UAMS announces it offers new surgical procedure for certain epilepsy patients | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

After numerous face injuries, five facial reconstruction surgeries and three wrecked cars due to epilepsy, a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences patient has received the first transplantation in Arkansas of interneuron cells, according to a media release.

Interneuron cell therapy, also known as NRTX-1001, is a clinical trial — approved by the Food and Drug Administration — for patients who have non-lesional epilepsy, which is a type of epilepsy where a person’s brain appears typical on scans even though they experience epileptic seizures. The Phase I/II study has been conducted by Neurona Therapeutics in 18 states for more than two years, and is available to participants between the ages of 18 and 75.

Additionally, participants must be experiencing seizures that do not respond to the appropriate medications, and they must have had at least four seizures during a 28-day cycle in the past six months, according to Monday’s media release.

Sisira Yadala, a neurologist and director of the UAMS Division of Epilepsy and the Level 4 Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, is the principal investigator for the UAMS epilepsy study. The new treatment will introduce cells that balance the brain’s excitation and inhibition to treat the overexcitation, which is abnormal, Yadala said over the phone.

“If this becomes available everywhere with widespread use, we can hopefully even cure epilepsy without side effects and limitations of all the other currently available treatment,” Yadala said over the phone.

The UAMS patient who had the procedure, Tyler Priddy, 33, of Hot Springs, is a father of three. He has endured daily seizures since he was 12 years old. He is the 19th patient enrolled in the study and the first with non-lesional epilepsy to undergo the 5-hour surgery in February, doctors said.

Four months after he received this treatment, Priddy reported significant reduction in the three types of seizures that have made it difficult to stay employed. Even though his condition has restricted him in the past, the results of the treatment have given him hope and confidence, according to the media release.

“The transplanted cells are a specialized lineage of human interneurons with the capacity to migrate through brain tissue, integrate into existing neural circuits and regulate local network activity,” Yadala said in the press release as she explained the surgery’s process.

Viktoras Palys, a neurosurgeon at UAMS, and Brooke Elberson, chief neurosurgery resident at UAMS, performed the groundbreaking surgery on Priddy. Palys further explained in the release that the surgery focuses on transplanting cells into the human hippocampus to “help restore inhibitory chemical balance in seizure-prone brain regions, potentially reducing or eliminating seizures in people who have epilepsy.”

For Priddy’s surgery, the interneurons were injected into a hippocampus that Palys described as “normal appearing,” the release stated.

The results of the procedure will take several months because the transplanted cells need to integrate into the brain network, Palys said in the release. However, early results have painted a bright picture for how the final results will appear, he added.

Before his surgery, Priddy experienced every two or three weeks a tonic clonic — also known as grand mal — seizure that causes muscle stiffening, loss of consciousness and uncontrollable jerky movements. Since his procedure in February, he has experienced one, he said.

His medical history also consists of twice-a-week focal seizures, which typically involve one area of the brain but can grow into tonic clonic seizures, and have caused Priddy to “black out” or drift away for a few minutes. Since the groundbreaking surgery, his focal seizure frequency has decreased to once every two weeks, according to the press release.

Additionally, Priddy’s historical experience with twice-a-day “aura” seizures, which involve fleeting sensory or visual changes but still include consciousness, now happen roughly once every other day, according to the release.

If the current trial is successful, Yadala said future studies could expand to include other forms of focal epilepsy where seizures originate outside the temporal lobe.

“This technique could pave the way for cell implantation in various brain regions where seizures originate, offering a minimally invasive, potentially curative treatment for epilepsy,” Palys said in the release.