Discovery

Two teams, Jeffrey Kordower of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.and Patrik Brundin of the Wallenberg Neuroscience Center in Lund, Sweden, develop advanced therapies based on neurons grown from stem cells.

The diseased cells in Parkinson contain structures called Lewy bodies, accumulations of a protein called ?-synuclein that are a hallmark of Parkinson’s. This is a surprise, as conventional wisdom suggests that the grafted cells, still only 11 to 16 years old, are too young to be affected in this way.

Linked to this research, Ole Isacson of the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, also studied three further patients, finding no Lewy bodies, and found a possibility to take skin cells from a Parkinson’s patient, reprogram them to an embryonic stem cell-like state, and then grow replacement neurons that would match to the patients’ own brain tissue.

Journal references: Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm1746, 10.1038/nm1747 and 10.1038/nm1752; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0801677105