Oxford Bio reaches nerve milestone
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
Published: June 1 2004 19:20 | Last Updated: June 1 2004 19:20
The prospect of treating spinal injuries through gene therapy will take another step closer to reality on Wednesday when Oxford Biomedica announces that its nerve repair product has restored feeling and movement to animals with damaged limbs.
The Oxford-based company said in December that its scientists had observed regrowth of nerves in rats treated with Innurex.
Nicholas Mazarakis, head of neurobiology, will tell the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene Therapy in Minneapolis on Wednesday that the product has restored function to the injured limbs.
"When I saw the data - how well we were getting back both sensory and motor functions - I was stunned," said Alan Kingsman, chief executive of Oxford Biomedica. "We felt we should repeat the experiments to confirm these exciting results."
The company and its academic partners at King's College London were talking to clinicians about how best to test Innurex in paralysed patients. "I think we could be going clinical in 2006," Prof Kingsman said.
The rats tested were an animal model for "avulsion injury", a common cause of paralysis in sporting and motor accidents, in which nerves are damaged by very rapid stretching or pulling. The Christopher Reeve Foundation - set up by the Hollywood actor paralysed after a riding accident in 1995 - recently gave King's College a grant to explore the use of Innurex in spinal cord injuries similar to the one suffered by Mr Reeve.
Innurex uses a virus to carry a gene called RARbeta2 to injured nerves. This gene - normally active in embryos but not in adults - makes the cells receptive to body chemicals that stimulate the growth of next nerve connections.
Most experiments to repair spinal injuries have not used gene therapy but other techniques including the application of cells or growth factors to the injury. But none has yet given convincingly reproducible results in animal experiments. "Stem cell therapy must be at least 10 years away, even if you take the most optimistic view of the stem cell story," said Prof Kingsman.
Oxford Biomedica has six gene therapy products in pre-clinical development or early clinical trials, either for cancer or to treat damaged nerves or brain cells. Innurex is one of the most promising. The shares closed down p at 16p.
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