Preparing for first human trial of iPSC-derived cells for Parkinson’s disease: an interview with Jun Takahashi

[Farooqji]

In this exclusive interview, Jun Takahashi discusses his current trial evaluating iPSC-derived dopaminergic progenitor cells for Parkinson’s disease.

regmednet.com/users/3641-re...

[jimcaster]

Thank you very much for sharing this. I think this is the most exciting and intriguing study related to Parkinson's Disease. I sure hope this proves to be safe and effective.

[Coling]

Hi Iqbaliqbal, thanks for the recent japanese stem cell paper. Being a slightly dumb layperson could you explain the difference (uniqueness) of this project as oppossed to the Australian project led by Andrew Evans almost 2 years ago? ie sbs.com.au/news/australian-...

cheers Colin

[jeffreyn in reply to Coling]

ISCO's Melbourne, Australia project is a little behind schedule, but seems to be still doing well:

- All 4 patients in the first cohort have received their 30 million stem cells.

- All 4 patients in the second cohort have received their 50 million stem cells.

- The first patient in the third cohort has received his/her 70 million stem cells.

​

"The study will conclude following the dosing of the last three patients of the third cohort, which ISCO plans to complete in 2018."

"... we continue to see encouraging signs of improvement that are dose-dependent, with patients with higher dosage performing better on average than patients with lower dosage ..."

investors.internationalstem...

[jeffreyn in reply to Coling]

Perhaps the most-significant difference is that the Japanese trial is using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), whereas the Australian trial is using human-parthenogenetic-stem-cell-derived neural stem cells (hpNSCs).

These terms are explained in the SoPD blog posts I linked to in your recent thread.

healthunlocked.com/parkinso...