Source: University of California - San Francisco
Date: February 11, 2011
Summary:
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco provided an update of their research and the progress of clinical trials during a scientific symposium honoring the opening of the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building on the UCSF Parnassus campus. The symposium included presentations about the development of stem cell therapies and groundbreaking clinical trials by leading scientists from California companies.
Scientist from Palo Alto-based StemCells Inc. discussed a decade-long program through which the company has developed neural stem cells for the treatment of several medical conditions. The company earlier completed a Phase I trial in which the cells were well tolerated in six patients with advanced stages of a rare and normally fatal disease called infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis, commonly known as Batten Disease. StemCells Inc. now is conducting a Phase I trial in another rare and fatal brain disorder called Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease (PMD), in which the protective myelin sheath fails to develop around nerves.
StemCells Inc. is also engaged in pre-clinical studies and aims to develop protocols to treat more common, less fatal diseases, including other disorders involving loss of myelin, and age-related macular degeneration. The company has been authorized to begin treating spinal cord injury in a Swiss clinical trial.
