World stem cell summit coming to Pasadena was both exciting and close to home. More importantly, it was close to home. The beautiful European or Greek style city hall of Pasadena gave everyone inside a compelling sense of being locked into the history undissolvable by any politics and financial crisis. Although it was hard to miss CIRM president Alan Trounson’s keyword “focus”, his keynote address was hitting everywhere but California stem cell research and cure act, or human embryonic stem cell research. Only later on, you would understand that those hits were very proportional to the distribution of his stem cell pie among California power houses that set the meeting agenda. It was no surprise that Ann Tsukamoto of StemCells, Inc would be the first to give ISSCR (International Society for Stem Cell Research) perspectives. Even her soft perfect English and the surrounding mystics of ancient history would not convince the audience that the reopen of a 14 year old Stem Cell clinical trial was because of a not so impressive long-term study, as she wished. Her quote, in 2 different languages, that “in wine, there was truth.” in the end was quickly followed by the shadow of human cloning that would soon return after the meeting. You would feel Arnold Kriegstein’s tense to come to spread the word of iPS cells (induced pluripotent stem cells) that signaled the relentless of human cloning coalition until he got to his own area of research. Larry Goldstein’s strong standing for human embryonic stem cell research on the stage would soon give away to the mixed faces of regenerative medicine coalition of no visible sign of human embryonic stem cell research printed in the program guide.
Sciences were negligible. Although the registration fee was high, abstracts were not printed, only speakers’ faces and staged interviews were. Obviously, my mentor Prue Talbot did not have the trouble I had for my posters since I put my other powerful mentor Evan Snyder as non-consenting mentor to describe our professional relationship in short (or out of laziness). I soon realized that I should spend more time on Evan Snyder because those 2 posters were declined that made Evan furious. Prue had 4 or 5 posters on display which I recognized some were hanging around her office for years, making me suspect that she probably was among those paid by CIRM. Astoundingly, speakers were allowed to make all kinds of claims without any scientific data basis. I remember when iPS cells were made, they were assumed to avoid immune-rejection since made from the same patient, but nobody bothered to do a test. Finally, my other mentor Yang Xu did a test with CIRM money and found out the assumption was not true. In the meeting, such assumptions were wide-spread. Xianmin Zeng from Buck Institute claimed she made DA neurons efficiently for patient trial, although no quantitative data, nor her images looked any way close to efficient. California Stem Cell showed 2 or 3 images and claimed that they had done all the preclinical study ready to go to trial. My questions of where were their data for their claims obviously annoyed Arlene Chiu of Beckman. Of course, there was no way to find out CIRM’s key clinical trial updates from the speakers.
Military speakers’ presence was encouraging and a relief that at least the honor system was still working in some part of the world. MG JK Gilman’s words “it’s not about stem cells, it’s about regeneration” hit to the hearts. Andy Grove’s speech was inspiring. Roman Reed and those patients in wheel chairs made me feel hopeless for the promise we could not keep. For years, I have been wondering how CIRM’s funding decision was made, why > 70% funding did not go to human embryonic stem cell research as promised? Don Reed was frank and most revealing. He said that they wanted to give money to UC Davis, but UC Davis did not have human embryonic stem cell research, so they gave the money to mesenchymal stem cells. Gil Van Bokkelen’s speech of coalition for regenerative medicine did not mention the only human cells that can regenerate, nor had any interest in alliance with the new face of regenerative medicine held by the promise of human embryonic stem cell research. His coalition is not about stem cell, nor regeneration, is about the California’s 3 billions stem cell pie, representing the shadow of past dynasties that could be found in the next stem cell pie meeting at www.stemcellmeetingonthemesa.com or UC connect.
Last night, the brightest shooting star was falling, the loss of a giant Steve Jobs reminds us the opportunity we are given to make the promise become reality. That opportunity was lost in years of anti-trust and anti-competition practices of CIRM, along lost, is the promise we could keep.
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