X-Message-Number: 8725
Date: Thu Nov 06 03:10:51 1997  PST
Subject: Fwd: Scientists in breakthrough to replace brain cells
From:  (Edgar W Swank)

01:30 PM ET 11/05/97

Scientists in breakthrough to replace brain cells


   By Patricia Reaney
   LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have discovered a
method of replacing damaged brain cells which could offer hope
to millions of sufferers of neurological disorders such as
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
   Scientists at the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley
Hospital in London found that rats which suffered brain damage
from simulated heart attacks recovered completely if they were
injected with embryonic brain cells from mice.
   The implanted brain cells, called neuroepithelial stem cells
or NESCs, found their way to the damaged brain cells and took
over their functions.
   Rats which earlier had total amnesia and memory and learning
problems were able to perform complex tasks after the cell
implants.
   Professor Jeffrey Gray, one of the researchers, said tests
on humans could begin in three years and a therapy to restore
neurological and cognitive functions resulting from brain
disorders could be available in less than a decade.
   ``The long-term implications are extremely favorable,'' he
said in an interview.
   In addition to being pleased by the recovery of the
brain-damaged rats, he said he was surprised that the injected
cells moved to the damaged sites.
   But he added that much would depend on further tests on
animals for different medical conditions before any human trials
could begin.
   If the animal studies were successful, he said, the
technique could help patients suffering from brain damage from
heart attacks, strokes and Huntington's disease, a hereditary
illness characterised by dementia.
   Gray, Dr. John Sinden and Dr. Helen Hodges, who worked as a
team on the 12-year-study which was published in the journal
Neuroscience, used mouse brain cells on the rats because they
were easy to reproduce.
   They were able to grow millions of foetal brain stem cells
in the laboratory by injecting the mouse brain cells with a
cancer gene that switched on below the body temperature.
   Researchers will be able to grow the cells in the laboratory
and keep them refrigerated until they are needed.
   Gray said the same method would be used for the human trials
but he believed only one human foetal cell would provide
millions of NESCs under laboratory conditions for the implants.
   The technique is not a brain transplant, he said, but a
replacement for damaged brain cells. He likened it to repairing
a tear in a finely woven carpet with a complicated pattern to
restore it to its previous condition.
   Gray and his team have set up a research and development
company which will specialise in the repair of the damaged
brain.

Edgar W. Swank   <>
President - American Cryonics Society
http://www.jps.net/cryonics/

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