Pfizer Acquires a Stem-Cell Therapy
By ANDREW POLLACK
NYT December 21, 2009
Pfizer said Sunday that it was buying the rights to a somewhat controversial cell therapy from Athersys, a biotechnology company — a sign of big pharmaceutical companies’ growing interest in stem cells.
Pfizer will have the rights to develop Athersys’s cells to treat inflammatory bowel disease, the companies are expected to announce on Monday. It will pay Athersys $6 million initially and up to $105 million in the future.
The relatively small payment reflects that “it’s really early for cell therapy and there’s more research to be done,” said Ruth McKernan, chief scientific officer of Pfizer Regenerative Medicine, a unit created by the company about 18 months ago to develop treatments based on stem cells.
Athersys’s cells, derived from human bone marrow, have not yet been tested in people with inflammatory bowel disease, a term that encompasses ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. But the product, called MultiStem, is in early human testing as a treatment for heart attacks and for cancer patients receiving bone marrow transplants.
Athersys, founded in 1995 and based in Cleveland, is publicly traded and still unprofitable. Its shares closed at $1 on Friday.
Stem cells can form different types of tissue in the body. Pfizer and Athersys envision the cells being infused into patients not to replace damaged tissue but rather to produce various proteins that would help existing tissues heal or prevent them from being damaged.
Stem cells derived from adult tissues, like MultiStem, are less ethically controversial than stem cells from human embryos. But MultiStem has been dogged by scientific controversy.
The cells were initially developed at the University of Minnesota, which said they were multipotent adult progenitor cells — almost as versatile as embryonic cells. But some scientists had trouble replicating those findings, and some papers published by the Minnesota researchers were retracted or corrected.
Dr. McKernan said that those controversies were “in the past now” and that scientists have been able to replicate the findings.
Big pharmaceutical companies have been cautious about stem cells because of the ethical controversies and the early stage of the research. Also, some cell-based therapies must be tailored to each patient, a departure from the business model of producing one-size-fits-all pills.
But as the science of stem cells has advanced, drug companies are taking an interest.
Pfizer is also developing a stem-cell treatment for macular degeneration, an eye disease, working with University College London. It is doing research with Novocell, a San Diego company trying to turn embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing cells to treat diabetes.
Novo Nordisk is working with Cellartis on stem-cell treatments for diabetes. Johnson & Johnson has invested in Novocell and Tengion, another regenerative medicine company. GlaxoSmithKline is providing $25 million to Harvard’s stem-cell institute. And Novartis and Roche have invested in Cellerix, a Spanish stem-cell company.
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