Disease Focus: Parkinson's Disease


Phase 1/2a Dose Escalation Study of ANPD001 in Sporadic Parkinson Disease

Therapeutic Candidate or Device Autologous stem cell-derived dopaminergic neuron replacement therapy. Indication Parkinson’s disease Therapeutic Mechanism The investigational cell therapy product is being studied as an autologous neuron replacement for Parkinson’s disease. Unmet Medical Need PD is a neurodegenerative disorder, affecting 1+ million people in the US. PD causes loss of dopamine (DA) neurons in […]

A Phase 1b Safety Study for MRI guided delivery of AAV2-GDNF for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease

Therapeutic Candidate or Device AAV2-GDNF is a gene therapy product encoding Glial cell line-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) Indication Parkinson's disease Therapeutic Mechanism AAV2-GDNF will be delivered into the putamen. GDNF is a growth factor expected to act by stimulating regeneration of the terminals of dopamine producing neurons that are progressively lost in PD. This is […]

Allogeneic iPSC derived Dopaminergic Drug Product for Parkinson’s disease

Therapeutic Candidate or Device Allogeneic iPSC derived dopamine progenitors delivered to the brain of Parkinson's disease patients Indication Idiopathic Parkinson's disease Therapeutic Mechanism The cellular product reconstitutes dopaminergic neuron circuits lost owing to the disease Unmet Medical Need There are currently disease modifying therapies. This approach is intended to be disease modifying. Project Objective To […]

MRI Guided Delivery of Neural Progenitor Cells Secreting GDNF for the Treatment of Parkinson’s disease

Therapeutic Candidate or Device CNS10-NPC-GDNF is a neural progenitor cell line transfected with glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) Indication Mid-stage Parkinson's disease (UPDRS stage III or lower) Therapeutic Mechanism Degeneration of dopaminergic neurons that project from the substantia nigra to the striatum causes the primary motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. CNS10-NPC-GDNF cells will […]

Engineered Biomaterials for Scalable Manufacturing and High Viability Implantation of hPSC-Derived Cells to Treat Neurodegenerative Disease

Cell replacement therapies (CRTs) have considerable promise for addressing unmet medical needs, including incurable neurodegerative diseases. However, several bottlenecks hinder CRTs, especially the needs for improved cell manufacturing processes and enhanced cell survival and integration after implantation. Engineering synthetic biomaterials that present biological signals to support cell expansion, differentiation, survival, and/or integration may help overcome […]

Misregulated Mitophagy in Parkinsonian Neurodegeneration

Parkinson’s disease (PD), is one of the leading causes of disabilities and death and afflicting millions of people worldwide. Effective treatments are desperately needed but the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms of Parkinson’s destructive path are poorly understood. Mitochondria are cell’s power plants that provide almost all the energy a cell needs. When these cellular […]

Common molecular mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases using patient based iPSC neurons

A major medical problem in CA is the growing population of individuals with neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s (PD) and Huntington’s (HD) disease. These diseases affect millions of people, sometimes during the prime of their lives, and lead to total incapacitation and ultimately death. No treatment blocks the progression of neurodegeneration. We propose to conduct fundamental […]

Neural Stem Cell-Based Therapy For Parkinson’s Disease

Ongoing degeneration of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the midbrain is the hallmark of Parkinson’s disease (PD), a movement disorder that manifests with tremor, bradykinesia and rigidity. One million Americans live with PD and 60,000 are diagnosed with this disease each year. Although the cost is $25 billion per year in the United States alone, existing […]

hESC-derived NPCs Programmed with MEF2C for Cell Transplantation in Parkinson’s Disease

We proposes to use human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) differentiated into neural progenitor/stem cells (NPCs), but modified by transiently programming the cells with the transcription factor MEF2C to drive them more specifically towards dopaminergic (DA) neurons, representing the cells lost in Parkinson’s disease. We will select Parkinson’s patients that no longer respond to L-DOPA and […]

Understanding the role of LRRK2 in iPSC cell models of Parkinson’s Disease

The goal of this research is to utilize novel research tools to investigate the molecular mechanisms that cause Parkinson’s disease (PD). The proposed work builds on previous funding from CIRM that directed the developed patient derived models of PD. The majority of PD patients suffer from sporadic disease with no clear etiology. However some PD […]