In what could become a breakthrough treatment for epileptic seizures, doctors at UC San Diego Health have successfully demonstrated injecting regenerative cells into the brains of individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy.seizure
They performed the third such procedure in the US last month as part of a national clinical trial sponsored by Neurona Therapeutics, a California-based biotherapeutic company that is developing regenerative therapies for neurological conditions.
The treatment involves injecting a person who has drug-resistant epilepsy with a cell therapy called NRTX-1001 at specific points of the brain (temporal lobe) that are affected by seizures. In testing, it has been able to restore balance in the brain and stop seizures.
“This experimental cell therapy is meant to bring relief for participants who suffer from seizures that cannot be controlled by medication,” said Sharona Ben-Haim, MD, associate professor of neurological surgery at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and surgical director of epilepsy at UC San Diego Health.
Ben-Haim performed the procedure where she injected inhibitory neurons called interneurons into the brain. With the help of multiple brain scans she was able to pinpoint the exact location in the brain to inject these neurons.
The participant of the latest trial was the third person in the US to undergo the procedure. The other two participants were followed up a year after the procedure and are showing a significant reduction in seizure frequency with improvements in memory.
Neurona Therapeutics is now recruiting 40 participants to undergo regenerative cell therapy as part of the Phase I/II trials for the therapy. Doctors at UC San Diego Health are hoping that the procedure can become the standard of care for all drug-resistant focal epilepsies.
“In drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy, some of the normal brain cells in the temporal lobe have been damaged or are dead,” said Jerry Shih, MD, professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine, neurologist, and director of the Epilepsy Center at UC San Diego Health.
“This first-in-human clinical trial represents a paradigm shift in the way we treat this disease process, shifting from procedures that destroy bad tissue to procedures that repair the bad tissue,” Shih added.
They added that improvement in the condition of individuals who receive the therapy is seen as early as one month, stating that their goal is to enhance long-term quality of life.
