Bar-Ilan University To Develop Cocaine Treatment Using Stem Cells

Bar-Ilan University’s tech transfer company BIRAD has just received the rights to develop and commercialize a treatment that uses stem cells from donated placentas to treat cocaine addiction. 

The treatment, which uses PLX-PAD cells developed by Israeli biotech firm Pluri, has been found to reduce cocaine cravings after just one use by creating new neurons in the brain – nerve cells that carry information throughout the body and allow us to think, feel and perform motor functions. 

Studies have also found that animals treated with the PLX cells experience decreased cocaine cravings during withdrawal and after they have had a drug relapse. 

The new agreement which gives BIRAD the rights to develop the treatment stems from a collaboration between Pluri and Bar-Ilan University which produced the aforementioned findings. 

There are currently no medications approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat cocaine addiction. 

“Based on several models, PLX offers great hope as a healing modality for the treatment of cocaine addiction as compared to traditional pharmacological methods that only address symptoms such as depression and anxiety, resulting in high relapse rate to drug usage even after long time of detoxification,” said Prof. Gal Yadid of Bar Ilan University’s Brain Research Center and leading neuropsychopharmacologist.

“The data suggest PLX offers a noninvasive one-time treatment that produces an immediate, long-term effect,” he said.

“We look forward to further exploring PLX’s mechanism of action, which we believe is likely through the cells’ migration to specific mesolimbic regions [a major dopamine pathway] of the brain, thereby improving the regions’ plasticity [the ability of the brain to grow] by restoring neurons in the hippocampus.”