly affect how they vote.

Social scientists have long understood that physical and social context shapes the way people think, feel and behave. Without even realizing it, most of us are likely to speak more quietly when talking about the possibility of visiting a library than when discussing plans to dine at an exclusive restaurant.

Each physical setting offers cues that, at least temporarily, prompt people to think and behave in ways consistent with stereotypes about that space. Scholars call this a priming effect.

Sometimes this happens consciously as people realize that they are influenced by the situation. For example, you might feel serious and reverent while visiting a war memorial. Much of the time, however, people arent aware of the subtle priming influences of everyday spaces.

These unconscious influences can be powerful.

For example, people in a business-themed room with briefcases and boardroom tables tended to act more competitive and self-interested in decisions than those making the same decisions in a classroom, researchers found.

Similarly, on average, people who could see a sports drink rather than a bottle of water ran longer on a treadmill. And those hearing French music over supermarket loudspeakers were more likely to buy French wine than when German music was playing.

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Ballot bias

These effects extend to the polling booth.

In Arizonas 2000 general election, citizens voting in schools were more likely to support a state sales tax increase to fund education than citizens with similar social and political characteristics who cast ballots elsewhere.

In a related laboratory study, voters shown images of a school encouraged support for education-oriented taxation, whereas images of a church reduced support for stem-cell research.

In 2012, my colleagues and I asked approximately 100 participants from more than 20 different countries to answer questions about their political attitudes and feelings toward various minority groups while standing in front of a cathedral or City Hall in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Regardless of their own religious identity or beliefs, respondents who could see the church supported more conservative approaches to issues such as immigration, taxes, drug policies, warfare and abortion than those who could see City Hall. They were also more prejudiced toward minorities such as gay men and immigrants especially those of Arab descent.

Our recent analysis of 2016 election data from Virginia reveals similar tendencies. Controlling for population, county-level religiosity and other factors, citizens casting their ballots in churches were significantly more likely to vote for Republican candidates than their nearly identical neighbors who were voting in secular venues.

This effect was strongest for counties with the highest proportion of religious people. That is, when Christians vote in churches, they seem to be even more likely to vote for conservative candidates than when they vote outside of churches.

Further, which houses of worship are selected may invite more bias into the polling booth. When a single mosque was included as a polling site among more than 50 churches in Palm Beach County, Florida, in 2016, the countys election board received complaints and threats of violence until they removed the mosque as a polling site.

Meanwhile, Christian churches are common polling sites even in communities that are not themselves predominantly Christian.

As a result, some citizens who may feel stigmatized and threatened by religious institutions are expected to visit them to vote.

Small influence but tight margins

Although some non-Christian citizens have complained that voting in churches violates their rights, courts have consistently ruled that the availability of alternatives such as absentee voting means that having places of religion serve as polling stations does not represent a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of religion.

In other words, where you are can influence who you are, even when you dont notice it. Although the influences of physical spaces are small and people are more likely to be influenced by these kinds of peripheral cues when they dont already have strong opinions on a topic, elections can be decided by fractions of a percent especially in consequential local races where people may enter the polling booth undecided, and thus be more susceptible to the influences of the space theyre in.

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Voting while God is watching does having churches as polling stations sway the ballot? - Huron Daily Tribune