Will your own neurons help with Parkinson's disease?
Swiss scientists working under the guidance of Dr. Jean-Francois Brunet have demonstrated that the use of their own brain cells (autologous transplantation) to replace damaged neurons in certain areas of the brain of great apes with simulated asymptomatic Parkinson's disease provides a certain degree of brain protection, as well as partial elimination of damage to nervous tissue and restoration of motor synthesizing dopamine of subcortical structures.
The purpose of this study differed from the goals of the work on the restoration of the functions of the central nervous system lost as a result of damage or degeneration through transplantation of donor nerve cells, the results of which were widely reported in the press. In order to avoid both ethical problems associated with the use of embryonic or fetal material and the transplant rejection reaction, the authors isolated neurons from the cerebral cortex of monkeys, cultured them for a month and reimplanted them into the caudate nucleus of the brain of animals in whose body the synthesis of the neurotransmitter dopamine was partially blocked.
The attempt turned out to be quite successful, since the implanted cells took root in the caudate nucleus of the right hemisphere, and also migrated through the corpus callosum (the structure connecting the right and left hemispheres) to the striatum of the left hemisphere. At the same time, four months after the operation, up to 50% of the implanted cells remained viable, which is a very good indicator for this type of procedure. Most of the implanted cells were found in the most dopamine-depleted regions of the caudate nucleus. These results repeated the success previously achieved by the authors in experiments on laboratory mice.
According to the authors, after a month of cultivation, the cells they used demonstrated the characteristics of nerve progenitor cells, which indicates that they can be used to repair brain damage.
The results obtained by the researchers showed that adult brain cells can be isolated, cryopreserved, cultured in the laboratory and implanted back into the donor's body, where they can remain viable for at least four months. The study attracted great interest of many transplant specialists. According to John Sladek, professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Colorado, the results obtained are of exceptional importance. Despite the fact that specialists have known for about 30 years about the possibility of using fetal and embryonic cells to replace damaged neurons, this approach has not been used in clinical practice due to a number of problems associated with the use of embryonic material, which are automatically excluded during autologous transplantation.
The results of the work are published in the journal Cell Transplantation in the article "Primate Adult Brain Cell Autotransplantation, a Pilot Study in Asymptomatic MPTP-Treated Monkeys".
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of Science Daily: Researchers Find Brain Cell Transplants Help Repair Neural Damage.
05.11.2009