Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp. Announces Issuance of Second US Patent

16-May-2006

Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp. announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted U.S. Patent 7,033,995 to the company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Stem Cell Therapeutics Inc. The patent, entitled "Production of Radial Glial Cells", protects novel methods of producing radial glial cells in the brain. The production of radial glial cells in the brain of a patient suffering from a central nervous system (CNS) disease has the potential to be a fundamental technology in the field, key to the successful development of neural stem cell based approaches for the treatment of many CNS diseases.

The ability to harness the power of a patient's own neural stem cells to regenerate lost brain tissue following stroke or other forms of brain damage represents one of the most extraordinary and powerful potential therapies under development in the neurosciences today. However, one of the major remaining challenges faced in developing such a therapeutic approach lies in inducing newly formed cells to migrate to the site in the brain where regeneration is needed. During fetal brain development, the role of instructing neurons where to migrate to falls to specialized cells called radial glia, which function like a ladder for neurons to climb on while they migrate to their proper position in the brain. Unfortunately for brain regeneration, radial glial cells are only present in the developing brain and they completely disappear as the brain matures, with the result that there are no radial glial cells found in the adult brain.

The new patent describes methods to cause neural stem cells present in the adult brain to make radial glia. The new radial glial cells act like those found in the developing fetal brain and direct the migration of newly generated neurons out into the deep tissues of the brain.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/54790/stem-cell-therapeutics-corp-announces-issuance-of-second-us-patent.html