Japan’s Central Social Insurance Medical Council on Wednesday started to discuss extending the public health insurance coverage to two regenerative medicine products using induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells. The council, which advises the health minister, is expected to decide the official prices for the products as early as summer. The products will come into use for medical treatment after that.
A Japanese panel of experts on Thursday gave the green light for the health minister to approve the production and sale of two regenerative medical products that use induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells. The products, if approved by the minister, are expected to be the world’s first of their kind. The panel examined the products under a conditional approval system. Even if approved, additional data on the products will be collected for up to seven years.
A Japanese team said on Tuesday 3rd June that it has started a final-stage clinical trial to administer to patients with familial Alzheimer’s disease a drug discovered through induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells. This is the first final-stage trial conducted in the field of iPS drug discovery, which uses iPS cells to discover new efficacies of new and existing drugs, according to the team. The team includes members of Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, or CiRA, and Towa Pharmaceutical Co., which makes and sells generic drugs.
Kyoto University Hospital has succeeded in transplanting pancreatic cell sheets made from induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells into a diabetic patient, achieving the first clinical application of such sheets in Japan. Announcing the results Monday, the hospital said that the patient in her 40s has already been discharged with a favorable prognosis. The hospital observed her for one month after the surgery and confirmed that there was no safety problem.
A preview ceremony was held Sunday for the “Osaka Healthcare Pavilion” to be run by the prefecture and city of Osaka at the 2025 World Exposition, which begins next month in the western Japan city. Inside the pavilion, a myocardial cell sheet using induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cell technology and an experience-based area where avatars are generated based on visitors’ health data were shown to the press.
When a transplant is performed, rejection occurs if the type of human leukocyte antigens, or HLA, of the donor does not conform with that of the recipient.
Using genome-editing technology, the foundation altered genes related to immune cells to create the iPS cells with lower rejection risk.
Japan’s Keio University said Friday it has started a clinical research to transplant neural progenitor cells derived from induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells into patients with spinal cord injuries, the first such attempt in the world.
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