An upcoming clinical trial at Children's National Hospital will harness cardiopulmonary bypass as a delivery mechanism for a novel intervention designed to stimulate brain growth and repair in children who undergo cardiac surgery for congenital heart disease.
The NIH has awarded Children's National $2.5 million to test the hypothesis that mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), which have been shown to possess regenerative properties and the ability to modulate immune responses in a variety of diseases, collected from allogeneic bone marrow, may promote regeneration of damaged neuronal and glial cells in the early postnatal brain. If successful, the trial will determine the safety of the proposed treatment in humans and set the stage for a Phase 2 efficacy trial of what could potentially be the first treatment for brain damage in children with congenital heart disease. The study is a single-center collaboration between three Children's National physician-researchers: Dr. Jonas, Catherine Bollard, M.B.Ch.B., M.D., and Nobuyuki Ishibashi, M.D.
Dr. Jonas, chief of cardiac surgery at Children's National, will outline the trial and its aims on Monday, November 18, 2019, at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2019. Dr. Jonas was recently recognized by the Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative for his lifelong research of how cardiac surgery impacts brain growth and development in children with CHD.
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