Preclinical data on Neuralstem’s genetically modified HK532-IGF-1 stem cells in Alzheimer’s disease presented at ISSCR

Neuralstem, a biopharmaceutical company using neural stem cell technology to develop small molecule and cell therapy treatments for central nervous system diseases, has announced preclinical data on genetically modified HK532-IGF-1 stem cells in Alzheimer’s disease.

The data was presented in the poster “Human Neural Stem Cells Expressing IGF-1: A Novel Cellular Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease” at ISSCR.

Mice transplanted with HK532-IGF-1 cells demonstrated both enhanced learning cognitive processes and memory consolidation

In the poster, researchers from the University of Michigan presented data that mice with an animal model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), transplanted with HK532-IGF-1 cells in the peri-hippocampus, performed better on hippocampal-dependent behavioural tasks than untreated mice, demonstrating both enhanced learning cognitive processes and memory consolidation.  Researchers also reported a beta-amyloid plaque reduction in both the cortex and hippocampus of the mice that received the stem cells. Amyloid plaque is one of the two hallmarks of AD.

These results indicate that HK532-IGF-1 transplantation can impact learning and memory deficits, as well as Alzheimer’s pathology.  The researchers found the results to be encouraging and recommend further study.  HK532-IGF-1, Neuralstem’s second stem cell line, is a proprietary line of cortical neural stem cells engineered to express insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), which has been shown to have wide-ranging neuroprotective properties.