Year 4/NCE/Bridge
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a devastating degenerative brain disease with a 1 in 10,000 prevalence that inevitably leads to death. These numbers do not fully reflect the large societal and familial cost of HD, which requires extensive care-giving. HD has no effective treatment or cure and symptoms unstoppably progress for 15-20 years, with onset typically striking in midlife. Because HD is genetically dominant, the disease has a 50% chance of being inherited by the children of patients. Symptoms of the disease include uncontrolled movements, difficulties in carrying out daily tasks or continuing employment, and severe psychiatric manifestations including depression. Current treatments only address some symptoms and do not change the course of the disease, therefore a completely unmet medical need exists. Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) offer a possible long-term treatment approach that could relieve the tremendous suffering experienced by patients and their families. HD is the 3rd most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, but because it is entirely genetic and the mutation known, a diagnosis can be made with certainty and clinical applications of hESCs may provide insights into treating brain diseases that are not caused by a single, known mutation. Trials in mice where protective factors were directly delivered to the brains of HD mice have been effective, suggesting that delivery of these factors by hESCs may help patients. Transplantation of fetal brain tissue in HD patients suggests that replacing neurons that are lost may also be effective. The ability to differentiate hESCs into neuronal populations offers a powerful and sustainable alternative for cell replacement. Further, hESCs offer an opportunity to create cell models in which to identify earlier markers of disease onset and progression and for drug development. We assembled a multidisciplinary team of investigators and consultants who integrated basic and translational research and have now generated a lead developmental candidate neural stem cell having disease modifying activity with sufficient promise to initiate Investigative New Drug-enabling (IND) activities for HD clinical trials. We are now ready to utilize the collaborative research team, additional clinical investigators and FDA consultants to finalize work that will lead to an IND meeting with the FDA and a path forward for clinical trials with the neural stem cell developmental candidate.