Chinese researchers have developed a new stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease which reportedly provides rapid improvement in symptoms for patients suffering for decades from the neurological disorder.
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder which mainly affects the body’s movement capabilities and is caused by the death of nerve cells in a region of the brain that produces the hormone dopamine.
Patients may eventually become stiff in their whole body and entirely incapable of taking care of themselves over time.
The degenerative disease does not have a cure yet and current treatment options focus on managing symptoms.
Many existing treatment approaches attempt to temporarily replace dopamine in the brain, but fail to address the underlying death of neurons.
Now, researchers at China’s First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei claim to have achieved high efficiency in their stem cell therapy, helping Parkinson’s patients regain lost movement.
These scientists have been conducting a Phase I clinical trial of stem cell transplants in six patients since April, and report rapid improvement in symptoms with a sustained increase in dopamine signalling within the brains of the participants.
The therapy aims to induce injected stem cells to differentiate and become nerve cells that could only secrete dopamine.
Researchers say they could achieve very high efficiency in inducing the stem cells to differentiate into functional dopamine-producing cells in the patients.
“We ‘plant’ them in the patient’s brain and allow them to differentiate into brand new dopaminergic neurons that reshape the brain’s neural networks,” neurologist Shi Jiong, who is part of the study team, told SCMP.
“Internationally leading teams recently reported a conversion rate of around 50 per cent, but our collaborative team achieved a rate of over 80 per cent through a series of efforts,” Dr Jiong said.
One of the six participants part of the study reportedly saw a dramatic decline in symptoms like tremors and rigidity.
The 37-year-old patient’s Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale score dropped from 62 – classified as severe disability – to a score of 12, resembling that of a healthy individual, researchers say.
Early results from the trial already showed in April that the stem cell treatment is safe for patients, with the injected cells surviving and producing dopamine.
Researchers hope to recruit more patients for larger-scale studies to further test the potential of the new therapy.
