Stanford University 'joins spinal injury stem cell trial'RSS Feed

Stanford University and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in the USA have joined the first clinical trial investigating the use of embryonic stem cells in spinal injury, reports say.

The Food and Drug Administration-approved, phase-1 trial is designed to test the safety of embryonic stem cells for this purpose and if successful, will lead to larger studies of the treatment, PhysOrg reports.

Led by neurosurgeon Gary Steinberg, the Stanford team is the third site to participate in the trial and will enrol up to ten patients.

According to the news site, he said: "Now we're moving stem cell therapy into the clinic, which I feel is a tremendously important step. People are not mice or rats, and we can learn so much from clinical trials that we can never learn by studying animals."

This comes after research, published in Science Express, found that cancer drug Taxol promotes regeneration of injure parts of the central nervous system nerve cells, meaning it could be used to treat those with spinal injury.

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Posted by Timothy Walters
 

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