BORDEAUX, France / May 20, 2024 – TreeFrog Therapeutics will participate for the first time at the IAPRD in Lisbon, Portugal, to present data from their Parkinson’s disease cell therapy program, which has demonstrated excellent results with full motor recovery at 16 weeks in preclinical studies.[1]
Parkinson’s Disease is a progressive neurological disease affecting more than 10 million people worldwide[2] with prevalence doubling in the last 25 years.[3] The complex disease is the result of the degeneration of specific dopamine-producing neurons in the brain. There is a huge unmet need as current treatments provide symptomatic relief only and medication fails to control symptoms for nearly 75% of people.[4] Regenerative medicine and in particular, cell therapy, holds great potential as it can replace these lost neurons, ultimately restoring function.
“We are excited to present the data to the scientific community at the IAPRD for the first time. Pioneering work in the 1990s using human fetal midbrain has already demonstrated that cell therapy can bring real clinical benefits to patients [5] and, in the last decade, an increasing number of trials have been launched using pluripotent stem cells as a more standardizable cell source.” says Jens Schroeder, Chief Medical Officer, TreeFrog Therapeutics. “Cell therapy has the potential to open an avenue for functional recovery where no therapy options exist. The data we are presenting reports on the first bioproduction of a cell therapy for the disease in a scalable bioreactor. In pre-clinical models, full behavioral recovery was observed by 16 weeks post transplantation and dopaminergic neurons were seen projecting into the host striatum.”
The off-the-shelf therapy in development by TreeFrog uses their proprietary technology, C-Stem™, a breakthrough technology that addresses critical challenges of producing high quality, cell therapies at scale, efficiently. The closed system enables both the amplification and differentiation of cells. The Parkinson’s program is the first application of this technology using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) that are differentiated into ready-to-graft 3D microtissues containing mature dopaminergic neurons.
Details of presentation:
Guided poster tour – PD Therapy #P_03 (GPT)
Date & time: 20 May 2024 @ 15:30-16:30
About TreeFrog Therapeutics
TreeFrog Therapeutics is a French-based biotech company set to unlock access to cell therapies for millions of patients. TreeFrog is unique in its approach to cell therapy development bringing together biophysicists, cell biologists and bioproduction engineers to address the challenges of the industry — producing and differentiating cells of quality at unprecedented scale, cost-effectively. To realize their mission of Cell Therapy for all, TreeFrog operates a business model that includes its own therapeutic programs and partnerships with leading biotech and industry players in other areas. In the last 3 years, the company has raised $82 million to advance a pipeline of stem cell-based therapies in regenerative medicine. In 2022, the company opened technological hubs in Boston, USA, and Kobe, Japan, to drive the adoption of the C-StemTM platform and establish strategic alliances with leading academic, biotech and industry players.
Media Contacts
Rachel MOONEY,
Chief Communications Officer
rachel.mooney@treefrog.fr
+33 6 74 06 34 61
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[1] Data on file. Poster #P_03 (GPT) IAPRD 2024
[2] Statistics | Parkinson’s Foundation
[3] Parkinson disease (who.int)
[5] Lindvall et al 1989, Lindvall et al 1990, Freed et al 1992