Aspen Neuro Bags $6.5M to Test Parkinson’s Disease Stem Cell Therapy

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Aspen’s lead drug candidate, which is in preclinical testing, is intended to replace neurons in the brains of people with the disease, which causes those cells to become damaged or die. And the group developed another predictive genomic-based test, similar to the effort Loring spearheaded nearly a decade ago to determine whether cells were pluripotent, that can detect which iPSCs are destined to become neurons. It also has a second treatment in the works that it intends to develop for patients with familial forms of the disease, and uses a gene editing tool—yet to be selected—to alter their stem cells during the reprogramming process. Federoff says he has “come to believe that Parkinson’s patients need more than just to stabilize their disease… They need to turn the clock back.” Many companies are working on drugs to treat Parkinson’s, but most are meant to manage symptoms rather than reverse the disease. Levodopa, which supplants missing dopamine, is used widely, but it can cause side effects, including involuntary movement called dyskinesia; and, as the disease progresses, the drug eventually stops working between doses.

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