In November, voters approved a new $5.5 billion bond measure that extends the life of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The measure passed with far less fanfare than the original proposition that established the institute in the midst of a national controversy over embryonic stem cell research. With the passage of the new measure, the institute is expanding its work in emerging areas of regenerative medicine including cell and gene therapies and increasing its focus on translational research and clinical development. We spoke to Jonathan Thomas, chairman of the Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee, which oversees the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, about the progress CIRM has made to date, what the new funding will enable, and how the institute hopes to help shape the future of regenerative medicine.

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Full Transcript

Danny Levine (Producer). Yeah, it's exciting to be part of this inaugural Bio-Bridge podcast. Who've we got lined up today.

Neil Littman (Host)
Thanks, Danny. I just want to say a big thanks to you and the Levine media group for producing the podcast. Today. We have Jonathan Thomas, who is the chairman of the California Institute for regenerative medicine, which is a mouthful to say, so people generally refer to the organization as CIRM.

 

Danny Levine (Producer)
CIRM just secured 5.5 billion in bond funding from California voters extending the life of the Institute well into the future. How big a role did JT play in shaping seroma and securing its future?

Neil Littman (Host)
No, I think JT has played a major role in securing the future of CIRM. There's been a lot of controversy surrounding CIRM since 2004. When the Institute was first established, there's been a lot of, conflicts or perceived conflicts at the board level. A lot of us surrounded, a lot of board members come from the Institute, come from organizations that received some funding. There's, there's been a lot written about, perceived conflicts of interest funding, going to organizations where there is a board support from those organizations who vote where the funding is going. With JT took over at a time when the institutes of medicine had released a report that indicated that there were a lot of, of these conflicts that were pervasive at the board level. JT, as one of his first tasks really cleaned up a lot of those issues put in place new measures at the board level to recuse board members from voting on certain grants where there may be a conflict.

Neil Littman (Host)
I think that really served to increase the credibility of CIRM as an organization and really serve to put a lot of the controversy that has surrounded the organization in its early days behind CIRM. I think, a lot of that is to his credit. I think it really did clear the path to refocus firm's energy on what really mattered on that was, funding programs that can ultimately help cure patients of a variety of different,

Danny Levine (Producer)
If we're all set. Why don't we talk to JT?

Neil Littman (Host)
That sounds great. JT, thanks for joining us. Congratulations on the recent success of prop 14,

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Glad to join you. Thanks very much for the invitation.

Neil Littman (Host)
My pleasure JT, the campaign for extending the funding of CIRM was far more low key than I anticipated, and certainly much more so than the original ballot initiative in 2004, there wasn't the context of a big national debate driving it this time around. Were you surprised that it passed with as little controversy as it appeared to?

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Well, it didn't have the same controversy, but it had its own issues to be sure the biggest one of course, being that the COVID driven economic difficulties at the state made this a year last year, a year, that was not the greatest to bring a bond measure to the ballot, which would involve adding to the state debt. On the other side of the coin, the subject matter of the proposition, which was curing disease was something that was clearly on everybody's top of mind and really what it boiled down to was, which was going to prevail. As between those two macro factors, when the voters went out to vote and very happily for patients everywhere, the curing disease side prevailed, although certainly not by very much, but in terms of the levels of controversy that surrounded things like embryonic stem, cell research, et cetera, those were not there nearly as they were as in 2004, but it wasn't without its difficulties.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
That's for sure as evidenced by the fact that it passed 51 49 compared to 59 41 back in 2004.

Neil Littman (Host)
What will this new funding mean for CIRM and how should voters measure the ultimate success of some?

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Well, first and foremost, if you go back to prop 71, CIRM enabled a then fledgling industry to really accelerate in a major way over the first 16 years of SERMs existence, the $3 billion was a tremendous amount of funding to have available. Through that, were able to make grants that led to 68 clinical trials. We funded another 33 projects that were funded in their clinical trials through other sources. If you add that we are around a hundred projects that have made it to the clinical trial stage, which by any account is a great result. I think if you were to build upon that and say, what is the additional funding mean that we're going to be able to further accelerate the field? We will continue all of our core programs that we've had that have been so successful, which would be the basic research, which we call discovery, the translational research, which for those not familiar with the terminology simply means the gap bridging the gap between basic research discovery and getting into human clinical trials and the clinical trials themselves.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
We have a number of other programs, which we can get into if you'd like, but those are the ones that are the biggest drivers and to have the additional amount of money means to take all of that work and take it to the next level five and a half billion dollars is, should carry the agency for another 10 to 15 years. During that time there will be any number of major developments in the field that CERN will be squarely in the middle of an instrumental and making happen. The, the, trying to remember your second question was Neil, what the bottom is the second one after that.

Neil Littman (Host)
Yeah. How should voters think about measuring the success of.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Sure. Okay. So that's a great question. Voters in general have to understand that science takes time. CIRM first passed, as I said, the field of regenerative medicine was really in its infancy. The most of the science that was getting funded was at the earliest stages. Since that time, many of those have made it onto the clinical trial phase, but to date, very few have made it all the way through to commercialization. That's not to say that is an any sense of failure, quite the contrary, the clinical trials and the pipeline of projects behind it are positioning California and the field for great successes as these work, their way through. At the moment I would measure success by that metric. As we get further down the road, another 10 to 15 years, you're going to see many of the projects that do pan out and mind you, science is such that not everything's going to work by any means, but some of it will.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
We're driving towards cures as well as therapies that will fundamentally the nature of the treatment for the diseases in question and change the lives of the patients and their families who have to deal with these conditions on an ongoing basis. I would urge the, the voters as you look back and retrospect, just see the whole body of work over two iterations of survey to see what we've actually enabled. I think that you'll see that it will be a very significant body of work that will greatly contribute to treatments and cures.

Neil Littman (Host)
And JT. I think that's a great reminder that, science does take time to develop just to dive into that point . You had mentioned this, but the field has matured significantly since swarm was first established back in 2004, we've moved well beyond basic research. There's now a rich clinical pipeline or starting to see potential therapies emerge both certainly in the clinical stage, but hopefully towards the commercialization stage here over the next decade or so, what is the expected mix of CIRM investment? If you break it down between basic science versus clinical development or between academic scientists and biotech biopharma companies.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
If you look back at the first iteration of CIRM under proposition 71, the 3 billion of which 2.7 billion give or take was actually put out to fund research about 900 million of that went to basic research, which was the biggest chunk of all of, and towards the end of the first iteration, when we're running low on funds, were had a bit of a shift of emphasis to funding more in the clinical trials side, because we wanted to position projects to get through that as soon as possible. We had a, a bit more weight given on the clinical trials side of the ledger, coming back now to five and a half billion additional funding. We fully expect that we'll be giving very large amounts of funding to the entire research spectrum, starting again with basic research, which is after all where all this stuff begins, but we also have more and more projects getting to the clinical trial phase.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Plenty of stuff in the middle and the translational phase. I think you'll see a, quite a mix of, of phases that we will fund that if you were to go on our website, a secondary question is how does it break down in terms of the funding we've given to different research for different types of diseases? You'll, you'll notice that amongst the biggest allocation was two neurological disorders, roughly 25% or so, as I recall, went to those, you will see in the language of prop 14, that are the five and a half a billion and a half of that is earmarked for neurological conditions which is more of a percentage than we funded, but that's going to be something that gets particular emphasis. I think that's reflective of the fact that the in the regenerative medicine space, the neurological conditions have been amongst the toughest nuts to crack.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
They're certain of the conditions lend themselves to easier quote unquote, nothing's easy but easier research than others. As a whole, that category just requires a lot more funding. That's why a billion and a half was carved out for that. I think you'll see in this the five and a half, you'll see a great deal of it will go towards prevalent conditions, meaning heart disease cancer, plus the neurological vision disorders, et cetera. As with prop 71, a great deal will also go towards rare conditions that don't have the funding that a lot of the larger conditions have. Part of what were set up to do was to fund the part of the research spectrum that the, that other places weren't. NIH funds certain types of things, and CIRM tries to figure out where it can make the biggest impact by funding those projects that don't necessarily get the same funding that some others do.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
We're, we're pretty specific about that, but also going forward, Neil, I think you'll see an increased emphasis in the regenerative medicine space on gene therapy in prop 71, there was, most of the focus was on stem cell research itself with some attention to gene therapy and some hybrid projects that use both. I think you'll see more of the gene therapy products that will be funded here with respect to your question about academia versus biotech companies and industry in the earliest days, because there were no real products getting anywhere near commercialization. A vast percentage of the funding went to academia with very little going to companies, but as time has passed and companies have spun out from academia in an increasing pace and other companies have established themselves from scratch. We've seen a gradual transition and the ratio of academia awards to industry awards has leveled off where it's somewhat comparable at this point.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
We would envision as more and more companies set up that the percentage going to industry will continue to increase.

Neil Littman (Host)
JT. That there's a lot to dive into there as a initial follow-up question, you had mentioned expanding the scope of funding for CIRM going forward. As the Institute's name suggests right, the California Institute for regenerative medicine, there may be a broader focus than just stem cells. I know under prop 71, there was a specific focus on stem cells. Does the new proposition expand the scope of what CIRM is able to fund going forward with the new $5.5 billion?

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Yes, it does. I mean, it specifically mentions gene therapy. It mentions a broad term genetic research, which is going to, as it will be applied, we'll refer to genetic research that is apropos of regenerative medicine, not just genetic research, writ large. There is this category of what we call vital research opportunities, which in prop 71 was employed very sparingly. These are things that are a little outside, the scope of what the proposition provided for that we think are still consistent with the mission. And the first go around. I think we only had two, one was a gene therapy project and the other was last summer when we had a, a small, but I think quite remarkable round for COVID related projects. One of those went to a convalescent plasma grant, which was deemed as so-called vital research opportunity. The, the new initiative suggests that the scope of what can come under vital research opportunity will be larger, but that's largely up to the board to define.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
I'm sure there'll be lots of discussion on what that means. We will having done that, then be able to instruct our peer reviewers, who are the ones who review the grants for is blush before recommending them for approval by the board, have to give them direction on what vital research opportunities can mean, et cetera. I do think you will see an expanded scope, but it's all going to be under the evolving name of regenerative medicine. Now, one of the things that is going to be very interesting is the T the things that go into the projects and the type of projects as a function of new developments in the field that don't exist today. If you go back to 2004, when prop 71 was passed, there been a number of very significant developments in the field. One of which was the advent of induced pluripotent stem cells, which for your listening audience, that's not familiar with that term is a remarkable thing.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
This was something that a fellow who's at the university of Kyoto and jointly at the Gladstone Institute pose the question. If you took an adult stem cell, is there a way to expose it to some combination of proteins that would in effect reverse engineer it back to embryonic stage, so called plurry potent stage where the cells are basically able to convert to anything in the body. So, interestingly enough, he came up with a four protein cocktail that did the trick either with adult stem cells, I'm sorry, adult stem cells from your skin or from your blood. It would reverse engineer them back to plural potent stage, hence the name induced pluripotent stem cells. You could reprogram them with other proteins to become something that you wanted to do additional research on the most prominent thing, being neurons. You'd have, if you took somebody who had a neurological condition like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, and you created these induced pluripotent stem cells, you reprogram them to become neurons in a dish.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
The neurons then could be exposed to high throughput drug screening to see if there were any drugs or combination of drugs out there that could have a, a materially positive effect on the cells as they were in the dish. It's think of it as the disease itself, because it's the patient's cells, or as the origin manifest into the disease in the dish. That if you get something that has an impact on it, then you can use that as the basis for clinical trials to test further, as a way of seeing if you really got something that's therapeutic or curative, and you'd say, well, that's all kind of complicated. Why would you do that? The reason is if you take something like Alzheimer's, as an example, there are lots of drugs you think might do something for Alzheimer's, but the FDA would never let you try to use those drugs to, because it'd be, wouldn't be safe, be bombarding patients with numerous drugs, one after another.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
So that just doesn't happen. If you recreate their condition in a Petri dish and use the drugs there to see if there's an impact on the condition in the dish itself, then you really got something. That's kind of the biggest single use that will come out of these induced pluripotent stem cells. Look for a lot more based on that in the future, that work was so revolutionary that the scientist Shinya Yamanaka got the Nobel prize in about five years, which for those of you keeping track, no, that normally takes 30 to 40 years to get a Nobel. That was a development, a second development that nobody expected was the whole area of gene editing, which goes best by its acronym, CRISPR, which I'm sure most of your audience is familiar with where building off the ability in the early two thousands to sequence the entire human genome, and then an ability to actually identify mutations that drive certain diseases all the way down to the base pairs, for those who remember their high school biology, because which base pairs are responsible for a given mutation that drives a disease, this technology, which is super powerful, allows you to go in and literally added out those base pairs and either substitute in correct base pairs or do other things.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
This gene editing then permits you to give the patient a chance to actually get back to a normal condition. Giving it an example of this, that UCLA Don cone is one of their researchers who CIRM is funded. A number of times over the years, worked on young children with a condition colloquially known as bubble baby disease, scientifically severe combined immunodeficiency or skid, which is the result of a single mutation. He was able to take the blood forming stem cells out of a child's bone marrow, which is where they reside and do what they do to create your blood. Do gene added out that mutation and put the blood-forming stem cells back into the child's bone marrow. Whereas before there, they had no functioning immune system, Hans the bubble baby. They had to live in quarantine from birth. This allowed these kids to generate normal bloodstreams with fully functioning immune systems.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
And Dr. Cohn has done this with over 50 kids, all of which are healthy and in, in school and they get sick and nobody cares, whereas before I could have killed them. It was major, major things of gene editing is a very potent developments in California. Jennifer Doudna up at UC Berkeley was the, along with a, a coworker was the discover CRISPR. For that, they got the Nobel prize as well, which is a very big deal obviously. Again, in a very short time period. You get these major developments that come up and so going forward, what's the next big thing like that's going to come up. Obviously we don't know as we sit here, but we can say that it's going to revolutionize the field, all these things as they come along. A further answer to your question, what does this mean for the future that will inform that as well?

Neil Littman (Host)
It certainly feels like the pace of innovation is accelerating within the field. JT. I did want to ask about the infrastructure that CIRM has supported throughout its history. If we think back to the creation of CIRM, it was really necessitated by federal restrictions at the time on embryonic stem cell research. One of the consequences of that for our listeners was that researchers actually needed to be in separate labs to conduct embryonic stem cell research from any facilities that were operating with federal funding at the time. So that meant a lot of storms. Initial funding went into infrastructure programs to house and support this type of research. JT, could you just comment on how that infrastructure has paid off for establishing California as a leader in the field, and then also any expectations of continuing investment infrastructure going forward with the new funding?

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
So you're absolutely right. The, there was a need to segregate the areas of research from anything that would be funded by NIH or federal government. In the early days SERMs spent about, I think it was about 270 million of the 3 billion on 12 different research institutes up and down the state, which varied from new free standing buildings. Like you'd see at USC, for example, or at the buck Institute up in Nevato and Northern California, or it took the form of refurbished existing facilities such as was done at UCLA. There was scrupulous record keeping to make sure that there was no use of federal funding in these labs. What happened was because it set up these state of the art world-class labs. It was an additional source of incentive for scientists to move to California, to have access to these facilities as well as to be able to apply for funding that with 3 billion in hand was a lot more available than anywhere else.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
That as those facilities and programs continue to develop it just led to a, a world class. It already, there were a lot of wonderful scientists here, obviously beforehand, but it's been able to magnify and amplify upon that. The you've got all these programs now that in the aggregate are second to none in terms of a body of scientific work. That has been very successful and that's not only created an ecosystem for science to flourish, but it's generated already a lot of economic benefits to the state in the form of various tax revenues, et cetera. Of course, as therapies and cures start to develop, and we can take treatment of disease off the roles of the Medicares Medicaids of the world, you'll begin to see even greater economic benefits. It all started at the beginning, but it's, it just continues to snowball with all these benefits.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Second question again, you know,

Neil Littman (Host)
Continuing investment infrastructure going forward.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Okay. That, I, I I'm certain the answer to that is yes, I was going to be more, the board is in the earliest stages of analyzing and developing the next strategic plan to cover the week we do them in five year increments. 2021 is a year one of the next plan. We're working very hard with the effort being led by our CEO, Dr. Maria Milan on figuring out what that's going to entail. Almost certainly there will be more infrastructure in the form of facilities, but that also is a term that we use to describe certain of our programs, which are some of the more noteworthy ones I mentioned, induced pluripotent stem cells. We've set up a as IPS for short set up an IPS cell bank, where we took 2,500 lines of IPS cells covering a large number of different sorts of diseases. We've established a cell bank where they're all kept and are made available to researchers to use.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
In addition, we formed a collaboration with the Brode Institute in Cambridge, which is, is made up from MIT and Harvard. They're taking the cell lines as we've banked them and doing genetic sequencing on them. That's an additional set of data that's available to the public for research. That was one big what we call infrastructure project. Another is in the field of genomics, which gets down to determining genetic sequence and function of lots of different diseases. We have a genomic center that we funded at various places throughout California, which are generating tons of data, which are being analyzed by the data core of that program at UC Santa Cruz under David Hassler. That again is making a large body of data and information available to the public for research purposes, third infrastructure project, we call the, the alpha stem cell clinic network. What that is simply is at currently at five different universities, we have these clinics, which are meant to provide soup to nuts treatment for clinical trials, for various stem cell projects, whether they're funded by CIRM or not.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
It starts with going out and finding the patients for these clinical trials and then having the facilities to be able to undertake the trials themselves, work all the way through that with the patients, all of which is towards developing the, whatever the treatment is of the condition at issue. This network shares a number of features, which give it economies of scale. It's it's, as far as I know, really the only one like it in the world, and it serves as a valuable, not only for itself, but it also is in direct contrast with the proliferating snake oil stem cell clinics that have arisen throughout the world, really. Certainly there are a ton of them in California, which promise this and that for exorbitant amounts of money and don't deliver, and are frankly very dangerous and expensive. Our network is set up to be what I defined as the right way to go as compared to these others, I should say, in the new measure, Neil there, in addition to adding more alpha stem cell clinics, there's a provision to provide something called community care centers of excellence, which are meant to be for lack of a better expression, satellite clinic sites out in more rural areas or underserved parts of the community that wouldn't have access and, or be able to get into the trials at these five sites.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
This is meant to give a much greater accessibility to state residents, to be able to participate in these trials. That's something that we're starting to discuss and figure out how to implement. We'll be taking lots of stakeholder input on from members of the public and other interested parties as we plan that out. That the infrastructure as between the facilities and these other infrastructural programs, I think you'll find only increasing as we go forward, which serve to further enhance the whole effort.

Neil Littman (Host)
And JT. I think it's pretty clear that, you've helped navigate CIRM through enormous periods of change over the years on if I remember correctly, you joined in 2011 and your 10 will be coming up to an end next year. After about a decade on the job, as you think back, what are you proudest about?

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Well, at first I'm, I'm proudest of, I'd say having the privilege to be able to work with an incredible team of which you were a member for many years at CIRM, an incredible slate of scientific talent throughout the state and being part of the fabric of regenerative medicine research nationally and internationally. I just stayed that privilege at the outset of, I think the, what I would say I'm most proud of is taking the reins from Bob Klein, who came up with the idea for prop 71, got it on the ballot, got it passed and served as the first chair of the board. Which was the sermon itself is a tremendous paradigm shift in the way you fund medical research and taking his vision and doing the best I could to continue his work and the work of the board to that point and the work of the team to that point, and to take it to a higher levels based on development of the research and just the, and really continuing CIRM as the trendsetter in the world for this thing, nobody had this funding.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Nobody had the scientific base. We were very lucky in California. This is a frontier mentality state that saw fit to enable CIRM to form and to do what it does. And, and I think there were lots of smaller triumphs along the way, but I just say the ability to continue improving the process, getting better and better projects funded and having positioned the world really for a number of therapies and cures that are going to come down the road, a result of what SERMs done, that'll have tremendous benefit to patients everywhere.

Neil Littman (Host)
That's clearly a lot to be proud of JT. As you look forward, given your experience, what do you think the biggest challenges are going to be? What advice would you give to whomever may be your successor?

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Well, the immediate challenge is we have a number of new programs to implement as part of the CIRM effort, courtesy of the new proposition. How to be able to do that in a way that's efficient and continues, what CIRM move along in what really is now a very well-oiled machine. We want to make sure that there's a seamless transition into the larger scale program envisioned by the proposition. That's not a simple thing it's going to require the, the excellent CERN team led by Dr. Milan to continue to do what it does and to integrate all these new programs and the board to provide guidance and how to prioritize and best implemented, et cetera, not easy, but the entire CIRM team writ large think is very well positioned to do that. We're going to be adding new people. We had to slim down because we didn't know were going to have money or not.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
The vote we're going to be regrouping and adding a number of people to get back to where were. Plus we've got additional folks we'll have to hire for some of the new programs. All of that's going to be a major logistical challenge, but I'm sure we're up to it. And, and so I'm, we will succeed on the question of what would I say to a successor it's just to appreciate what you're inheriting in terms of the program and the operation in place, and to go forward with an eye open, to how to integrate all of the incredible developments that are yet to come to make the whole CIRM experience continue to improve, and the ability to have the, to increase the access and affordability for patients to therapies and cures, as they're developed, everything is about the patients. That's what everyone's here for. It's all gotta be with a mind about them.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
The increased role of the patients and everything we do, which they are considerably involved in at this point, the increased attraction of getting more and more scientific talent to California. All of these things are challenges that the successor and the board and the team will face going forward, but I'm fully confident that they will be able to build on what we've got and make it even better.

Neil Littman (Host)
I, I think JT, you hit the nail on the head. I think prop 14 is really just a major victory for patients. I think that's really exciting what the new funding we'll be able to provide over the next 10, 15, 20 years. With that, I would like to thank Jonathan Thomas chairman of the independent citizens oversight committee, which oversees the California Institute for regenerative medicine. JT, thank you so much for your time and for being with us on the show today.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Well, thank you, Neil. I just want to point out for your listeners that you are a head of business development, as well as a number of other things, while you were there for five or six years, as I recall, and you did a wonderful job to increase our visibility and increase access to industry and all that's connected to that. I wanted to thank you for all you did while you were there and wish you continued best of luck in your current endeavor.

Neil Littman (Host)
Thank you, JT. I appreciate that, to this day, when people ask about my time at CIRM, I always describe storm as a, a very unique and wonderful place. It's in fact inspired me to do so much more throughout my career and take, I took a lot of learnings from my time at Saara. It was a real privilege to work at such a great Institute. As you said, work with such great colleagues, including yourself.

Jonathan Thomas (Guest)
Well, thank you. Thanks again for the opportunity to speak to your listeners.

Danny Levine (Producer)
Now, that was quite a conversation.

Neil Littman (Host)
Yeah, thanks, Danny. I think that the conversation with JT was just wide ranging and I think, hopefully it gives listeners a nice overview of just how far CIRM has come since the Institute was first established back in 2004. You heard JT talk about the wide range of funding that CERN provided. Initially a lot of the funding went to the basic research, basic biology on infrastructure programs. If you think back to the federal ban on embryonic stem cell research, CIRM had to spend a, I think it mentioned $270 million on building out infrastructure and lab space to house researchers who are working on a embryonic stem cell programs, because funds could not be co-mingled with labs that have had received NIH funding, for example. If you think about how much the science has advanced since then, it's amazing to think about some of the innovations that have taken place and JT talked about the know Nobel prize being awarded back in.

Neil Littman (Host)
I think it was 20 12, 2 Shinya Yamanaka for the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells or IPS cells. I mean, that's just create an explosion in the field in terms of the breadth and, potential types of therapies that can be developed based on stem cells. You also heard JT talk a lot about gene therapy programs and in particular, the program from UCLA, which was very inspiring to me when I was at CIRM. I think as you look forward, I was really excited to hear that the breadth of the types of technologies that CIRM has leeway to fund going forward has broadened and has increased. I think the future is really bright in the field of regenerative medicine. That's, that's the cell therapy, that's gene therapy. Of course, certain funds, a lot of enabling technologies to support the development of new types of therapies that aren't even on our radar yet.

Neil Littman (Host)
So I think that's really exciting.

Danny Levine (Producer)
It's kind of interesting in that it's been freed up to live up to its name now that it has the ability to move beyond just stem cells. As you think about the landscape of everything from cell therapy to gene editing, what excites you most, where do you think the biggest opportunities are?

Neil Littman (Host)
Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunities around the, this idea of programming medicine, right. Or engineering biology. If we think back to the recent history of medicine, you can look at the, the biotech industry was born with the advent of insulin, basically. That was in, I think, 1978, you fast forward to the first cell therapy that was approved, which was in, I believe it was 2017, right. Car T therapy to treat patients with, with blood cancer. If you think about where we are now and where we're going, we are really in essence able to rewrite the code of life. That's things like programming cells to attack cancer cells. Right now it's not, I don't want to say limited to blood cancer, but those have been the approved therapies. There's a lot of work being done with targeting those cells to solid tumors as well.

Neil Littman (Host)
If you think about the field of gene, a gene editing and gene therapy, you heard J T mentioned that, gene editing can address and gene therapy can address, 10,000 monogenic diseases that are out there. I think the future is very bright. We're just beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible. The other topic, what JT mentioned was the IPS cell phenomenon. So induce postponed stem cells hold tremendous. We we've already seen that. They've been adopted by the industry by academia for a lot of preclinical work, a lot of toxicology type work for testing drugs. I think the next wave, and we're seeing a lot of small companies pursuing these types of innovations will be in using IPS cells as an actual therapy and not just as a preclinical screening tool. I think those are some areas that, that I'm particularly excited about.

Danny Levine (Producer)
That was a great start in the, and look forward to continuing this,

Neil Littman (Host)
Thanks to any I'm excited for this new podcast series. I think, just to our listeners, you can expect a whole host of guests with the ride ranging experience in the healthcare sector that are really working to bring science fiction to life. So stay tuned.

Danny Levine (Producer)
Thanks for listening. The bio verge is a product of bio Virginia Best platform, buttons, visionary entrepreneurs with the aim of transforming health viral birds provides access and enables everyone to invest in highly vetted healthcare startups on the cutting edge of innovation from family offices, registered investment advisors, and non-accredited individuals to learn more, go to bio verge.com. This podcast is produced by over by the use it for this podcast is provided the Curtis Jonah Levine collect.