Japan approved the world's first iPS cell clinical trial in the treatment of spinal cord injury

Japan's Ministry of health, labor and welfare approved the world's first clinical trial on the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) in the treatment of spinal cord injury Monday If all goes well, the experiment is expected to start within the year The experiment, proposed by Keio University in Japan, will soon be officially approved by Japan's minister of health, labor and welfare, according to several Japanese media reports According to the plan, the research team led by Professor Kono Rongzhi of the school will recruit four volunteers over the age of 18 and with spinal cord injury for two to four weeks from this autumn The specific method is to inject neural stem cells cultured from iPS cells into patients to repair the damaged spinal cord The spinal cord is an important part of the human central nervous system When the spinal cord is damaged, the nervous system can not work normally, so the patients will usually be paralyzed In Japan alone, there are more than 100000 spinal cord injured people Repairing the injured spinal cord has always been a difficult problem in the medical field Once iPS cell therapy is successful, it will bring new hope to the patients with spinal cord injury in sports or traffic accidents IPS cell is a kind of stem cell developed by reprogramming mature cells It has the similar differentiation potential with embryonic stem cells, but the method of obtaining iPS cell is relatively simple Meanwhile, iPS cell avoids the ethical problems in embryonic stem cell research, so it is considered to have great application value in clinical treatment So far, Japan has approved a number of clinical trials for the treatment of diseases involving iPS cells For example, Kyoto University announced in November last year that it has transplanted neural progenitor cells cultured by iPS cells into the brain of a Parkinson's disease patient The patient's recovery is good, but the effect and safety of the operation still need long-term observation.