Mount Sinai Medical Center has joined withBrainStorm Cell Therapeutics to explore the safety and efficacy of NurOwn as a potential treatment for progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) in an ongoing Phase 2 trial.

The New York center is the fourth clinical site participating in the trial, in addition to Keck School of Medicine of The University of Southern California (USC), Stanford University School of Medicine, and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Mount Sinai is ready to start enrolling patients under the supervision of neurologistFred Lublin, MD, and his clinical team at The Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis.

We are happy to be a part of this exciting study to determine if neurally-directed stem cells can be a therapeutic approach to treating MS, Lublin said in a press release.

NurOwn is a cell-based therapy that uses the patients own bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) to promote and support the repair of nerve cells.

Patients MSCs are modified in the lab to secrete growth factors that are believed to protect nerve cells from damage, to promote the repair of the protective myelin sheath in nerve cells (which is destroyed in MS), and potentially slow or halt disease progression.

The open-label Phase 2 clinical trial (NCT03799718) will enroll and treat up to 20 adults with either primary progressive MS (PPMS) or secondary progressive MS (SPMS).

All participants will undergo a bone marrow biopsy to collect MSCs, which will later on be injected back to the patient through three intrathecal administrations injected directly into the cerebrospinal fluid over 16 weeks.

During this time, and for the following 12 weeks, researchers will evaluate the safety of the procedure, as well as the neuromodulatory effect of the modified MSCs.

To confirm that NurOwn cells are delivering neurotrophic factors and immunomodulatory signaling molecules as expected, the research team will look for an increase in the amount and type of these biomarkers in patients cerebrospinal fluid following the cell transplants.

BrainStorm looks forward to partnering with and supporting Dr. Lublin and the dedicated clinical trial team at the Mount Sinai Hospital to quickly advance the Phase 2 progressive MS clinical trial, said Ralph Kern, MD, MHSc, BrainStorms chief operating officer and chief medical officer.

For more information about the trial, including its sites and contacts, please visit this link.

NurOwn has been tested in animal models for various neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), where it showed a good safety profile and promising efficacy signs.

An ongoing Phase 3 trial (NCT03280056) testing NurOwn in people with ALS is expected to conclude in December 2020.

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Patrcia holds her PhD in Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases from the Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, The Netherlands. She has studied Applied Biology at Universidade do Minho and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon, Portugal. Her work has been focused on molecular genetic traits of infectious agents such as viruses and parasites.

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Mount Sinai Joins Progressive MS Trial of NurOwn Cell Therapy - Multiple Sclerosis News Today