Culturing growth

The four-day annual conference of the International Society for Stem Cell Research ends Saturday after bringing about 3,300 scientists and business people from 55 countries to the Vancouver Convention Centre. A Friday morning panel discussion on commercializing stem-cell advances included Dr. Allen Eaves, the CEO and president of Stemcell Technologies, a Vancouver-based company that's the main sponsor of the event, which was held in Boston last year and is slated for Stockholm in 2015.

The trajectory of Stemcell Technologies, now the biggest company in the field in Canada, helps illustrate the state of the emerging industry, its potential and its roadblocks.

It started in the Terry Fox Lab

Eaves first made a name for himself as a cancer specialist and research scientist pioneering bone marrow transplants with a team from the Terry Fox Laboratory at the BC Cancer Agency (the team included his wife, Dr. Connie Eaves, who is still an active researcher at the agency.) The procedure that is now standard treatment for leukemia can involve a transplant from a comparable donor or use stem cells derived from the patient's blood or marrow. New cells created from stem cells - the so-called master cells of the body, which can transform into any type of body tissue - have to be grown in specialized material called tissue culture media.

Of necessity, the Terry Fox Lab started making this media to continue its work.

Taking it private

The BC Cancer Agency board suggested that Eaves continue the work of the media preparation unit outside of the Terry Fox Laboratory when he retired seven years ago under the compulsory retirement rules of the day. Eaves re-mortgaged his home and received about $1 million in grant money from the B.C. government to start Stemcell Technologies.

Universities and other research institutes play key roles in stem cell research because of its complexity and the need for expertise. But scientists aren't business people and incubating new companies isn't the main aim of universities - at least, not yet - so there is a gaping "valley of death" between a discovery and a clinically tested technique that can be used in medicine, said panel moderator Gregory Bonfiglio, founder of Proteus Regenerative Medicine based in Portola Valley, Calif.

"We're in a capital-constrained environment," said Bonfiglio, even though 2012-13 was the best year in the last 20 in terms of new stem cell-related companies being listed on stock markets. One way to deal with this is to keep research in the university setting longer or hive it offto institutes associated with universities, which is a growing trend in the U.S., he said. In Canada, a public-private partnership called the Centre for Commercialization and Regenerative Medicine based in Toronto is trying to take viable concepts from academia, find partners and turn them into businesses.

Investors? What investors?

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Culturing growth