April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is joining the campaign to #Take6ForPD—take 6 minutes to raise Parkinson’s awareness and highlight our commitment to funding research for the disease.  In addition to highlighting our commitment to funding research for Parkinson’s Disease, we’re also giving patients and patient advocates the opportunity to share their stories and experiences. In this blog, CIRM Board Member David Higgins shares why spreading awareness of Parkinson’s is important to him. Dr. David R. Higgins g ..read more

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is investing $4 million in a late-stage preclinical project by Ryne Bio aiming to improve treatment for Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD). PD is characterized by a loss of dopamine producing neurons that result in motor symptoms, such as dyskinesias (involuntary, erratic, writhing movements of the face, arms, legs or trunk) and non-motor effects such as dementia, depression and sleep disorders. PD is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease affecting approximately 1 million people in the U.S. In Cali ..read more

One of the great pleasures of my job is getting to meet the high school students who take part in our SPARK or Summer Internship to Accelerate Regenerative Medicine Knowledge program. It’s a summer internship for high school students where they get to spend a couple of months working in a world class stem cell and gene therapy research facility. The students, many of whom go into the program knowing very little about stem cells, blossom and produce work that is quite extraordinary. One such student is Tan Ieng Huang, who came to the US from China for high school. During her internship at U.C ..read more

A colony of iPSCs from a Parkinson’s patient (left) and dopaminergic neurons made from these iPSCs (right) to model PD. (Image credit: Jeanne Loring) A new study that used adult blood stem cells to create replacement brain nerve cells appears to help rats with Parkinson’s. In Parkinson’s, the disease attacks brain nerve cells that produce a chemical called dopamine. The lack of dopamine produces a variety of symptoms including physical tremors, depression, anxiety, insomnia and memory problems. There is no cure and while there are some effective treatments they tend to wear off over time. In t ..read more

This blog is also available as an AUDIO CAST Photo of New York Attorney General Letitia James courtesy Wikimedia commons A now-defunct New York City for-profit stem cell clinic — Park Avenue Stem Cell — was order by court to pay $5.1 million in potential consumer restitution, penalties, and costs for fraudulently and illegally advertising their stem cell procedures. The judgment resolves a 2019 lawsuit by New York State Attorney General Letitia James which claimed the defendants’ scammed patients out of thousands of dollars each for unproven and potentially harmful medical treatments involvin ..read more

If you have never heard of AADC deficiency count yourself lucky. It’s a rare, incurable condition that affects only around 135 children worldwide but it’s impact on those children and their families is devastating. The children can’t speak, can’t feed themselves or hold up their head, they have severe mood swings and often suffer from insomnia. But Dr. Krystof Bankiewicz, a doctor and researcher at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), is using techniques he developed treating Parkinson’s disease to help those children. Full disclosure here, CIRM is funding Dr. Bankiewicz’s Parki ..read more

Neurodegenerative diseases impact millions of people worldwide with the risk of being affected by one of these diseases increasing as you get older. For many of these diseases, there are very few treatments available to patients. As life expectancy increases and the population continues to age, it is crucial to try and find treatments that can potentially slow the progression of these diseases or cure them entirely. This is one of the reasons why CIRM has committed directing around $1.5 billion in funding over the next few years to research related to neurological disorders. One of the most ..read more

At first glance Lauren Miller Rogen and Dr. David Higgins seem an unlikely pair. She’s an actor, writer, director and has worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. He has a doctorate in molecular biology and genetics and has worked at some of the most well-known companies in biotech. But together they make a great team. Lauren and David are both on the CIRM Board. She’s a patient advocate for Alzheimer’s and the driving force (with her husband Seth) of HFC (Hilarity for Charity), which has raised millions of dollars to help families battling the disease and to educate young people ..read more

Two voices, one message, watch out for predatory stem cell clinics Last week two new papers came out echoing each other about the dangers of bogus “therapies” being offered by predatory stem cell clinics and the risks they pose to patients. The first was from the Pew Charitable Trusts entitled: ‘Harms Linked to Unapproved Stem Cell Interventions Highlight Need for Greater FDA Enforcement’ with a subtitle: ‘Unproven regenerative medical products have led to infections, disabilities, and deaths.’ That pretty much says everything you need to know about the report, and in pretty stark terms; need ..read more

Sometimes you read about a new study where the researchers did something that just leaves you gob smacked. That’s how I felt when I read a study in the journal Cell Stem Cell about a possible new approach to helping people with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). More on the gob smacking later. But first the reason for the study. We know that one of the causes of Parkinson’s disease is the death of dopamine-producing neurons, brain cells that help plan and control body movement. Over the years, researchers have tried different ways to try and replace those cells but getting the cells where they need to ..read more