“Since 2012, Dr. Jeanne Loring, the founder of the eponymous Loring Lab at Scripps Research, has been thinking about how to use pluripotent stem cells as a potential treatment for Parkinson Disease.
“Now, eight years later, Aspen Neuroscience, the company she founded to bring her research to market has raised $70 million in funding and is set to begin clinical trials.”
Very encouraging indeed! Earlier Kyoto university team had transplanted stem cells in 02 PD patients towards the end of 2018 and 02 more patients in the early 2020. Their results are still to be published. They had planned to bring the therapy into the market by 2023.
Like all things that take place a few years ago, the one that took place in a faraway land could aptly be considered a 1.0, while this latter one could be considered the 2.0. One product is derived from an unfertilized egg, while the latter product is from the patients own skin cells. While 1.0 chose to bypass a lengthy FDA approval process in the states (see quote below) both products originate in a California biotech firm.
“The Australian regulatory agency Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the Melbourne Health's Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) independently reviewed ISCO's extensive preclinical data and granted approval for the evaluation of a novel human parthenogenetic derived neural stem cell (NSC) line, ISC-hpNSC, in a PD phase 1 clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02452723).”
No, Hikoi, I wasn't saying the hpn stem cells used in your referred trial were not as developed as the ip stem cells at the heart of the upcoming Aspen trials (despite the fact that technically they are not). I was simply helping you out with a little critical detail missing from your misfired effort to flaunt the the groundbreaking innovations of the Mighty Oz: The stem cells used in ongoing trials taking place in Melbourne do in fact come from ISCO, a California-based biotech in the "mighty USA".
"In a bid to cure Parkinson’s disease, medical researchers at The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) have trialed a new revolutionary type of stem cell that is injected into the brain as part of a world-first clinical trial.
"The phase one study, which involves 12 patients with moderate to severe Parkinsons, uses neural stem cells derived from unfertilized eggs and manufactured in the lab by [insert drum roll]... a biotech company in California."
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