Smoothing the way to lifesaving stem cells

Most of us have long left behind the fundamentals of biology that we studied in high school, but every so often we’ll catch a news item that brings it all back. And today is one of those days. Why? Firstly, because we are full of surprises and, secondly, this is a story of a medical breakthrough, a Nobel prizewinner and how we are helping in a quest to bring lifesaving stem cells to more people.

Induced Pluripotent Stem cells, or iPS cells are incredible (we’ll explain why shortly) and, as you might expect, they were discovered by someone who is just as amazing. Today, Dr Shinya Yamanaka is the Director Emeritus at CiRA (the Centre for iPS Cell Reseach and Application) at Kyoto University in Japan, but once upon a time he was a young man who planned to take over the family business until his father said otherwise.

My Yamanaka Senior was an engineer and when an accident at work put him in hospital, his family were, of course, terribly worried. To their relief he recovered from his injuries, thanks to a blood transfusion, but it soon became clear that all was not well. His father progressively became sicker in front of his eyes. Unknown to them, he had contracted hepatitis and over a period of years suffered from the terrible effects of cirrhosis of the liver. This was probably why, out of the blue, he instructed his young son, “Shinya, you should become a doctor.” And that’s just what he did and was a 26-year-old surgeon when his father passed away. Speaking at the University of Oslo, he describes feeling “powerless that I could not help my own father” and this was the turning point at which he decided to change his career from a surgeon to a scientist, specialising in stem cell research. A field which showed great promise for helping people like his dad, whose hepatitis would, today, be curable.

By 2006, Shinya had made a phenomenal discovery – one which saw him become the joint recipient of The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He and his team discovered that by introducing some specific genes to mature stem cells they could be ‘reprogrammed’ to become ‘pluripotent’, which means they can be manipulated to become immature cells again and they, in turn, could grow into all types of cells in the body.

Of course, this is putting it into the most simplistic if terms, but basically this means that he discovered how to turn our old cells (that have only one clear purpose in the body) into fresh new cells that can then be ‘trained’ to work in any number of areas. The implications here for medicine were – and are – huge. For example, imagine transplanting your own new, healthy stem cells to replace those that are malfunctioning, damaged or diseased? One clinical trial has already taken place that appears to have halted sight deterioration in a patient with age-related macular degeneration. Many others are in progress.

Without getting too technical, this is effectively ‘personalised medicine’, which is where healthcare and treatments are tailored specifically to the patient. Discoveries in this space are bringing us closer to a tipping point for medicine which will potentially improve the health outcomes for many millions of people. In this case, by taking a patient’s own stem cells and changing them to become useful again. However, the use of these Autologous iPS Cells (‘autologous’ meaning that the cells come from the same individual they will be used to treat) would be an extremely bespoke example of this and, as you might have guessed, even in the research phase is extremely costly. Which can naturally slow down the time it will take for clinical trials to become patient reality.

To reach a point where this can happen, CiRA needs a stable supply of iPS cells, with guaranteed quality, which can be produced in a short period of time and at a low cost. And this is where Canon comes in. Together, we are working on a joint research project to create a solution which will realise this challenging goal because our wide span of tech expertise hits a sweet spot for CiRA at many levels.

We are able to help them to develop a low-cost method to examine the cells using our expertise in optical, measurement and diagnostic imaging. And because quality guarantees are very much at the heart of our business (we manufacture to standards of excellence every day), together we can adapt our production tools and QC tech to identify and control the factors that affect the quality of the cells.

And beyond the incredible potential for treating a wide range of diseases through cell transplantation therapies and other forms of regenerative medicine (which helps to return functions which have been lost through disease or injury), it is also thought that iPS cells will be critical in developing new drugs and even discovering the causes of diseases, as they can be taken from sick patients without causing any trauma, then studied against healthy cells.

Dr Yamanaka’s goal is to bring the cost of producing and providing these cells for one patient down to under €6000 by 2025. “Combining the optical, measurement and diagnostic imaging technologies of the Canon Group with the data CiRA has accumulated through iPS cell production, I expect we will make progress in achieving that goal.”, he says. As we move ever closer to a time when his research can begin to truly change lives, even those of us who struggled with biology at school will agree that we are witnessing a truly extraordinary time for medicine. It seems we all have a lot to thank both him and his late father for.