Entry Details

About the Entry

Category: 
All Content > Company Profile > Northeast

Title of entry: 
Uncertainty and excitement surround one company’s cell therapy for epilepsy

Issue or Publication date:
October 5, 2023

Publication name: 
The Transmitter

Publishing/parent company: 
The Simons Foundation

View Website home page:
www.thetransmitter.org

Description of the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

The Transmitter aims to be an essential resource for the neuroscience community, dedicated to helping scientists at all career stages stay current and build connections. The new publication delivers useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research.

Neurona Therapeutics has bet its future on a new way of treating epilepsy: transplanting inhibitory neurons into people’s brains to quiet the excess activity that leads to seizures. The science behind the company’s treatment is cutting edge, and the initial results from its ongoing clinical trial have been impressive, with the first two trial participants seeing a more than 90 percent reduction in seizures in the first year after surgery. But in her deep dive into Neurona’s treatment for The Transmitter, reporter Angie Voyles Askham reveals that some researchers involved in the early stages of the work felt that the science was not properly vetted — and 10 years later, they still have concerns about the treatment’s long-term effects.

As Joy Sebe, who worked on some of the preliminary research, put it, “I do think there should be no doubt if you’re going to put this into people’s brains.”

For this article, Askham reported on the exciting research that underpins the ongoing clinical trial and the disagreements that led one of Neurona’s co-founders to part ways with the company. She spoke with researchers who criticized Neurona’s decision to move forward with its technology before all questions had been answered — including the exact composition of cells included in its treatment. She talked to Neurona founders who focused on the potential of their product and wanted to push forward when they had the opportunity. And she talked to observers in the field who are eagerly awaiting the results of the trial.

Those results could potentially change the course of epilepsy treatment, researchers agree. “If it goes well, they’ll be trailblazers,” neuroscientist Matthew Shtrahman told Askham. If it doesn’t, he said, “they’ll be called cowboys. That’s the nature of the business.”

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https://www.thetransmitter.org/interneurons/uncertainty-and-excitement-surround-one-companys-cell-therapy-for-epilepsy/