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Advanced Cell Technology Inc. has started dosing patients with a therapy based on human embryonic stem cells to treat an eye condition in trials in Europe, the company reported in a release.
Marlborough-based ACT (OTCBB: ACTC) said that surgeons at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London delivered the cells via transplant on Friday, Jan. 20. According to a statement from principal investigator Professor James Bainbridge, the surgery team transplanted retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells that had been derived from human embryonic stem cells into a patient that is “severely sight-impaired” because of the disease Stargardt’s macular dystrophy.
The Phase 1/2 trial is mainly to study the safety of the transplant, and ACT said the patient had no complications and tolerated the surgery well. The team will also study any change in the patient’s eyesight, however, as the trial progresses, ACT said in the release. The company won approval from the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to conduct the trial in September 2011.
Similar trials are already under way in the United States, having begun in July 2011. The trials in Europe will eventually involve 12 patients, with cohorts of three patients each in an ascending dosage format, according to ACT.
In October, MIT professor and serial entrepreneur Robert Langer joined the board of directors at ACT, where he also now chairs the board’s scientific advisory committee. Last month, ACT agreed to settle with 40 separate holders of certain warrants and debentures by issuing approximately 240.5 million shares to them.
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