Geron has the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration license to use the controversial cells to treat people, in this case patients with new spinal cord injuries. It is the first publicly known use of human embryonic stem cells in people.
"The patient was enrolled at Shepherd Center, a 132-bed spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation hospital and clinical research center in Atlanta, Georgia," Geron said in a statement.
"Shepherd Center is one of seven potential sites in the United States that may enroll patients in the clinical trial."
Northwestern University in Chicago is also ready to enroll patients.
Geron's stem cells come from human embryos left over from fertility treatments. They have been manipulated so that they have become precursors to certain types of nerve cells.
The hope is that they will travel to the site of a recent spinal cord injury and release compounds that will help the damaged nerves in the cord regenerate.
The Phase I trial will not be aiming to cure patients but to establish that the cells are safe to use. Under the guidelines of the trial, the patients must have very recent injuries.
Geron said the Shepherd Center would keep details of the patient confidential.
"When we started working with human embryonic stem cells in 1999, many predicted that it would be a number of decades before a cell therapy would be approved for human clinical trials," Geron President and CEO Dr. Thomas Okarma said in a statement.
Geron is not subject to limitations on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, as it has done all its work with its own funding.
The government is embroiled in a legal battle over the cells. Just weeks after he took office in 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that eased limitations on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
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Lovely information about stem cell treatment. But the major problem would be the sample of stem cell and record where to find?
ReplyDeleteThere are many problems with this study. The main one is that they are only using newly injured incomplete injuries. Incompletes have unpredictable increase in function in the first six months. This for profit company will claim that any gains in function will be due to the cells and drugs they insert.
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