International Stem Cell Corporation (OTCQB: ISCO) is the company behind a powerful new stem cell technology called parthenogenesis, which promises to significantly advance the field of regenerative medicine by addressing the problem of immune-rejection. Derived from unfertilized eggs, the company’s human parthenogenetic stem cells (hPSCs) are pluripotent, meaning that they have the potential to become virtually any cell in the human body.
The first pluripotent stem cells to be studied for the purposes of regenerative medicine were embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which were taken from donated human embryos. While these cells could offer considerable healing potential, they also present a number of ethical concerns, because their production involves the destruction of a human embryo. ISCO’s hPSCs avoid these ethical issues while retaining many of the inherent advantages of ESCs.
One of the key factors limiting the advancement of regenerative medicine in the past has been the issue of immune-rejection. ESCs, much like transplanted organs, come with a high probability of rejection. This means that, after injection, the host’s immune system attacks the stem cells in an effort to prevent infection. When unfertilized human eggs undergo parthenogenesis, however, they inherit a duplicate set of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, which greatly decrease the risk of immune-rejection. According to the company’s preclinical data, a relatively small number of hPSCs could be sufficient to provide ‘immune matched’ cells to a large percentage of the global population.
ISCO’s developmental pipeline includes a collection of hPSC-based treatments targeting severe diseases of the central nervous system, the liver and the eye. The company’s most advanced product candidate is for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, which affects an estimated 10 million people worldwide and as many as one million in the United States alone. In preclinical studies, rodent and non-human primate subjects have shown measurable improvement in Parkinson’s disease symptoms and an increase in brain dopamine levels following the intracranial administration of hPSCs.
Last month, ISCO announced that it had entered into a master clinical research agreement with the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health of Australia, one of the world’s leading brain research centers, to conduct a phase I/IIa clinical trial of hPSCs in Parkinson’s disease patients. Under the terms of this agreement, ISCO will work with the Florey to conduct these studies at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
“We recently received authorization to initiate Phase I/IIa and now we are moving forward toward formal engagement of the clinical site to conduct this study,” Russell Kern, PhD, executive vice president and chief scientific officer at ISCO, stated in a news release. “We expect to enroll all patients into the clinical trial in Q1 2016 and provide interim results in October 2016.”
For more information, visit www.internationalstemcell.com
