Shanghai UniXell Biotechnology Co, Ltd, a biotech company focused on innovative cell therapies, announced on Friday the successful first dosing of its Parkinson's disease cell drug UX-DA001 in China in March 2025.

The Phase I clinical trial aims to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of UX-DA001 in patients with Parkinson's disease.

On 1 March 2025, Dr Li Dianyou, Director of the Functional Neurosurgery Department at Ruijin Hospital, performed the surgical path planning and the subsequent stereotactic surgery for transplantation. A one-month follow-up revealed significant improvements in the patient's sleep quality and motor function, with no severe adverse events reported.

The first recipient of UniXell's autologous stem cell-derived drug, UX-DA001, shared, "after receiving the stem cell treatment, I experienced a remarkable improvement in my sleep quality. I fall asleep quickly and notice gradual progress every day. Although recovery takes time, the 'day by day improvement' fills me with hope for the future."

UX-DA001 is an investigational autologous iPSC-derived neural progenitor cell drug derived from the patient's own peripheral blood cells, which are firstly reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells and then differentiated into dopaminergic neurons in vitro. This is transplanted into the patient's brain through minimally invasive surgery.