- An innovative clinical trial against Alzheimer's disease will start at the Toulouse University Hospital.
- It will use stem cells supplied by the start-up Cell-Easy.
- They have the distinction of being from liposuction waste. The young company now knows how to produce them in industrial quantities and therefore at an affordable price.
From the superfluous to the super scientific hope. What is the unlikely link between liposuction performed by cosmetic surgeons and research against Alzheimer's disease? These are the stem cells whose fat tissues abound and that the Toulouse start-up Cell-Easy, specialized in regenerative medicine, had the idea to recover from clinicians.
"We take this waste and we make it a drug," explains Pierre Monsan, the general manager of the company and founder of the French Federation of biotechnologies. While stem cells generally come from either umbilical cords or painful lumbar punctures, our technology makes it possible to multiply them. ” So that a donor can "supply" thousands of recipients and above all, that the cost of production, in this industrial quantity, is greatly reduced.
Tests on nine patients at the start
At a time of innovative therapy drugs (IMT) and where scientists aspire to "cure the living by the living", the Toulouse University Hospital took the leap. He has just signed an agreement with Cell-Easy for a clinical trial against Alzheimer's disease. The latter should start in early 2021. “Alzheimer's disease is characterized by a chronic inflammatory state of the brain which causes protein deposits, explains Pierre Monsan. The CHU team wants to test the anti-inflammatory effect of stem cells and their ability to slow the progression of the disease. "
The test will be conducted by the team of Professor Bruno Vellas at the gerontopole. It should initially concern nine patients followed at the Toulouse and Montpellier teaching hospitals, aged 50 to 85, who are at the very beginning of the pathology. Stem cells will be injected into them through the blood. Depending on the preliminary results, the patient cohort may then increase to around fifty. With great hopes in the balance.
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