Are there other, intermediate embryonic cells that might, in similar fashion, give rise to the nervous system or brain?
Yes. The way to think of this is that you have a tree with branches that give rise to all of the different tissue types of the body. The hemangioblast, for instance, gives rise to one branch—to blood cells, vessels, and the immune system. But there are also neural stem cells as well as early progenitors that have this plasticity in most of the other systems of the body. Right now we’re trying to discover how to isolate and expand them.
You’re a bit limited using just cells. You started out with Christiaan Barnard transplanting hearts.
To realize the full potential of stem cells, we must learn to reconstitute them into more complex tissues and structures. So if we want to make an artery or bones or even an entire kidney or a heart, we need to learn to assemble and grow them on a biodegradable scaffold, which the body can later absorb. In one study we used the cells to make little kidneys that even produced urine. The urine had concentrated creatine or urea, meaning the kidneys were actually removing toxic materials from the blood. Entire bladders have been grown this way. Other researchers are doing bones, heart valves, and cartilage for joints.
The officer had a 16-year-old son who would go totally blind in two years without the therapy. I was almost in tears.
This seems like lifesaving technology on an unprecedented scale, yet the work has been stymied by politics. It must be frustrating to have these cells sitting around the lab, in storage, when you could be helping people.
Four years ago I was driving to work, going up a hill on a quiet little road with a speed limit of 15 miles an hour. I was in a rush and whirled into the parking lot, and there’s this police cruiser next to me. I almost hit it. “Oh, jeez, now I’m screwed,” I thought. I went into my office, started working, and a few minutes later a scientist from the next office over comes in and says, “Bob, there’s a police officer out there who wants to see you. He has handcuffs and a gun.” The whole lab is thinking he’s there to arrest me. He says, “Dr. Lanza, could I speak to you in your office?” so I brought him in. It turns out that I had just published a paper showing that we could create human retinal pigment epithelial cells capable of restoring visual function in animals. The officer had a 16-year-old son who would go totally blind in two years without the therapy. By the time he finished his story, I was almost in tears because we had these cells and they had been frozen at that point for nine months.
Why couldn’t you take them out of storage to help the boy?
We didn’t have $20,000, which is what we needed to do the preclinical studies required for working with people. At that point, our phones had been turned off. We didn’t have a fax machine. I couldn’t even afford bottled water for my pipettes. The point is, there is just no funding because basic research is generally funded by the government and the government will not fund stem cell work.
What else are you storing, still unfunded, in the vault?
We have cells that reverse paralysis in sheep that have spina bifida and can’t walk. After we injected our cells, the first animal that we treated returned to normal and was walking fine. The same model could work for paralyzed humans, but without funding, we haven’t been able to repeat the experiment in five years. People are in wheelchairs when there could be a cure.
A few years ago a woman contacted me. In the course of chemotherapy for a tumor, something must have been activated, and for some unknown reason the glial cells in her cerebellum had started to degenerate. She was a lady with all these kids. Slowly she started to lose her ability to talk. She began to use a walker. She got worse and worse, and then, not long ago, she died.
You could have helped her?
Yes, we have cells that probably could have helped her with a single injection. One of her sons kept coming and asking, “Is there anything you can do?” But we didn’t have the resources to go through the process at the FDA. It’s heart wrenching to see this happening, knowing that this work is being held up.
Amid all this, are you still trying to achieve your first dream, harvesting embryonic stem cells from human clones?
We’re continuing this work, but with less urgency since the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells—adult cells that have been reprogrammed back to an embryonic state. We’re working on new ways to reprogram skin cells that would allow us to safely create a bank of stem cell lines that would closely match the population as a whole. It turns out that only 100 cell lines could give you a complete haplotype, or immune, match for 50 percent of the U.S. population. These reprogrammed cells are not as controversial since you don’t use cloning or embryos.
What do these technologies portend for human longevity?
It turns out that the human life span plateaus as it approaches a roof of about 120. By eliminating infectious diseases, some chronic diseases, and cancer, we can get the life span past 100. I think with tissue engineering we can patch you together like a bicycle tire, replacing a kidney with a kidney and a heart with a heart, to about 120 years. That was always my thinking: That was the limit. But with these hemangioblasts, I now have questioned my own rules. These cells can go in and fix the damaged tissue inside, almost like nanoparticles. We may be able to do the same thing with similar cell lines for neurons, where we can repair the damage in the brain itself. So if it continues the way it’s going, we may break that ceiling, like breaking the sound barrier. I’d be very hesitant to put a lid as to where longevity is going to go.
You’re launching the future of medicine, but it is still on hold.
Rather than curing disease, we’re trying to get around theological problems. It’s not what I signed up for in medical school. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thrown my hands up and said, “Enough, I can’t take it anymore,” but then I’m back the next day. We’re crippled, but they can’t stop us forever. We’ve now got enough irons in the fire and hopefully ways to bypass many of these objections. But it’s just a shame that the research has been held up so long. We’re living through a paradigm shift. People are going to look back at us and say, “They used to cut people’s legs off.” Then they’ll just give an injection and the blood flow will be restored and the limb saved. If I were a patient and I knew I was going to have my leg cut off and something could be done, I would be demanding it. But most people, even most scientists, don’t realize what we’re capable of. I realize it because I’m doing the work and I can see what’s possible before my eyes.
