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COMPANIES RACING TO USE STEM CELLS TO FIND AND TEST NEW DRUGS

New Technology Will Be Used To Help Discover Medicines Not Just To Repair Or Replace Damaged Cells

Rob Waters (Bloomberg) - May 20, 2008

Two companies that produce different types of stem cells have signed contacts to sell their products to drugmakers, showing the new technology will be used to help discover medicines not just to repair or replace damaged cells.

California Stem Cells Inc., an Irvine, California, biotechnology company that turns embryonic stem cells into neurons, said today it's selling the brain cells to researchers trying to find drugs to treat Lou Gehrig's disease. CellDesign Inc., of New Haven, Connecticut, said it has contracts with four drugmakers seeking to use its product to find new medicines for conditions such as Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia.

The efforts of these two closely held companies indicate stem cells will aid in the search for old-fashioned drugs long before they're infused into patients. It also suggests that the first businesses to benefit from stem cell technology will be traditional pharmaceutical companies and their suppliers not developers of new kinds of therapies.

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``It's similar to what happened in the last century with molecular biology'' and gene therapy, said John Hambor, CellDesign's founding chief executive officer, in a telephone interview yesterday. ``We're now going down a similar path with stem cell biology. While it may lead to cures by itself, it will drive the next generation of drug discovery.''

California Stem Cell will provide hundreds of batches of its neural cells over the next year to BioFocus DPI, a unit of the Belgian drug discovery company Galapagos NV, said Chris Airriess, the California company's chief operating officer, in a telephone interview yesterday.

Manipulating Cells

BioFocus researchers will manipulate the neurons so they match the damage found in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, said Katherine Hilyard, BioFocus vice president for biological sciences. Then researchers will run the altered neurons through machines that can rapidly test huge libraries of so-called gene silencers -- bits of genetic material that can block the action of proteins -- to see if they can fix the damage.

``Stem cells let us create systems that mimic what's happening in the patient so we can find a better drug,'' Hilyard said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The project is funded by the ALS Association, a nonprofit research and advocacy group that works to develop treatments for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. The condition kills nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, robbing patients of muscular control and eventually leading to paralysis.

``This is a quick way to look for potential targets,'' said Lucie Bruijn, the association's science director. ``To test all these things in an animal model is so much more expensive.''

Airriess said the agreement with BioFocus is one of many he and his colleagues are developing. The company also is negotiating with drug companies to supply neural and heart cells.

`Very Profitable'

``It's potentially a very profitable business,'' he said.

Three European pharmaceutical companies, Roche Holding AG, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, announced last October they'd work together to develop ways to use stem cells for drug screening. The work will be coordinated by a new London-based organization, Stem Cells for Safer Medicines, funded by the companies and the British government.

The group's goal is to find more efficient ways to identify new drugs and test them for potential side effects earlier in the drug development process, said Philip Wright, the group's executive director.

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