Stem cell technology pushing medical frontiers

Interview with Dr Nico Forraz

UK scientists, Dr Nico Forraz and Professor Colin McGuckin, have developed the world's first 'artificial' livers, using stem cell technologies. Their biotech company, ConoStem - a spinout from Newcastle University - aims to commercialise mini blocks of liver tissue for pharmaceutical testing.

What makes your work unique?

We specialise in the very special and rare stem cells, which are harvested from umbilical cord blood.

There are different ways you can grow cells in a lab. Most people grow them flat in two dimensions, but Colin and I are trying to engineer tissue into three dimensions.

If you think about your body, all organs develop in three dimensions. The liver, for instance, can be compared to a small rugby football, which functions in three dimensions.

 

What are the benefits to the pharmaceutical industry?

This is quite important because a lot of pharmaceutical companies don't have access to human tissue to test their drugs on. They do tests on animal cell models, which do not often predict the toxic side effect of drugs on humans.

As a result, they're losing about $2 million every year on research and development costs, and clinical trials.

What other applications does the technology have?

We've got two other ideas to build on this technology. The first is to use the human tissue to act like a liver dialysis machine.

If you had a bio-dialysis device outside the body, which filtered toxic blood, it would either cure the patient or buy some time to find a new liver for transplantation.

Our long-term aim is to build enough liver tissue for an actual transplant, but that's at least 15 years away yet.

How much liver tissue can you currently produce?

We can only grow a couple of millimetres - but this is enough to carry out drug screening. We now have to optimise the procedure, so we can build several blocks at one time, giving us enough to do meaningful experiments.

Is it possible to use this biotechnology to create other types of organs?

Yes, we're working on a programme to produce neural tissues. We're also interested in cardiovascular disease.

To be honest, the sky is the limit if you have funding. When you have a toxic reaction the four main organs that are affected are the liver, kidney, lungs and brain, so these are all very important in terms of this type of work.

When do you think the first stem cell therapies will become available to patients in the UK?

They are already available to patients. We have the first clinical trial in the UK, looking at adhering bone marrow stem cells to the heart to see if it helps recovery from heart attacks. Stem cell therapy is also used to treat people with blood disorders such as leukaemia.

What are the advantages of working in the UK?

I think the UK has a strong scientific community, but we have to build the bridges and encourage communication between scientists, clinicians, industry and the public. If you can't explain to the public what you're doing, why would they agree for their tax money to be used to sponsor the costs?

What's being done to help bridge those gaps?

Well, for example, in Newcastle we have the Visitor Centre at the Centre for Life. It's a science museum where they organise exhibitions, events or debates on stem cell research and other topics relating to medical research. The public can interact with scientists, politicians and people from industry to debate these issues and get things moving forward.

What else needs to be done to encourage public debate and acceptance?

It's all about information and education - reaching out to people through schools, public debate, forums and exhibitions. We have to be able to inform people about what we're doing and encourage them to debate what they agree and disagree with.

What do you think are the main barriers to innovation in biotechnology?

The biggest breakthroughs in scientific history were made by people who had unorthodox thoughts. If we spend too much money, time and energy promoting centres of excellence, we may miss some really important discoveries.

People need to start thinking out of the box. If you're a scientist, you don't necessarily have to become a lecturer or a professor. People have to have the means and culture to be a bit more entrepreneurial.

I think another limitation for scientists is that you tend to discover something really significant in the lab, but unless you can find a way to commercialise the technology and turn it into an interesting product, that great discovery will stay in the lab.

What can we do to encourage medical researchers to commercialise their ideas?

I think the structure and the culture have to evolve. There need to be more opportunities for scientists to take the time to think about the business side of things and how to commercialise their ideas in the most efficient way. Scientists also need support from people who know what they're talking about. I think that's what is missing.

For example, I was lucky enough to be selected for The Academy, run by NESTA's Creative Pioneer Programme. I attended as part of a pilot project, with four bio-scientists from around the country.

There, we learned how to transform our idea into a strong business proposition, which was very useful for us. The access to a network of coaches and mentors was very useful.

The Academy gave us the confidence to get our product off the ground. It was an opportunity to structure our thoughts and translate an idea into a business proposal. We're now working with the university to make this happen properly.

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Published February 2007