Neuralstem, Inc.,a biotechnological company that focuses on the development of stem cell therapy treatments designed to treat neural conditions, has granted licenses to intellectual property surrounding its spinal cord delivery platform, floating cannula, and method for delivering therapeutic agents to the spinal cord to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a non-profit academic medical centre located in Los Angeles, California. The license agreements grant Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre the non-exclusive right to use the licensed intellectual property in academic research.

This is the second group of licenses announced by Neuralstem for these technologies. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Neuralstem holds the exclusive worldwide licenses to the platform and cannula technologies.

The platform and cannula have been used since 2010 in a phase I ALS trial, sponsored by Neuralstem and recently completed at Emory University, covering the delivery of Neuralstem's NSI-566 neural stem cells into the spinal cords of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease). Neuralstem recently received US FDA approval to commence a phase I trial in chronic spinal cord injury using the platform and cannula technologies.

"This second set of licenses for our devices further demonstrates the growing acceptance of intraspinal delivery of therapeutics, once thought impossible, in the treatment of spinal cord conditions and diseases," said Richard Garr, Neuralstem's president and CEO. "We have shown that it can be done safely in our ALS trial in 15 patients, and 18 procedures, in which three patients successfully returned for second transplants. We plan to continue our licensing programme to industry and academia as they begin to explore the possibilities our technology has enabled."

Neuralstem's patented technology enables the ability to produce neural stem cells of the human brain and spinal cord in commercial quantities, and the ability to control the differentiation of these cells constitutively into mature, physiologically relevant human neurons and glia.