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our institutions with a distinct advantage. As we noted in last year’s annual report, animals and humans share the planet, and they have many illnesses in common: cancer, arthritis, organ failure, injuries, and toxicities. In the past, the art and science of medicine was practiced across species because human and domestic animals were so co-dependent. But as humans have lived farther from their livestock and food- source wildlife, a gulf opened between veterinary medicine and human medicine. The intention of this cross-disciplinary conference was to bridge that gap and to create conversations and relationships between human and veterinary colleagues confronted with similar clinical challenges. We deem our joint efforts with CSU to have done just that and look forward to continuing our partnership, outreach and mutual progress toward therapies and cures.
Additionally, the Gates Center receives frequent inquiries about stem cell treatments, obviously inspired by the advertising wraps that regularly encase copies of the newspaper and ads that pop up on the internet. Purportedly, there are now hundreds of clinics across the country advertising fat-derived stem cell therapy treatments for ailments ranging from sports injuries and Alzheimer’s to paralysis and neurodegenerative conditions, as well as numerous clinics abroad making equally unsupported claims. Following a Channel 7 investigative report on local stem cell clinics, Gates Center’s Entrepreneur in Residence Heather Callahan and Biomanufacturing Facility Executive Director Ryan Crisman gave a televised interview, sharing their concern over the safety and efficacy of these treatments that have not been proven in carefully conducted clinical trials. Clinic operators generally insist that fat-derived stem cells generated from their patients should not be subject to the same kind of regulations as other treatments, but the FDA is increasingly alarmed. The FDA has made headlines in the past year with crackdowns on clinic operators making unscrupulous claims, and the Colorado public often turns to us for context. Currently, the only stem cell therapies approved by the FDA use cells from bone marrow or cord blood to treat cancers of the blood and bone marrow. We will continue to voice our concern over this situation to our elected officials, the FDA and the public.
Finally, prior to the holidays Gates Center staff was privy to a harmonic convergence that reminded us of the potential of adhering to the highly regulated, FDA-compliant clinical trials process to achieve our mission of treatments and cures. Fox
31 filmed a touching interview at the Gates Biomanufacturing Facility featuring our new campus recruit Terry Fry, M.D., GBF Executive Director Ryan Crisman and Bill Brennan, a lymphoma patient who successfully underwent CAR-T cell therapy last spring after two unsuccessful rounds of chemotherapy (see link https://kdvr.com/2018/12/19/mans- terminal-cancer-disappears-one-month-after-treatment-at- uchealth/ Man’s terminal cancer disappears one month after treatment at UCHealth). Ironically, recent CU Anschutz recruit Terry Fry is a CAR-T cell pioneer, and Ryan Crisman worked until recently at Juno Therapeutics, which manufactured the cells for the clinical trial at UCHealth (University of Colorado Hospital) in which Bill Brennan participated. It was beyond touching to have these peripherally connected individuals come together to celebrate Brennan’s new lease on life. We are inordinately proud that the Gates Center’s affiliate Gates Biomanufacturing Facility is among the few facilities in the country now capable of producing CAR-T cell products for clinical trials to benefit patients like Bill Brennan.
Kent Denver senior Lily Dines and Senior Manager, GMP Manufacturing, Mitchell Fraller, are
Gates Center for Regenerative Medicine 45 unrecognizable gowned up for a tour of the facility.