Biotech company Ryne Bio has received a large research grant to develop their late-stage preclinical cell transplantation procedure for Parkinson’s.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (or CIRM) is a major funder of research focused on stem cell treatments. To date, they have invested more than US$59 million in projects for Parkinson’s, and this week announced they are investing $4 million in a lab-based research project with Ryne Bio to help bring their dopamine producing cell replacement therapy into the clinic for Parkinson’s.
The motor symptoms of Parkinson’s are associated with a significant loss of dopamine-producing cells in the brain. Cell replacement transplantation therapies have long been considered a potential treatment for Parkinson’s, but there have been problems associated with the availability of the correct types of cells to transplant. For the last decade, researchers have been developing new recipes for producing dopamine producing nerve cells in cell cultures and, importantly, they are now ready to start clinical trials testing cell transplantation for Parkinson’s.
Ryne Bio is a small biotech company that was co-founded by Cure Parkinson’s iLCT committee members Prof. Howard Federoff and Prof. Jeff Kordower. With the results of this newly funded project, the company hopes to have enough data to request US FDA approval to start clinical trials in people with Parkinson’s.
