Swede scientists are developing new ways to grow brain cells that could one day be used to treat Parkinson’s disease. A recent article in the news reports that an institute in Sweden believes that stem cell therapy holds the promise of treating disease by growing new tissues and organs from stem cells – ‘blnak’ cells that have the potential to develop into fully mature or ‘differentiated’ cells.
These kind of treatments are still a big challenge though. Early efforts at growing dopaminergic neurons from embryonic stem cells produced cells which, when transplanted into animal models, had a tendency to form tumors or clumps, or die without an obvious reason.
Researchers have moved away from embryonic stem cells – which can be induced to grow into a wide variety of different cells. Instead they used neural stem cells – which are programmed to develop only into nerve cells.
When the researchers transplanted the cells into laboratory animals whose substantia nigra region of the brain was damaged, the results were promising. “We reversed almost completely the behavioural abnormalities, and neurons differentiated, survived and re-innervated the relevant part of the brain better†Professor Arenas said. “Furthermore we do not see the kind of proliferation of the cells that has occurred in the past and we get very little clustering when the cells are treated with Wnt5a. The cells are safer than embryonic stem cells and more efficient than fetal tissue.â€
Verification of this approach with human cells is ongoing and if the study is successful, it may lead to a clinical trial. Experts in the field have recently identified this approach as the next step in cell replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease and the hope is that this may, ultimately, lead to cells suitable for transplant into human patients.
