Virgin birth

What are stem cells?

Key characteristics

• They self renew, allowing them to maintain their own population
• They are relatively undifferentiated which means they can produce several different types of differentiated cell
• They continuously divide
• They rarely replicate but can do so many times
• They live within a niche that nurtures and controls the cells within it – limiting their number and replication

Who are Merlin Biosciences?

Merlin Biosciences Limited is a specialised venture investor in life sciences companies managing three funds, worth in excess of €450 million of equity capital. Merlin invests in companies that are bringing to market human medicines or medical devices with groundbreaking technology and significant commercial potential.

Merlin is an active investor in and partner to its portfolio companies. It normally has a seat on each company board and likes to play a leading role in financing and other strategic events.

Q&A

Stem cell research

NGP spoke to Michael Hunt, CEO of ReNeuron, a leading stem cell research company, to find out more about this emerging development in patient treatment.

Q. How are stem cells revolutionising patient treatment? What innovations are you particularly excited about?

A. The whole field is somewhat early stage, and there are no marketed stem cell therapies available as yet, but there are a number in development, including ours. The excitement is in the ability of stem cells to potentially provide therapies in the future for disease states that currently have no other methods of treatment available for them.

We’re focused on diseases where there are no cures or where existing treatment modalities are poor. The potential of stem cell therapy is very large and that’s why there is much excitement surrounding the field, as well as controversy, of course.

Q. There is wide spread controversy over stem cell research due to the techniques used in the creation and usage of stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cell research. How do you defend your research when facing critics?

A. We are not involved in embryonic stem cell research so we’re able to avoid the controversy that arises in that area. Having said that, what we do is not completely removed from the ethical debate. We take our stem cells from foetal tissue and that is something that certain groups of people would oppose.

Our response to these objections is two-fold. Firstly there is a patient argument; we’re looking to treat patients in large-scale diseases, diseases that have millions of patients worldwide, like stroke, who have no real alternatives available to them. Secondly, there is a technology argument.

The particular technology we use means that we take the minimal amount of starting tissue. With our stroke programme, for example, using a single tissue sample, we have managed to scale up sufficient numbers of stem cells to treat all the eligible patients we believe will require the treatment when it is approved for use in patients. It means we do not have to go back and source new tissue samples. We do therefore believe that we are using our technology in a way that is most efficient and that best minimises those ethical concerns.

Q. What are your hopes for the biotechnology sector over the next 18 months?

A. In the wider biotech scene there is perhaps a feeling that the field is maturing. Large pharmaceutical companies’ pipelines are running short in terms of conventional small molecule approaches and the small biotech companies have a great opportunity to fill those pipelines with biological products. Stem cell therapies, however, are somewhat early stage at this point and there is much to prove in terms of their clinical utility. In the UK, the biotech scene remains some way behind the US but it’s vibrant and there are products coming through the clinic now, and indeed being marketed which shows that the end game is worth the effort. We will see further biological drugs and of course stem cell therapies coming through to the market in due course.

Q. What do ReNeuron have planned for the future? What direction do you hope to take the company in?

A. Our focus is fairly specific right now. It’s all about getting our first cell therapy through to the clinic and driving our other cell therapy programmes as hard as we can, making the best use of the assets we have, which are our excellent platform technology and our excellent people. We’re very small as a company but we do believe we have an opportunity here to really make a difference in the field and hopefully to generate stem cell therapies that can be widely applied to solve some very, very significant unmet medical needs. That remains our prime focus and we are very confident that we will get there in the end.

Blinded by branding?

Alcor Life Extension Foundation

People in the US can now sign up for life extension through cryonics. Alcor Life Extension Foundation are the world leader in cryonics and use the science of ultra-cold temperatures to preserve human life, with the intent of restoring good health when technology becomes available to do so. Alcor claim that cryonics “is a speculative life support technology that seeks to preserve human life in a state that will be viable and treatable by future medicine.”

Paracetamol

The first paracetamol went on sale in the US in 1955 under the brand name Tylenol. In 1956, 500mg tablets of paracetamol went on sale in the UK under the name Panadol and in 1958 a children’s formulation, Panadol Elixir, was released. GSK, owner of the Panadol brand, unveiled its first direct-to-consumer campaign for the product in January 2007. The first stage will be to gather data on different types of pain by handling an unbranded survey targeting existing and prospective GSK products, who will then use the data for future communications.