A new clinical trial has been approved by the FDA(Food and Drug Administration), it’s a new groundbreaking strategy that allows scientists to utilize stem cells for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS).

In the United States there are currently 350,000 to 500,000 people that have been diagnosed with MS and at least 200 are diagnosed with the disease every week, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system (CNS), which is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. Common symptoms that occur include numbness of the limbs, and more sever cases can lead to paralysis and blindness.

The FDA granted the researchers from the Tisch MS Research Center of New York to begin early clinical investigation, Phase I trial, of autologous neural stem cells in the treatment of MS. The new regenerative technique will include utilizing autologous (derived from the same individual’s body), mesenchymal stem cell-derived neural progenitor cells (MSC-Nps), which will be collected from the skeletal substance marrow of 20 MS patients who meet the criteria for the trial. Then  the stem cells will be injected into the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the spinal cords of the patients. In a 3-month period the injections will be repeated, after the last injection patients will be monitored for at least 27 months.

The clinical trial’s primary objective is to measure the procedure’s safety, and the secondary objective is to determine the effectiveness of the treatment. Once the clinical trial has received ethical approval and provided secured funding, patients will be enrolled.