Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd. of Japan announced that Kyoto University Hospital has successfully completed the first surgery using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to treat Parkinson's disease, marking the therapy's first clinical application since receiving conditional approval in Japan. The therapy, named Amchepry, involves guiding iPS cells from healthy donors to differentiate into dopaminergic neural precursor cells, which are then transplanted into patients' brains via neurosurgery to compensate for the loss of dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson's disease patients. Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare granted the therapy conditional, time-limited approval in March of this year.