Regenerative Cell Therapy for Epilepsy

Neuroscientist Professor Sonja Bröer from Freie Universität Berlin is involved in the development of an innovative treatment option for therapy-resistant epilepsy. Together with colleagues, veterinarian and neuroscientist Sonja Bröer has researched how regenerative cell therapies can contribute to curing or alleviating epilepsy. The work was carried out at biotechnology start-up Neurona Therapeutics, Inc. in San Francisco, where Bröer led a team in preclinical research, before she moved to Freie Universität. The company is developing a cell therapy (NRTX-1001) for treatment-resistant epilepsy and has now published the results from preclinical studies in the renowned journal Cell Stem Cell . Based on these data, the cell therapy is now being evaluated in human patients as part of an ongoing phase 1/2 clinical trial. On October 6, 2023, Bröer will present both the preclinical and the first clinical data at the Einstein Center for Neurosciences' ÜBerlin Neuroscience Meeting." Approximately fifty million people worldwide suffer from epilepsy; in about one-third of patients, epileptic seizures do not respond to drug treatment, reducing patients' quality of life as well as their life expectancy.