Richard Fessler, MD, on Working Toward Cell Therapy for Spinal Cord Injury
The professor of neurosurgery at Rush University Medical School discussed challenges with trials for SCI and the 1st Annual SCIIS.
“Everybody that has a potential impact on moving this field forward is sitting at the table talking to each other. And that's really novel. And that'svery exciting. And of course, we have many individuals with lived experience, who have spinal cord injuries, who are talking to us and saying, ‘This is what's important to me', and maybe ‘these are the questions you're not asking that really would have an impact on my quality of life’. So, I think that's informing all of us.”
Lineage Cell Therapeutics and Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation held the inaugural 1st Annual Spinal Cord Injury Investor Symposium (SCIIS) in La Jolla, California, on June 29, 2023. The symposium aimed to facilitate discussion and cooperation between various experts in the field, with the ultimate goal of accelerating the development of novel drugs and therapeutics for spinal cord injury (SCI), an important area of unmet need.
Lineage Cell is 1 of a number of companies developing cell therapies for treating SCI, with its oligodendrocyte progenitor cell therapycandidate LTCOPC1, which is being evaluated in a phase 1/2 trial (NCT02302157). CGTLive spoke with the study’s primary investigator, Richard Fessler, MD, a professor of neurosurgery at Rush University Medical Schoolwho attended the SCIIS, to learn more about his thoughts on the synposium and the importance of bringing together all the relevant parties for to accelerate advancements in SCI specifically. He also discussed challenges of conducting clinical trials in this population. These included logistical and mobility challenges specific to people with SCIs and characteristics of the condition that may complicate study outcome measures.
