StemCells announced that it has completed enrollment of the first of two planned patient cohorts in the company's clinical trial of its proprietary HuCNS-SC product candidate for dry age-related macular degeneration. This cohort consisted of eight subjects, four of whom each received 200K cells and four of whom each received 1M cells. The company said, "Our immediate goal for the study in the next quarter is to complete enrollment of the second cohort. The eight patients in this stage of the trial will have better visual acuity than those in the first cohort. We are expanding the trial from two sites at the beginning to ultimately a total of five sites, and with additional sites actively evaluating patients, the second cohort should be completed by mid-year. We also expect to announce interim follow-up data on the first cohort later this year. Following enrollment of the second cohort, we expect to initiate a controlled phase II efficacy proof-of-concept study by year end."