Technique generates new brain cells

WASHINGTON, Jun 13, 2005 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- U.S. researchers have developed a method to produce a limitless supply of new brain cells from adult stem cells, opening the door for using the technology to replace brain tissue damaged due to disorders such as Parkinson's or Huntington's disease.

The technique "facilitates generating huge numbers of neurons that could be used for cellular transplantation," said Dennis Steindler, executive director of the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute and the lead researcher.

The study, which appears in the June 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted on mice, but the researchers said they are hopeful the technique can be applied to humans.

"Based on what we know about the use of stem cells for animals models of neurological diseases, then we could be optimistic that it could" prove beneficial in human patients, Steindler told United Press International. He cautioned, however, "You never known until you actually do it."

Steindler's co-author, Dr. Bjorn Scheffler, a neuroscientist at the university, said: "We can basically take these cells and freeze them until we need them. Then we thaw them, begin a cell-generating process, and produce a ton of new neurons."

The team collected adult stem cells from the brains of mice. Stem cells can give rise to other cell types under the right conditions. In this case, the researchers used various chemicals to induce the transformation into a particular type of neuron that could be useful for treating Huntington's disease or epilepsy.

They photographed the cells every five minutes for 30 hours, showing the transformation from stem cell into "huge numbers of brand new neurons," Steindler said.

"It's a fascinating new tool for studying stem-cell biology, much like making a home-movie of a child growing up to become a doctor or an engineer," said Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of scientific and medical development at Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts company focused on developing embryonic stem cells into medical therapies.

"Hopefully, this method can be used in the future to help produce distinct populations of cells for the treatment of various neurodegenerative disorders," Lanza, who was not involved in the research, told UPI.

Steindler said the technique could be applied to human patients in one of two ways. The adult stem cells could be obtained from the patient themselves or they could be salvaged from brain tissue of people who have died and donated their organs, Steindler said.

He noted that his group previously discovered adult brain stem cells can survive in the brain up to five days after death if the tissue is kept refrigerated.

"We could use these cells if we could bank them ... but the patient (receiving a transplant from the cells) would have to go on immunosuppressive drugs just as you would do in any transplant of another tissue, like heart or liver," Steindler said. The drugs can cause severe side effects, and rejection of transplanted tissues can be life-threatening.

To avoid the possibility of rejection, another option is a brain biopsy on a living patient to obtain the stem cells. That way, the cells would be the patient's own and probably would not be rejected if transplanted back into the body.

Steindler said neurosurgeons he has consulted with said the risk of such a procedure would be "very small." It would involve drilling a small hole in the skull, inserting a tiny needle and extracting the stem cells.

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Steve Mitchell is UPI's Medical Correspondent. E-mail: sciencemail@upi.com