Severance Successfully Transplants Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Cell Therapy into Brain for Parkinson's Disease Patients

Severance Hospital announced on the 26th that it has implanted a cell therapy derived from embryonic stem cells into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients. This implantation was carried out with approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety through a collaboration between the Department of Neurosurgery (Principal Investigator Professor Jang Jin-woo) and the Department of Neurology (Professor Lee Pil-hyu) at Severance Hospital. The clinical trial drug implanted is a midbrain dopamine neural progenitor cell differentiated from human embryonic stem cells.

The subjects were patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease for more than five years who had undergone drug treatment but experienced reduced effectiveness or side effects such as dyskinesia. The treatment was completed on three patients each for low and high doses, and an additional three patients per dose group will be selected to continuously verify the safety and efficacy of the implantation procedure.

Professor Jang Jin-woo stated, "None of the six patients showed surgical side effects, and symptom improvement was observed. We plan to recruit six more patients to verify the safety and efficacy of the therapy, and subsequently, clinical research will continue with a larger number of patients."

Professor Lee Pil-hyu said, "The implantation of dopamine neural progenitor cells derived from embryonic stem cells is expected to be a fundamental treatment for Parkinson's disease," adding, "We will continue long-term observation of safety and efficacy."

Professor Kim Dong-wook from the Department of Physiology at Yonsei University College of Medicine, the developer of the cell therapy, stated, "Prior to this surgery, we confirmed the excellent efficacy and safety of the therapy through various non-clinical basic experiments and animal studies."