by Margarida Maia, PhD – Parkinson’s News Today
A request to launch a first Phase 1/2 clinical trial of a stem cell-based therapy in people with Parkinson’s disease has been approved by the Swedish Medical Products Agency.
The therapy, called STEM-PD, consists of stem cell-derived dopamine-producing, or dopaminergic, neurons that are expected to replace the dopaminergic neurons that are progressively lost in Parkinson’s. Dopamine is a major chemical messenger in the brain.
“We are looking forward to this clinical study of STEM-PD, hoping that it could potentially help reduce the significant burden of Parkinson’s disease,” Malin Parmar, PhD, a professor at Lund University, Sweden, which owns the STEM-PD product, said in a university press release.