Pig cell Parkinson's trial passes milestone

As part of the trial at Auckland City Hospital, four patients had 80 NTCELL microcapsules implanted into each side of their brain, and two had sham surgery with no NTCELL implanted. Photo / File

A New Zealand medical trial involving injecting specially encapsulated pig-derived cells into human brains has passed another milestone.

Auckland biotech company Living Cell Technologies has announced it has completed treatment of all six patients in a second group of a clinical trial of its cell therapy NTCELL for the potential treatment of Parkinson's disease.

The product is a capsule that contains clusters of neonatal porcine choroid plexus cells sourced from a unique herd of designated pathogen-free pigs bred from stock originally discovered in the remote Sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands.

As part of trial at Auckland City Hospital, four patients had 80 NTCELL microcapsules implanted into the putamen on each side of their brain, and two patients had sham surgery with no NTCELL implanted.

The company reported that, to date, there had been no safety issues in any of the six patients.

Its next step was to look at another trial of six patients with another dose of NTCELL, this time involving the implantation of 120 microcapsules.

The current phase of the trial, which has been backed by Parkinson's New Zealand, aims to confirm the most effective dose of NTCELL, define any placebo component of the response and further identify the initial target Parkinson's disease patient subgroup.

If the trial was successful, the company would apply for provisional consent to treat paying patients in New Zealand by the end of next year.

"Our goal, subject to continued satisfactory data, is to obtain provisional consent and launch NTCELL as the first disease modifying treatment for Parkinson's disease early in 2018," company chief executive Dr Ken Taylor said.

Initial results of the trial were presented by Auckland City Hospital neurologist Dr Barry Snow to the 19th International Congress of Parkinson's Disease in San Diego last year.

In 2014, the company opted to stop recruiting further patients when a previously published study showing implanted cells were effective in treating animal models of Parkinson's disease in rats was retracted because of incomplete data.