Original WuXi AppTec WuXi AppTec 2022-11-02 07:44 published in Shanghai
Editor's note: In addition to traditional small-molecular drugs and antibody drugs, more new molecular types such as cell and gene therapy, RNAi and other oligonucleotide therapies, CRISPR gene editing therapy have gradually come to the forefront in recent years, becoming the focus of biopharmaceutical industry , and are expected to rewrite the future treatment pattern of patients. As Biomedical enters a new era, WuXi AppTec's content department has also launched the "Fast New Molecule" series, inviting the trendsetters of new molecular therapy to conduct interviews - the companies led by these interviewers are focused on creating new types of therapies and have recently completed large early financing, which can be regarded as a rising star of the future in the industry. In a series of interviews with the content department of WuXi AppTec , they will also introduce to the industry how to use new molecular types to break through the limitations of existing therapies and bring new breakthroughs!
Guest profile: Guest of this interview Mr. Geoff Hamilton is the co-founder and CEO of Stemson Therapeutics, a startup focused on generating healthy new hair follicles through stem cell technology to achieve hair regeneration. Last year, the company received $15 million in Series A financing. Mr. Geoff Hamilton has 20 years of product commercialization and business management experience in life sciences and biotechnology companies, and has held various leadership positions in large technology companies such as Illumina and Life Technologies.
WuXi AppTec Content Department: Thank you for taking the time to accept the interview, Mr. Geoff Hamilton. For cell therapy, in general, what challenges do you think are the current therapeutic interventions facing?
Geoff HamiltonMr.: Cell therapy companies, including Stemson, are faced by our industry challenges in developing cells into a therapeutic model. This requires us to have the ability to control these cells safely and at scale to achieve therapeutic effects. Cells are alive, with their own activity and high variability, so it is a major challenge to make these cells have a certain level of controllability and repeatability, and consistently fulfilling the functions we envision. has tools, processes and methods that make these cells more unified, controllable and repeatable. It may be the biggest challenge facing Stemson and a challenge facing peers working on cell therapy solutions throughout the industry. Many large pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies are developing cell therapy-based solutions in their R&D pipeline.
WuXi AppTec Content Department: How will your company's new treatments help solve these challenges? How is it different from the existing approach?
Geoff HamiltonMr.: Stemson's innovative therapy is to use cell therapy to solve the problem of hair loss that is widely present in humans. Hair loss affects all races, ethnicities, nationalities and genders, it is very common and has a huge negative impact on people’s mental health, confidence and well-being. So far, the therapeutic products launched to treat this problem are small molecule or biological treatments. Hair loss is a degenerative disease of the skin. Like degenerative diseases in other parts of the body, cell therapy plays a great role in regenerating lost hair tissue. Therefore, what is unique about our method is that we have the ability to create the cell types required for hair follicles to regenerate. We use these cells as starting materials to provide new hair follicles in the way of bioengineering to treat people with hair loss. This is novel and there is currently no treatment option that can generate new hair follicles.
WuXi AppTec Content Department: Please talk about the key challenges in leveraging your company's full potential of regenerative cell therapy? What are the expected key milestones?
Geoff HamiltonMr.: In order to realize the full potential of cell therapy in treating hair loss, the biggest challenge for Stemson is how we can use cells as a cornerstone to build a hair follicle tissue that can survive and maintain normal function and last long-lasting after transplantation to the skin. It is hard enough to build the cells needed in cell therapy, but guiding the cell populations to work together to form a functional tissue that can be successfully transplanted to the patient's skin and survive for a long time is the next major challenge. Therefore, Stemson's key milestone will be the first human clinical trial, and we hope to initiate clinical trials after successful completion of preclinical studies. Our initial animal model study data demonstrates great prospects, but we need the first human proof-of-concept study to demonstrate that this therapy is feasible and reproducible in humans.
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WuXi AppTec Content Department: As many new treatment methods enter the clinical practice and gradually approach patients, in your opinion, by 2030, the type of therapy newly approved by the US FDA will be similar or different from the current therapies?
Geoff Hamilton: As many new treatment methods advance to clinical practice, the entire field of cell therapy is also making great progress. Cell therapy will prove to be a better way to treat some degenerative diseases, rather than other types of therapy such as biological products or drug molecules. With the rapid development of the pipeline of cell therapy-related drugs for multiple indications, I expect a larger proportion of the newly approved therapies by the U.S. FDA in 2030 to treat a wider patient population. This applies not only to companies targeting degenerative diseases, but also to companies that are committed to regulating and modifying immune cells to unlock the potential of the immune system to treat certain diseases such as cancer.
WuXi AppTec Content Department: For the development of cell therapy, do you think that in the next few years, new data technology, artificial intelligence or machine learning will be applied?
Geoff HamiltonMr.: I do observe that technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence are being used in large quantities, especially in the field of cell therapy. The tricky challenge we face in understanding the basic biological mechanisms we need to control a wide range of cell populations is biovariability. The complex genetics that drive cell behavior and the proteome interaction are massive data, even if it is just a single cell. Without the use of big data tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, traditional analytical methods will not be able to effectively analyze drivers of cellular function and behavior. At Stemson, we gather a large amount of molecular data to remind us of what is happening in the cells we are transforming and what is happening in the tissue we are transforming. The complexity of these data makes it necessary to write and utilize algorithms of machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify patterns, correlations, and statistical significance to help us understand what is happening between and within a wide range of cell populations and in cells.
