Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are teaming up with colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston, to use stem cells to treat PD.
The process involves taking stem cells from a patient's skin or blood, and converting them into a brain stem cell which is rich in dopamine neurons. Once they are injected into the brain, the dopamine is released and the broken links begin to be repaired.
Currently, a dopamine chemical is injected into the body with heavy immune suppression so the body will accept the chemical. In the new method, because a person's own cells are used, the theory is their body will accept the treatment more easily.
i'm afraid that appalling description which appeared in Canadian papers was written by a journalist who didnt quite understand a damned thing about what he or she were talking about.
a better description was:
The new approach that will be jointly investigated involves using stem cells generated from an adult’s own tissues, rather than from fetal cells. The adult cells are extracted from the patient’s blood or skin and converted first into stem cells and subsequently into specific dopamine neurons, which are the cells transplanted into the brain.
if the cells are to replace those lost from the substantia nigra the have to grow very long axions to the basal ganglia area where they release the dopamine.
lets hope the canadian scientists are better than their journalists.
Induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as iPS cells or iPSCs) are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from adult cells. The iPSC technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka’s lab in Kyoto, Japan, who showed in 2006 that the introduction of four specific genes encoding transcription factors could convert adult cells into pluripotent stem cells.[1] He was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize along with Sir John Gurdon "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent." [2]
Pluripotent stem cells hold great promise in the field of regenerative medicine. Because they can propagate indefinitely, as well as give rise to every other cell type in the body (such as neurons, heart, pancreatic, and liver cells), they represent a single source of cells that could be used to replace those lost to damage or disease
