(SD2018-372): A Protocol To Induce Human Spinal Cord Neural Stem Cells (US Pat No. 11,773,369)

Background

Worldwide, over 2.5 million people live with spinal cord injury, with over 100,000 new cases occurring annually. Spinal cord injury often causes motor dysfunction below the level of the injury. For example, thoracic and lumbar spinal cord injury can cause paraplegia and cervical spinal cord injury can cause quadriplegia. Such injury is permanent and often severe and there is no effective treatment. Various neurologic diseases also involve damaged or dysfunctional spinal cord neurons. Neural stem cell grafts have potential for treating such conditions. However, it has not been possible to obtain sufficient numbers of appropriately patterned neural stem cells, having a spinal cord positional identity, for implanted cells to survive and functionally engraft.

Technology Description

Researchers from UC San Diego patented methods of inducing and maintaining spinal cord neural stem cells (NSC) and spinal cord neural progenitor cells, staring with human pluripotent stem cells. In some embodiments the hPSC are human embryonic stem cells (hESC). In some embodiments the hPSC are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC).

Applications

Advantages

The ability to create a diversity of spinal cord neuronal types could facilitate disease modeling and drug screening for several spinal cord disorders.

The hESC-derived NSCs could further constitute the optimal cell type for clinical translation for spinal cord ‘replacement’ strategies in SCI or other disorders.

State Of Development

UC San Diego is seeking companies interested in commercializing US patent rights through a license.

Intellectual Property Info

US Pat No. 11,773,369

Related Materials

• Kumamaru H, Kadoya K, Adler AF, Takashima Y, Graham L, Coppola G, Tuszynski MH. Generation and post-injury integration of human spinal cord neural stem cells. Nat Methods. 2018 Sep;15(9):723-731. doi: 10.1038/s41592-018-0074-3. Epub 2018 Aug 6. - 08/06/2018

Patent Status