A Study to Evaluate Allogenic Bone-Marrow Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Product StromaForte in Aging Frailty Patients

This phase I/IIa study in frail patients is designed to assess the safety of intravenous human allogenic bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cell product StromaForte by reporting the number of adverse events assessed by Common Terminology Criteria. 12 male and female patients aged 60 to 85 years will be enrolled.

Frailty is theoretically defined as a clinically recognizable state of increased vulnerability resulting from aging-associated decline in reserve and function across multiple physiologic systems such that the ability to cope with every day or acute stressors is comprised. In the absence of a gold standard, frailty has been operationally defined by Fried et al. as meeting three out of five phenotypic criteria indicating compromised energetics: low grip strength, low energy, slowed waking speed, low physical activity, and/or unintentional weight loss.

One major factor proposed to contribute to frailty and related epigenetic dysregulation is stem cell loss. In order to treat this multifactorial dysregulation, stem cell therapy is an interesting strategy, and MSCs are a particularly tempting candidate. MSCs are an immune-privileged somatic progenitor cell type that is multipotent, self-renewing, and relatively simple to harvest (bone marrow harvest), isolate, and grow. MSCs are proven to regulate the body's immune response in many diseases and exert anti-inflammatory effects.

Following their discovery over 50 years ago, mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have become one of the most studied cellular therapeutic products by both academia and industry due to their regenerative potential and immunomodulatory properties. The promise of MSCs as a therapeutic modality has been demonstrated in a number of preclinical studies as well as in clinical setting. Stromaforte cells which will be used in this study is developed within CELLCOLABS AB which is a parent company to Cellcolabs Clinical SPV Limited and were generated following the same protocol established over the last 20 years by scientists CELLCOLABS AB at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

Currently completed in vivo studies on rats, rabbits and mice models showed that MSCs could attenuate sarcopenia via increasing skeletal muscle weight and myofiber cross-sectional area. The physical performance including muscle strength as well as endurance were significantly enhanced. In addition, MSCs have capability to activate resident skeletal muscle stem cells, which lead to myogenesis and differentiation of muscle tissues. The positive results provide novel insights into sarcopenia intervention, suggesting a potential role for MSC therapy in aging frailty. This study which has been designed to evaluate the safety of intravenous human allogenic bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cell product StromaForte in frail patients before further clinical development.