US clinical trial to investigate safety of stem cell transplantation in spine

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have launched a trial to investigate the safety of using human stem cells to treat patients with chronic spinal cord injury.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have launched a 5-year Phase I clinical trial to investigate the safety of using human neural stem cells to treat patients with traumatic T7—T12-level spinal cord injury in eight patients, after preclinical studies in rats showed that grafted neural stem cells improved motor function in spinal cord-injured rats with minimal side effects. All eight patients will receive injections of stem cells from a human line approved by the US FDA.

The primary goal of the study is to investigate the safety of injecting these cells, as this potential treatment is very early in its development and requires careful testing — for example, fetal stem cells transplanted to a child with a hereditary neurodegenerative disease were found to have grown into noncancerous tumors in his brain and spinal cord.

University of California, San Diego Health System is funded by Neuralstem, Inc.

Please see the original press release here and the paper on the fetal stem cell transplant here