A MAN with Parkinson's disease seems to have recovered after cells grown from his own neural stem cells were implanted in his brain. If further transplants are equally successful, the technique could rival other cell-based therapies already under investigation.
Parkinson's disease involves damage to cells in the brain that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. Doctors have long searched for a way to replace the damaged neurons. One option is to use neural cells from aborted fetuses. This alleviates the Parkinson's symptoms in some, but can cause serious side effects such as a worsening tremor. The patient's own neural stem cellsprimitive cells that can develop into other types of brain cellsseem like an ideal alternative if they could be grown to produce the right sort of cells.
Now Michel Levesque, a neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, claims his team has done just that. They extracted neural stem cells from ...
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