Cell Therapy Could Become As Common As Mainstream Medicine

Image Caption: (Left Image) For some medical applications, cell therapies are better equipped than small-molecule or genetically-engineered drugs. For instance, individually tailored, induced pluripotent stem cells might be used to regenerate damaged organs or tissues. (Right Image) In this example of the advantages of cell therapies, bacteria may be programmed to make an anti-inflammatory molecule and transplanted to the gut to treat inflammatory bowel disease. Credit: Science Translational Medicine

April Flowers for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

A new study from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) reveals that treating patients with cells may one day become as common as it is now to treat the sick with drugs from engineered proteins, antibodies, or smaller chemicals. The team outlines their vision of cell-based therapy as a third pillar of medicine in an online edition of Science Translational Medicine.

Today, biomedical science sits on the cusp of a revolution: the use of human and microbial cells as therapeutic entities, said Wendell Lim, PhD, a UCSF professor and director of the UCSF Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology.

According to the scientists, cell therapies have the potential to address critical, unmet needs in the treatment of some of the deadliest diseases. These include diabetes, cancer and inflammatory bowel diseases.

Cells can carry out functions that cant be performed by the small-molecule drugs produced by big pharmaceutical companies. Targeted drugs created by biotech firms in the wake of the genetic engineering revolution are not as effective as cells, either. Cells are adaptable, for example, and able to sense their surroundings. This allows them to vary their responses to better suit physiologic conditions, unlike todays drugs.

According to the researchers, continued advances in cellular engineering could provide a framework for the development of cellular therapies that are safe and predictable.

Michael Fischbach, PhD, assistant professor in the UCSF School of Pharmacy and an expert on the human microbiome, and Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, executive vice chancellor and provost at UCSF and a leading diabetes and transplant rejection researcher collaborated with Lim on the study.

The researchers have organized a symposium on the potential of cell therapy supported by UCSF and Science Translational Medicine, taking place April 12, 2013. It will feature talks and discussions by some of the nations leading scientists in stem cell therapy, immunotherapy and the human microbiome. The microbiome consists primarily of the many hundreds of interacting species of bacteria that live within and upon us.

Cells were first used successfully in bone marrow and organ transplants over forty years ago. The strategies envisioned today, however, are more complex. They involve manipulating cells based on new knowledge of how genes program their development and inner workings.

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Cell Therapy Could Become As Common As Mainstream Medicine