Geron Corp has gotten approval from the FDA to begin an early stage stem cell study on a patient with spinal cord injuries at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. Early stage studies focus on the safety of the therapy.
Geron said it plans to enroll 8-10 patients at sites around the country. Each patient will be studied for a year and the duration of the study will last about two years.
“When we started working with human embryonic stem cells in 1999, many predicted that it would be a number of decades before a cell therapy would be approved for human clinical trials,” Dr. Thomas Okarma, Geron’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
If the study is considered successful, it will lead to further studies which will focus on effectiveness.
For more information please visit http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/10/stem-cell-clinical-trial/1 or http://www.freep.com/article/20101012/NEWS07/10120362/1001/NEWS/Human-stem-cell-study-a-landmark.
