By turning stem cells into brain cells, Aspen Neuroscience hopes to rewind the progress of Parkinson's disease | FierceBiotech


Aspen looks to combine its expertise in stem cell biology, genomics and neurology to offer the first autologous cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease—while others in the space have pursued allogeneic routes, or therapies derived from donors other than the patient.
The process starts with a culture of the patient’s skin cells, which are then genetically induced to become pluripotent stem cells—or cells capable of differentiating into any other cell type in the body. These are then chemically nudged further to transform into precursor versions of the dopamine-producing neurons, which are typically found in the midbrain and regions responsible for the movement of limbs.
“We can say without any equivocation that we can produce the population of cells necessary to transplant, and in a short enough period of time to have a potential beneficial impact on the evolution of the disease,” said Federoff, who has also served as chair of the NIH’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee and helped lead the U.S. Parkinson’s Disease Gene Therapy Study Group.

Thanks for the update