With the announcement of encouraging interim results from the EU Horizon 2020-funded clinical trial for Diabetic Kidney Disease,  JASN Editor in Chief IC Josie Briggs spoke with Professor Giuseppe Remuzzi, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri for their podcast. The pair discussed the NEPHSTROM clinical trial and the next steps in translational work to test the possibility that mesenchymal stromal cells can be used as a therapeutic agent to promote the repair of kidney damage. Listen here.

NEPHSTROM is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 1/2a, trial evaluating the safety, tolerability and preliminary efficacy of an off-the-shelf allogeneic bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cell immunotherapy, ORBCEL™, in adult study subjects with type 2 diabetes and progressive diabetic kidney disease (DKD). ORBCEL is a proprietary formulation of highly purified immunomodulatory stromal cells. This investigator-sponsored, multi-centre study was led by the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research IRCCS (Bergamo, Italy).

NEPHSTROM has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 634086.