In 2025, China’s clinical medicine sector witnessed another landmark breakthrough — the research team led by Professor Shi Jiong from the First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China (Anhui Provincial Hospital) successfully achieved the world’s first clinical functional cure of a patient with early-onset Parkinson’s disease (EOPD) who had battled the illness for 15 years, using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) transplantation technology. Merely three months after the surgery, the patient was free from core symptoms such as limb tremors and muscle rigidity and regained normal living abilities. Imaging examinations confirmed that the transplanted dopaminergic neural progenitor cells had successfully engrafted and exerted their functions. This achievement not only lights up hope for millions of Parkinson’s disease patients worldwide but also marks China’s emergence as a global leader in the field of stem cell regenerative medicine, taking a pivotal step in transforming neurodegenerative diseases from "incurable" to "root cause reparable".
Tormented by Illness for 15 Years: An EOPD Patient Trapped in a Treatment Dead End
The patient who received the treatment, Ms. Li, is only 37 years old but has suffered from Parkinson’s disease for 15 years. At the age of 22, she first experienced bradykinesia in her hands, which gradually progressed to resting tremors and generalized muscle rigidity, making even simple daily actions like dressing and eating extremely difficult. As a typical patient with early-onset Parkinson’s disease (EOPD), her age of onset is far lower than the conventional onset age of 60 years old. Moreover, due to genetic factors, her disease progressed much faster than that of elderly patients.
For 15 years, Ms. Li relied on levodopa-based drugs for maintenance treatment. However, as dopaminergic neurons in her brain continued to die, the efficacy of the drugs diminished steadily, and she developed severe "on-off phenomenon" — she was in a motionless "off" state for 50% of each day, facing the constant risk of falls and completely losing her ability to work and live normally. "Traditional treatments only 'supplement dopamine' and cannot stop the continuous degeneration of neurons; patients will eventually end up paralyzed," said Professor Shi Jiong, noting that this is the core dilemma plaguing the global treatment of Parkinson’s disease for a long time.
A Miracle by Stem Cell Transplantation: Functional Cure Achieved in 3 Months
Faced with the clinical predicament, Professor Shi Jiong’s team proposed an innovative treatment approach: instead of simply supplementing dopamine, regenerate healthy dopaminergic neurons through stem cells to repair the damaged motor control system of the brain from the root cause. The core of this approach is to leverage the unlimited proliferation and pluripotent differentiation characteristics of iPSCs, induce them into fully functional dopaminergic neural progenitor cells, and then precisely transplant them into the striatal region of the patient’s brain to reshape neural network connections.
The NCR201 injection used in this treatment is an iPSC-derived dopaminergic neural progenitor cell preparation developed by ZhongSheng SuYuan, a domestic enterprise. Its cell differentiation purity has reached the international advanced level, with a transformation efficiency of over 80% in primate animal experiments, far exceeding the 50% data of foreign teams in the same period. On June 11, 2025, Chief Physician Qian Ruobing from the Department of Neurosurgery performed the surgery, and with the assistance of neurosurgical navigation robot + personalized AI algorithm, the catheter was accurately implanted into the predetermined area of Ms. Li’s brain, successfully completing the stem cell transplantation. This innovative surgical method controlled the target positioning error within the millimeter range, greatly improving the accuracy and safety of the transplantation.
The postoperative recovery effect far exceeded the team’s expectations: in the first two months, Ms. Li’s tremors and rigidity symptoms were significantly relieved, and her score on the Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) dropped from 62 points (severe functional impairment) before surgery to 28 points. Three months after the surgery, her "off" state completely disappeared, and the scale score further decreased to 12 points, which is basically close to the level of a healthy person. There was no significant difference whether she took traditional drugs or not. More importantly, PET-DAT/MRI fusion imaging examinations showed significant new dopaminergic activity signals in the bilateral striatum of Ms. Li’s brain, confirming that the transplanted stem cells had successfully engrafted and differentiated into functional dopaminergic neurons, achieving a genuine immune reconstitution and functional repair.
Rewriting the Treatment Landscape, Paving a New Path for the Treatment of Neurodegenerative Diseases
This world’s first functional cure of early-onset Parkinson’s disease with stem cell therapy is not only a historic breakthrough in the field of Parkinson’s disease treatment but also subverts the traditional treatment paradigm of neurodegenerative diseases.
For a long time, neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease have been regarded as "incurable diseases". Traditional treatments, mainly based on symptomatic drug relief and adjuvant surgical improvement, can only slow down disease progression, but cannot stop the continuous death of neurons, let alone achieve functional repair. The core advantage of the iPSC stem cell transplantation therapy lies in repairing damaged neural tissues from the root cause — by regenerating healthy dopaminergic neurons to replace the dead functional cells in the patient’s body and reconstructing the neural connections of the brain’s motor control system, it realizes an essential leap from "symptom control" to "disease cure".
This breakthrough holds special significance for patients with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Most EOPD patients are associated with gene mutations, featuring a long disease course and rapid progression, and traditional treatments have poor efficacy on them. In addition, due to the early age of onset, the disease has a far greater impact on their lives than on elderly patients. Stem cell therapy can not only effectively improve their motor symptoms but also eliminate complications such as the "on-off phenomenon" and dyskinesia caused by drug treatment, allowing patients to return to normal work and life and greatly improving their quality of life.
Industry experts point out that the significance of this achievement goes far beyond the treatment of Parkinson’s disease itself. The verified core technologies such as iPSC differentiation, precise transplantation and clinical translation can provide valuable experience for the treatment of other neurodegenerative and neurological injury diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal cord injury, boosting the development of the entire regenerative medicine field.
