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Neuralstem Scientist Sees Stem Cell Technology Replacing Animal Toxicity Testing in Many Drug and Chemical Products

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 March 2006, 09:01 CST

Speaking at a Johns Hopkins Medicine Symposium exploring humane methods of testing chemicals for brain toxicity last week, Dr. Karl Johe, Chairman & Chief Scientific Officer of Neuralstem Inc., discussed progress Neuralstem has made utilizing neural stem cells to test whether or not a substance is harmful to human brain tissue, especially during fetal and early childhood development. Toxicity testing is a vitally important step for commercialization of most household and industrial chemicals as well as drugs and drug candidates. Current methods for testing potential toxicity to the nervous system typically involve the use of many animals.

"Today we often use animals to test thousands of chemicals in a host of everyday products to determine their harmful effects on the brain," commented Dr. Johe. "Replacing this wasteful and expensive process with effective in vitro models is a goal for private sector manufacturers and the EPA alike. Using neural stem cells, we can generate a large number of human brain neurons in laboratory dishes on which we can test these chemicals. Testing on human cells provides more relevant information than testing on animals or animal cells, creating a new model that is cleaner, more cost effective and much more humane."

The nervous system is composed of non-regenerating tissue. Injury by a toxic substance can be devastating and permanent. In his March 14th presentation at the Johns Hopkins Medicine Developmental Neurotoxicity Symposium, in Reston, Virginia, Dr. Johe discussed the use of human neural stem cells for neurotoxicity testing. Human neural stem cells, which can be differentiated in a culture dish to capture a large window of human brain/spinal cord development, are exquisitely sensitive to toxic insults. They provide, Dr. Johe went on to point out, a better model for observing the cumulative neural effects of long-term chemical exposure than animals do. Human neural stem cells, he concluded, are an ideal surrogate testing system for screening large numbers of chemicals and drug candidates using reproducible, quantitative methods.

Neuralstem Inc.'s patent-protected technology enables, for the first time, the ability to produce neural stem cells of the human brain and spinal cord in commercially reasonable quantities, and to control the differentiation of these cells into mature, physiologically relevant human neurons and glia. The Company's primary focus is to transplant these cells into patients to treat currently incurable diseases. In addition, the company's ability to extract and immortalize neural stem cells creates the opportunity to develop in vitro assays for drug development, testing new chemicals on neurons in a laboratory setting to observe their potentially toxic effects.

Major CNS diseases targeted by the Company with research programs currently underway include: Ischemic Spastic Paraplegia, Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury, ALS, and Parkinson's Disease. The company has also developed immortalized human neural stem cells for in-vitro use in drug development for the academic and pharmaceutical markets.

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Neuralstem wishes to caution the readers of this press release that actual results may differ from those discussed in the forward-looking statements and may be adversely affected by, among other things, US FDA responses, and responses from other jurisdictions, to various regulatory submissions; SEC responses to various registration submissions; changes in corporate strategy; the need to raise additional capital; the success or failure of other private and public organizations and/or academic and corporate institutions engaged in stem cell research and development, and the market for stem cell research in general. For further information, please review the company's SB-2 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

 Company Contact: Karl Johe (301) 366-4850  Media Contact: Deanne Eagle (917) 837-5866  

SOURCE: Neuralstem, Inc.

Source: MARKET WIRE

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