Thank you.
For full disclosure, I should also let you know that I'm executive director of the Stem Cell Network. We all wear many hats but hopefully speak with one voice.
I'd like to thank the chair and the committee for inviting the Stem Cell Foundation to present this morning. We're a relatively young organization, and we're delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to these proceedings.
As you heard this morning, stem cell research is beginning to reach the clinic. Even if you exclude bone marrow transplants, which have been around for 40 years and still account, together with umbilical cord work, for more than 95% of all the clinical trials going on around the world, over 350,000 patients have now been treated with approved stem cell products across the globe, for diseases ranging from chronic wound healing to cartilage repair. While treatments for such diseases as Alzheimer's may still be ten, twenty, or thirty years away, treatments for stroke, multiple sclerosis, pulmonary hypertension, heart disease, Crohn's, neuroblastoma, and others are already entering the clinic.
The impact of this really will be profound, in several ways. First and foremost will be the improvement in the quality of life for both patients in Canada and around the world and the families and communities around them.
Second, delivering cures for these chronic degenerative diseases can have a really significant impact on the health care burden in Canada, not just through alleviating the direct costs of treatment but also through returning the patients and the families, to whom their care often falls, to productive lives.
Finally, the development of these new drugs and therapies will actually present a really great opportunity to create new high-level jobs in Canada in the growing regenerative medicine industry.
This is an opportunity that Canada should be capitalizing on, but it's also one that we should be taking great pride in. Stem cells are actually Canada's gift, if you like, to the world. Stem cells were discovered here in Canada. Next year marks the 50th anniversary of when Jim Till and Ernest McCulloch made the discovery at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto.
Over the last 50 years, Canadian scientists have continued to make landmark discoveries in this field. In fact, Canada scientifically is probably as strong as any country in the world. But that leadership and the long-term opportunities that flow from it are somewhat at risk.
Other jurisdictions around the world are recognizing the same opportunity and are investing heavily in the field. The clear benchmark for this is California. What California did three or four years ago was to invest $3 billion to create the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. That's an investment of $300 million a year over ten years. It represents about ten times the current federal investment in stem cell research, and close to one-third of the entire annual budget of CIHR. Those funds are being used to support the full spectrum of activities needed to move therapies from fundamental research to research and manufacturing facilities, to funding for phase I and II trials, and even to providing non-dilutive capital to start-up companies through loans. In a sense, it's simply not realistic to expect Canada, or indeed anybody else, to keep up and to remain globally competitive in the long term without some further dedicated investment in the field.
Even within the current context of our funding, there are still some challenges. Let me give you a couple of examples.
The utility of cord blood as a treatment for many types of cancers has been well established. In many centres in the United States, cord blood is now used more often than bone marrow transplants in these types of procedures. Here in Canada, the business case for a public cord blood bank has been well made. Not every umbilical cord needs to be banked. Cords from a small but statistically significant subset of the population would provide sufficient genetic variation to cover almost all of the needs.
We understand that discussions have been taking place between the provinces and territories to see if Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec could establish a public cord blood bank. In fact, there was a consensus statement around the need to do so in June 2007. But here we are at the end of 2010, there is still no visible progress, and patient needs remain unmet.
Let me give you another example. Just over $80 million of federal, provincial, and philanthropic funding is being invested right now in building three GMP-compliant cell-manufacturing facilities in Toronto, Montreal, and Edmonton. Collectively, these world-class facilities should have enough capacity to accommodate Canada's cell manufacturing needs for the next decade. The clinicians behind those facilities are already working with each other to determine how best to manage these effectively as a virtual national organization. How can we triage requests to the right city? How can we set up standard operating procedures? How can we develop common education programs?
The challenge is that as funding priorities have shifted across federal and provincial governments, it has become less and less clear where the operating costs for these facilities, or the funds to support the associated clinical trials, will come from.
To give an example, it might be necessary to do half a dozen trial runs of creating some cells in the facility before you actually put them into the patient. But that isn't the kind of research the granting councils typically fund; and because it's a clinical trial rather than an approved health care procedure, it's not eligible for provincial health care funding either. So we run the risk of these clinical trials falling into a black hole where no real opportunity for funding exists. The 50 trials mentioned by Dr. Rudnicki earlier in his presentation may never happen in the absence of that funding.
Finally, there are opportunities to improve both the regulation of the research environment and the regulation of therapies, if they move from the lab to the clinic. My colleague Dr. Rossant is going to talk to some of those challenges.
I'd like to wrap up with a plea. Stem cell research is an area in which Canada has pioneered and led the world. We have the talent, the will, and the expertise to continue to do so. I know this committee understands the significant benefits that stem cell research can bring to our health care system. Let's not squander the legacy of Till and McCulloch but make sure that Canadians patients are the first to benefit from their discovery.