NEW YORK – The US Department of Defense awarded UTHealth Houston a $4.9 million grant to support a Phase II clinical trial of an autologous stem cell therapy to treat severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), the university said Thursday.
The four-year grant was awarded through the Defense Department's Office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. It marks the department's first grant supporting the research effort, which is a collaboration between UTHealth Houston and stem cell banking firm Hope Biosciences that has already started a previous Phase I/IIa trial.
The treatment involves repeated intravenously infused autologous mesenchymal stem cells derived from patients' fat tissue, which are pluripotent and thought to have regenerative capacity. Early results from the Phase I/IIa trial, which enrolled 24 patients, suggested that the stem cell treatment could reduce chronic neuroinflammation, a response to severe TBI.
The multicenter Phase II trial is expected to begin enrollment in September.