EXPERIMENTS aimed at curing brain damage in stroke patients by injecting them with fetal brain cells from pigs have been suspended after reports of worrying side effects. Diacrin, the company based in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which developed the treatment, halted recruitment of volunteers for the trial last week.
“One patient developed seizures a week after transplant,” says Thomas Fraser, the president of Diacrin. “Another had minor brain swelling and muscular fatigue,” he says. “They were the fourth and fifth patients, and three had been treated previously without any adverse events,” he adds.
The company is trying to find out if the…
