US doctors have begun treating the first patient using human embryonic stem cells as part of the first approved study of the controversial treatment, the Geron Corporation said Monday. The patient began treatment Friday with Geron's GRNOPC1 human embryonic stem cells at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, a spokeswoman for the hospital, told AFP. She declined, however, to give more details, citing patient privacy.
Preclinical studies of GRNOPC1 found the human embryonic stem cells significantly improved locomotor activity of animals with spinal cord injuries when injected seven days after the injury. Participants in the human trials must be newly injured and receive GRNOPC1 between seven and 14 days after sustaining their injury.
David Apple, Shepherd Center's medical director, said the clinical trial, which seeks to establish whether GRNOPC1 is safe and tolerated in humans, was a key step forward in attempts to find a cure for paralysis in people with spinal cord injury. The Phase I trial comes just 11 years after Geron began working with human embryonic stem cells in 1999, when "many predicted that it would be a number of decades before a cell therapy would be approved for human clinical trials," said Thomas Okarma, Geron's president and CEO, in a statement. "Initiating the GRNOPC1 clinical trial is a milestone for the field of human embryonic stem cell-based therapies," Okarma said.
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