Disease Focus: Pediatrics
Induced pluripotent stem cells from children with autism spectrum disorders
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a family of disabling disorders of the developing brain that affect about 1% of the population. Studying the biology of these conditions has been difficult as they have been challenging to represent in animal models. The core symptoms of ASD, including deficits in social communication, imagination and curiosity are intrinsically […]
In Utero Embryonic Stem Cell Transplantation to Treat Congenital Anomalies
Many fetuses with congenital blood stem cell disorders such as sickle cell disease or thalassemia are prenatally diagnosed early enough in pregnancy to be treated with stem cell transplantation. The main benefit to treating these diseases before birth is that the immature fetal immune system may accept transplanted cells without needing to use immunosuppressant drugs […]
Studying Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia with patient-specific iPS cells
Most heart conditions leading to sudden death or impaired pumping heart functions in the young people (
Modeling Alexander disease using patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells
Alexander disease (AxD) is a devastating childhood disease that affects neural development and causes mental retardation, seizures and spasticity. The most common form of AxD occurs during the first two years of life and AxD children show delayed mental and physical development, and die by the age of six. AxD occurs in diverse ethnic, racial, […]
Stem Cell Mechanisms Governing Discrete Waves of Gliogenesis in the Childhood Brain
White matter is the infrastructure of the brain, providing conduits for communication between neural regions. White matter continues to mature from birth until early adulthood, particularly in regions of brain critical for higher cognitive functions. However, the precise timing of white matter maturation in the various neural circuits is not well described, and the mechanisms […]
A Phase 2 Study Evaluating the Efficacy and Safety of IV Administered rAAV9 Vector Containing RP-A501 in Male Patients with Danon Disease
A monoclonal antibody that depletes blood stem cells and enables chemotherapy free transplants
This trial proposes to replace SCID patients’ dysfunctional immune cells with healthy ones using a safer form of bone marrow transplant (BMT). Current BMT procedures must use toxic chemotherapy to make space in the bone marrow for the healthy transplanted stem cells to engraft. The Stanford team will instead test a safe, non-toxic protein called […]
Efficacy and safety of cryopreserved autologous CD34+ HSC transduced with EFS lentiviral vector encoding for human ADA gene in ADA-SCID subjects
In ADA-SCID, allogeneic hematopoietic (blood) stem cell transplants from non-matched sibling donors are a high risk procedure. Additionally, the efficacy of chronic enzyme replacement therapy is uncertain in the long-term. A team at UCLA is using a patient’s own blood stem cells to try and rebuild the damaged immune systems of patients with ADA-SCID. They will use what’s […]
A Phase I/II, Non Randomized, Multicenter, Open-Label Study of G1XCGD (Lentiviral Vector Transduced CD34+ Cells) in Patients With X-Linked Chronic Granulomatous Disease
X-linked Chronic Granulomatous Disease (X-CGD) is a rare immune disorder that prevents white blood cells from killing foreign invaders. This results in severe, recurrent infections that can impact quality and length of a patient’s life. X-CGD is usually diagnosed before age 5, but without treatment, children die before age 10. A team at UCLA is using the patient’s own genetically […]
Clinical Trial of Stem Cell Gene Therapy for Sickle Cell Disease
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is caused by a genetic mutation in the hemoglobin gene which causes red blood cells to “sickle” under conditions of low oxygen. SCD affects 1:500 African-Americans and is also common in Hispanic-Americans. The median survival for patients with SCD is 42 years for males and 48 years for females. A team at UCLA […]