Parkinson’s disease is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease, affecting 7 million-10 million people worldwide with an estimated 60,000 new cases of the disease diagnosed each year. While advances in research are underway, the disease continues to progress. As it stands, there is currently no cure for Parkinson’s disease.
It is in this segment of the healthcare space that International Stem Cell has emerged as a pioneer, becoming the first company to treat Parkinson’s disease using human parthenogenetic neural stem cells.
The company has achieved strong positives study results from pre-clinical rodent and primate models of Parkinson’s disease, demonstrating functional activity, behavioral improvements without unwanted side effects, and a solid safety profile.
ISCO anticipates completing pre-clinical trials for its Parkinson’s program in mid-2014, and plans to submit to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration an Investigational New Drug (IND) application in mid-2014 as well.
The company is advancing its Parkinson’s disease program alongside a focus on:
• Treating liver damage – ISCO’s scientific team is focused on developing better methods to create pure populations of hepatocyte that could be used in transplantation using HLA homozygous parthenogenetic stem cell lines to avoid the cells being immune rejected.
• Producing cornea tissue implants – Scientists at ISCO have developed and filed patents on a process that creates human corneal tissue from parthenogenetic stem cells. The tissue closely resembles a human cornea in structure and cell types.
• Producing GMP SC lines in its first-of-its-kind stem cell bank – UniStemCell Bank is the life science industry’s first collection of non-embryonic histocompatible human stem cells available for research and commercial use.
For more information, visit www.InternationalStemCell.com
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