#ALS research news: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was awarded an $11.99 million grant to support a clinical trial testing engineered neural progenitor cells as a potential therapy for ALS.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in California, has been awarded an $11.99 million grant to support a clinical trial that will test specifically engineered neural progenitor cells as a potential therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The work, funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, will build on years of prior research at Cedars-Sinai — also supported by CIRM, a state agency created in 2004 to fund stem cell research — that showed a similar stem cell-based technique was effective in rodent models of ALS.
“We are extremely grateful for CIRM’s support of our ALS work over many years,” Clive Svendsen, PhD, executive director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, said in a press release.
“The new grant allows us to follow the science wherever it takes to best serve our patients,” added Svendsen, also a professor of biomedical sciences and medicine.