WEDNESDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) -- Mice with a congenital
brain disorder improved after receiving human neural stem cell
transplants, a U.S. study finds.
The mice lacked myelin, a substance that plays a critical role
in the transmission of electrical signals between nerve cells. When
myelin is missing or damaged, electrical signals aren't properly
transmitted. These "shiverer" mice typically die within months of
birth.
Demyelination also occurs in people with multiple sclerosis.
Previous research has examined the use of cell transplantation
for restoring absent or lost myelin to diseased nerve fibers. But,
until now, no transplantation of human neural stem cells or of
their derivatives (glial progenitor cells) had been successful in
test animals.
In this new study, researchers from the University of Rochester
Medical Center and a number of other universities (Cornell, UCLA
and Baylor) created a new method for harvesting and purification of
human fetal glial progenitor cells.
They also developed a new cell delivery strategy that uses
multiple injection sites to encourage widespread and dense take-up
of the transplanted cells through the central nervous system.
When the researchers used these new approaches, the transplanted
cells took hold throughout the brain and spinal cord, and the mice
showed robust, efficient and functional myelination. Some of the
mice showed neurological improvement and a fraction of them were
save by the procedure.
"The neurological recovery and survival of the mice receiving
transplants was in sharp contrast to the fate of their untreated
controls, which uniformly died by five months," researcher Dr.
Steve Goldman, of the departments of neurology and neurosurgery at
the University of Rochester Medical Center, said in a prepared
statement.
"To our knowledge, these data represent the first outright
rescue of a congenital hypomyelinating disorder by means of stem or
progenitor cell transplantation," Goldman said. "Although much work
needs to be done to maximize the number of individuals that respond
to transplantation, I think that these findings hold great promise
for the potential of stem cell-based treatment in a wide range of
hereditary and ischemic myelin disorders in both children and
adults."
The study was published in the June issue of
Cell Stem Cell.
More information
The Multiple Sclerosis International Federation has more about
demyelination.
