World’s First Neural Stem Cell Transplant in Spinal Cord Injury Patient
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StemCells, Inc. has announced that the first patient in the Company’s Phase I/II clinical trial in chronic spinal cord injury was successfully transplanted with the Company’s proprietary HuCNS-SC® adult neural stem cells.
The stem cells were administered at Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich.
The transplant surgery was performed by a team of surgeons led by Dr. Raphael Guzman, a visiting staff neurosurgeon also on faculty at Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University, and Dr. K. Min, an orthopedic surgeon at Balgrist University Hospital.
“I am pleased to be a part of this innovative clinical trial designed to help us assess the safety and potential efficacy of HuCNS-SC stem cells for spinal cord injury,” explains Dr. Armin Curt, Principal Investigator. “The preclinical data underlying this trial provided compelling rationale to conduct a study of this nature in spinal cord-injured patients.”
StemCells, Inc. has published numerous preclinical studies demonstrating the therapeutic potential of the Company’s human neural stem cells for the treatment of acute and chronic spinal cord injury. These studies were conducted in close collaboration with Drs. Aileen Anderson and Brian Cummings of the University of California, Irvine.
The first patient transplanted in the trial, a 23-year-old German man, suffered a spinal cord injury in an automobile accident in April of this year. He sustained a complete loss of sensation and mobility from the waist down.
When asked about his decision to enroll in this leading-edge study, he said “This terrible injury crossed out almost all my life plans, and has led me to an unexpected path. Participating in this clinical trial not only gives me a sense of hope, but it also helps move this important research forward.”
“With this first patient enrolled and dosed, we remain on track to meet our goal of treating the first cohort of patients by the end of this year," said Stephen Huhn MD, FACS, FAAP, Vice President and Head of the CNS Program at StemCells, Inc.
Huhn continued, “While the trial’s first cohort will consist of patients with the most severe, complete injury, the second and third cohorts will progress to patients with less severe, incomplete injury. This unique trial design will allow us to evaluate the potential of our HuCNS-SC cells as a treatment for a broad spectrum of spinal cord injury patients. Even a small improvement could have a marked impact on quality of life for the millions of people who suffer from this debilitating condition.”
