Mike West

Photo: Courtesy of Advanced Cell Technology In these days of rampant science phobia, a researcher associated with human cloning risks being linked to the few renegade scientists claiming to already have done the deed. Mike West's quest as president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., is not to clone dinosaurs or replace children, but to customize cells to rebuild degenerating or injured human tissue. The company's late 2001 announcement1 that it had created a human embryo by transfer of a somatic cell nucleus to an enucleated egg attracted media attention, including a Business Week profile of West headlined "Cloning: Huckster or Hero?" No mention was made of the company's contributions to basic developmental biology2-4 or pro bono work on endangered species.5 West tries not to let it get to him. "I have a thick skin, but it hurts. There are days that I go home and think, 'Why don't I just take a university position?' But I keep coming back to the fact that I know we can help people." After a year in an honors physics program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, West became restless. "My motivation was to do something to help people. Spending the rest of my life chasing equations couldn't make the world a better place." His interests exploded, embracing psychology and religion, human origins, and aging. He majored in psychology, and minored in management. After graduating in 1976, West pursued an MS in biology at Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Barren Springs, Mich. But his conclusions from his research on microfossils were at odds with the institution's viewpoint. "My work was evidence for an old Earth, and that was a problem for creationism," he recalls. Interest in aging led next to doctoral research in cell biology, first with Samuel Goldstein at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, then with Jim and Olivia Smith at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. West was particularly fascinated by the progerias, rapid-aging disorders that send human cells rocketing through their normal 50 or so cell divisions. West forsook the usual model organisms. "I headed straight for human cells," he says. West entered the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, where in 1989, still writing his dissertation, he began working with telomere biologists Jerry Shay and Woodring Wright. "Mike asked if he could work on skin cell aging in his spare time," recalls Shay. "When I first mentioned the telomere hypothesis of cellular senescence, Mike was totally skeptical. I encouraged him to visit Calvin Harley at McMaster University [Ontario, Canada], a lead advocate of the hypothesis. Mike returned a 'born again' believer in telomeres, and this eventually led to the startup of the Geron Corporation." By 1991 West had had enough of the sleep-deprived life of a third-year medical student, and he was anxious to apply telomere biology to treating cancer. "There was so much to be done! I realized that if I stuck with it to become an MD, it would be too late to start a company," he recalls. And so at a conference where he presented his telomere work, West talked with venture capitalists, who "surrounded me like a micelle," he recalls. Geron was founded in April 1992, located first in Dallas, then Haywood, Calif., and today in Menlo Park, Calif. But West's restlessness resurfaced, and he began thinking about another route to cellular immortality. "There should be a cell, a human embryonic stem cell [ESC] from an inner cell mass, that is completely undifferentiated. Human ESCs would be immortal, and that would allow sophisticated genetic modifications. For aging, that could be huge," he pondered. In 1995, Geron began funding researchers to obtain human ESCs using material from fertility clinics, which made many people uneasy. Then in 1997, a Scottish sheep named Dolly changed the game. "Dolly had shown that you can take a cell backward in development. You could make personalized ESCs." West recalls. He left Geron in February 1998, and visited Ian Wilmut, Dolly's "father," at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. Two months later, at a meeting in Melbourne, West listened intently as James Robl, cofounder of ACT, a startup supported by Avian Farms of Waterville, Maine, described transfer of nuclei from aged cow fibroblasts into enucleated eggs, followed by gestation and further transfer of fetal nuclei. Each time, cellular youth returned. "I thought, they've reset the clock!" West recalls. West visited ACT, where vice president of research Jose Cibelli told him more about the serial nuclear transfers. West was sold, and the timing was right--ACT cofounder Steve Stice was about to leave to head a large animal cloning facility at the University of Georgia in Athens. West, Robl, Cibelli, and Robert Lanza, a physician who arrived two months after West as vice president of medical and scientific development, added clinical goals to the company's repertoire. "We shared a vision to develop human therapeutics. Now we are focusing on nuclear transfer, which has the potential to cure various diseases," says Lanza. But turning preliminary results, mostly in nonhuman animals, into new treatments may not be possible in the United States, given stalled proposed legislation that would criminalize research using human embryos. Sums up West, "We should remove all the emotion and biases and simply look at reality: This research has the potential to do tremendous good." Ricki Lewis (rickilewis@nasw.org) is a contributing editor. References 1. J.B. Cibelli et al., "Somatic cell nuclear transfer in humans: pronuclear and early embryonic development," Journal of Regenerative Medicine, 2:25-31, 2001. 2. J.B. Cibelli et al., "Parthenogenetic stem cells in non-human primates," Science, 295:779-80, 2002. 3. R.P. Lanza et al., "Extension of cell life-span and telomere length in animals cloned from senescent somatic cells," Science, 288:665-9, 2000. 4. R.P. Lanza et al., "Generation of histocompatible tissues using nuclear transplantation," Nature Biotechnology, 20:689-96, July 2002. 5. R.P. Lanza et al., "Cloning of an endangered species (Bos gaurus) using interspecies nuclear transfer," Cloning, 2:79-90, 2000.

Mike West

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