Hunting for Stem Cells in the Brain
If, as I suspect, neurodegenerative disease is what we should be most concerned about in the longer-term future of health and medicine, then it is vital that researchers start to apply the methods of regenerative medicine to the brain as soon as possible. Unlike other body parts, the brain doesn't allow us the last resort option of tissue engineering a new organ for transplant - we are our brains, so they must be delicately, cleverly repaired in situ. Regenerative medicine based on the use of stem cells seems to offer the best bet for the near future in this regard.
Stem cell research is progressing: scientists recently learned how to produce dopamine neurons from embryonic stem cells to treat Parkinson's disease, for example. Other groups are making progress in healing the brain through the use of adult or non-embryonic (but still pluripotent) stem cells isolated from bone marrow, cord blood, teeth or elsewhere in the body. There is a great deal of groundwork yet to reach completion when it comes to understanding neural regeneration or the brain itself at a deep enough level, however. It's a big job.
For a look at some of the latest research, see this article:
A study led by a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon has provided the first comprehensive map of a part of the adult human brain containing astrocytes, cells known to produce growth factors critical to the regeneration of damaged neural tissue and that potentially serve as brain stem cells....
Because the potential existence of human brain stem cells could have an enormous impact in understanding and subsequently developing treatments for brain diseases and injury, Quinones says his team set out to learn more about how new cells are formed in this critical area in the adult human brain.
...
"We do not think that ependymal cells are stem cells," he says." However, they might mutate and become cancerous. They might be communicating or relating to astrocytes. At this point, we are only scratching the surface. But if we can achieve a better understanding of why these cells are there and how they function and/or migrate, this could help us treat brain tumors such as ependynomas or even gliomas as well as help us treat neurodegenerative diseases and brain trauma"
As you can see, getting to the good stuff is exceedingly resource intensive; the brain is very complex. The payoff for isolating and understanding populations of neural stem cells is huge, however - huge and very necessary for our future health and wellbeing.
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