Cord Blood Infusion for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Summary

This is a single site, prospective, randomized, double-blind study of a single intravenous autologous or allogeneic, unrelated cord blood (CB) infusion in children ages 2-7 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Participants will be randomly assigned to Sequence A, consisting of a single infusion of CB cells at baseline followed 6 months later by a single infusion of placebo, or Sequence B, consisting of an infusion of placebo at baseline followed 6 months later by an infusion of CB cells. All participants will ultimately be treated with CB cells at some point during the study. Participants with an available qualified autologous CB unit will receive autologous cells, and those without a suitable autologous CB unit available will receive cells from a ≥4/6 HLA-matched, ABO-matched allogeneic, unrelated donor CB unit from the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank. All infusions will be double-blinded. The primary outcomes will be assessed 6 months after the initial infusion in the sequence. Additional testing for secondary exploratory analyses will be performed at 12 months. Duration of study participation will be 12 months from the time of baseline infusion.

Timeline

Start

2016-09

Primary completion

2018-08-19

Completion

2019-05

Publications

• Yuan A, Sabatos-DeVito M, Bey AL, Major S, Carpenter KL, Franz L, Howard J, Vermeer S, Simmons R, Troy J, Dawson G. Automated movement tracking of young autistic children during free play is correlated with clinical features associated with autism. Autism. 2023 Nov;27(8):2530-2541. doi: 10.1177/13623613231169546. Epub 2023 May 8.
• Simhal AK, Carpenter KLH, Kurtzberg J, Song A, Tannenbaum A, Zhang L, Sapiro G, Dawson G. Changes in the geometry and robustness of diffusion tensor imaging networks: Secondary analysis from a randomized controlled trial of young autistic children receiving an umbilical cord blood infusion. Front Psychiatry. 2022 Oct 20;13:1026279. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.1026279. eCollection 2022.

Drugs

Indications