ArticleRegenerative therapy2026
First-in-human study to investigate the safety and efficacy of effective-mononuclear cell therapy for radiogenic xerostomia.
Article in Regenerative therapy, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
20 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Salivary gland (SG) hypofunction is the most common complication following radiotherapy for head and neck cancer. Currently, there are no effective therapies for radiation-induced xerostomia. We recently developed a novel therapy for preclinical studies using effective-mononuclear cells (E-MNCs) induced from autologous peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PB-MNCs) via a new primary culture system for treatment of radiation-induced xerostomia. However, the safety and effectiveness of E-MNC therapy have not been assessed in humans. The objective of this first-in-human study was to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and in part the efficacy of E-MNC therapy for treating radiation-induced xerostomia. Methods: This first-in-human study was an open-label, single-center, two-step dose escalation study. A total of 5 patients who had no recurrence of head and neck cancer over a 5-year period following radiation therapy and suffered from radiation-induced xerostomia received a transplantation of E-MNCs to one-sided submandibular gland (SMG). The primary endpoint was the safety of the protocol. The secondary endpoint was effectiveness evaluated based on change from baseline in whole-saliva secretion, MRI/CT-evaluated volume of the SMG and subjective/objective symptoms after intervention. The duration of the intervention was 1 year. Results: During follow-up, no treatment-related adverse events were detected. The stimulated whole salivary flow rate increased from an average of 3.86 mL/10 min at baseline to 5.16 mL/10 min at 6 months post-investigational intervention. Additionally, subjective/objective symptoms improved in 4 of 5 treated patients. By contrast, imaging findings revealed no obvious changes in MRI/CT-evaluated volume of SMGs due to conspicuous progression of atrophy and fibrosis compared with baseline. Conclusion: This is the first clinical study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of E-MNC treatment in patients with severe radiation-induced xerostomia. The results of our study indicate that E-MNC treatment is safe and effective, and provide valuable information that will aid in designing subsequent clinical studies. Trial registration: This study was registered with the Japan Registry of Clinical Trials (http://jrct.niph.go.jp) as jRCTb070190057.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.