Data Safety Monitoring Board

So far, some encouraging news for stem cell clinical trial treating epilepsy

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment

Neurona Therapeutics is testing a new therapy for a drug-resistant form of epilepsy and has just released some encouraging early findings. The first patient treated went from having more than 30 seizures a month to just four seizures over a three-month period.

This clinical trial, funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), is targeting  mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), one of the most common forms of epilepsy. Because the seizures caused by MTLE are frequent, they can be particularly debilitating and increase the risk of a decreased quality of life, depression, anxiety and memory impairment.

Neurona’s therapy, called NRTX-1001, consists of a specialized type of neuronal cell derived from embryonic stem cells.  Neuronal cells are messenger cells that transmit information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system.

NRTX-1001 is injected into the brain in the area affected by the seizures where it releases neurotransmitters or chemical messengers that will block the signals in the brain causing the epileptic seizures.

The first patient treated had a nine-year history of epilepsy and, despite being on anti-epileptic medications, was experiencing dozens of seizures a month. Since the therapy he has had only four seizures in three months. The therapy hasn’t produced any serious side effects.

In a news release Dr. Cory Nicholas, Neurona’s President and CEO, said while this is only one patient, it’s good news.

“The reduced number of seizures reported by the first person to receive NRTX-1001 is very encouraging, and we remain cautiously optimistic that this reduction in seizure frequency will continue and extend to others entering this cell therapy trial. NRTX-1001 administration has been well tolerated thus far in the clinic, which is in line with the extensive preclinical safety data collected by the Neurona team. With recent clearance from the Data Safety Monitoring Board we are excited to continue patient enrollment. We are very grateful to these first participants, and thank the clinical teams for the careful execution of this pioneering study.”

CIRM has been a big supporter of this work from the early Discovery stage work to this clinical trial. That’s because when we find something promising, we want to do everything we can to help it live up to its promise.

CIRM-funded stem cell clinical trial for retinitis pigmentosa focuses on next stage

/ Kevin McCormack / 5 Comments

rp1

How retinitis pigmentosa erodes normal vision

The failure rate for clinical trials is depressingly high. A study from Tufts University in 2010  found that for small molecules – the substances that make up more than 90 percent of the drugs on the market today – the odds of getting from a Phase 1 trial to approval by the Food and Drug Administration are just 13 percent. For stem cell therapies the odds are even lower.

That’s why, whenever a stem cell therapy shows good results it’s an encouraging sign, particularly when that therapy is one that we at CIRM are funding. So we were more than a little happy to hear that Dr. Henry Klassen and his team at jCyte and the University of California, Irvine have apparently cleared the first hurdle with their treatment for retinitis pigmentosa (RP).

jCyte has announced that the first nine patients treated for RP have shown no serious side effects, and they are now planning the next phase of their Phase 1/2a safety trial.

In a news release Klassen, the co-founder of jCyte, said:

“We are pleased with the results. Retinitis pigmentosa is an incurable retinal disease that first impacts people’s night vision and then progressively robs them of sight altogether. This is an important milestone in our effort to treat these patients.”

The therapy involves injecting human retinal progenitor cells into one eye to help save the light sensing cells that are destroyed by the disease. This enables the researchers to compare the treated eye with the untreated eye to see if there are any changes or improvements in vision.

So far, the trial has undergone four separate reviews by the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), an independent group of experts that examines data from trials to ensure they meet all safety standards and that results show patients are not in jeopardy. Results from the first nine people treated are encouraging.

The approach this RP trial is taking has a couple of advantages. Often when transplanting organs or cells from one person into another, the recipient has to undergo some kind of immunosuppression, to stop their body rejecting the transplant. But earlier studies show that transplanting these kinds of progenitor cells into the eye doesn’t appear to cause any immunological response. That means patients in the study don’t have to undergo any immunosuppression. Because of that, the procedure is relatively simple to perform and can be done in a doctor’s office rather than a hospital. For the estimated 1.5 million people worldwide who have RP that could make getting treatment relatively easy.

Of course the big question now is not only was it safe – it appears to be – but does it work? Did any of those people treated experience improvements in their vision? We will share those results with you as soon as the researchers make them available.

Next step for the clinical trial is to recruit more patients, and treat them with a higher number of cells. There’s still a long way to go before we will know if this treatment works, if it either slows down, stops, or better still helps reverse some of the effects of RP. But this is a really encouraging first step.

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