Parkinson's: the breakthrough 
Posted by The Independent 
Thursday, 11 June 2009 at 07:32 am 
Author: By Steve Connor, Science Editor


The research was carried out on laboratory mice but scientists believe the 
findings are proof that the techniques could be applied to humans suffering 
not just from Parkinson's, but a range of other incurable diseases.
Researchers have demonstrated the possibility of treating Parkinson's disease 
by transplanting laboratory-matured brain cells back into the individual who 
supplied the skin cells that were turned into cloned embryos ? a process known 
as therapeutic cloning.
"This is an exciting development, as for the first time it may be possible to 
create a person's own embryonic stem cells to potentially treat Parkinson's 
disease," said Kieran Breen, director of research at the Parkinson's Disease 
Society ? a charity representing the 120,000 people in Britain affected by the 
illness.
Dr Breen said: "Stem cell therapy offers great hope for repairing the brain. 
It may ultimately offer a cure, allowing people to lead a life that is free 
from the symptoms of Parkinson's disease."
Proof that therapeutic cloning is more than a pipedream will be used by 
British scientists as justification for their push to expand the boundaries of 
their research to include the use of animal-human "hybrid" embryos for medical 
experiments, a process that is bitterly opposed by the Catholic Church.
Scientists say that, because of the shortage of human eggs for research 
purposes, they need to use cow or rabbit eggs for cloning experiments, and 
have lobbied hard for it to be allowed under the Human Fertilisation and 
Embryology Bill currently going through Parliament. Even though the stem cells 
derived from cloned hybrid embryos will never be used on patients, the 
practice is condemned by the Church, which wants all MPs to be given a free 
vote in the Commons.
The latest development, published in the journal Nature Medicine, is further 
proof-of-principle that therapeutic cloning can effectively treat ? and 
possibly cure ? a degenerative brain disorder.
For the first time scientists have been able to create healthy, working brain 
cells from immature stem cells, derived from embryos cloned from skin cells, 
and transplant them back into the diseased brain. 
The laboratory mice in the study suffered from a type of Parkinson's disease, 
which is marked by the death of certain nerve cells or neurons in the brain 
that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. Skin cells were scraped from the 
tails of the animals and cloned using mouse eggs, which had their own cell 
nuclei removed. Stem cells taken from the resulting cloned embryos were grown 
in the laboratory into mature dopamine-producing brain cells. After 
transplanting the cells back into the brain, the mice showed significant 
improvements in a range of experiments designed to test skills that become 
notably worse in those with Parkinson's disease. 
The team of American and Japanese scientists, led by Lorenz Studer of the 
Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York, were able to produce 187 different 
strains of embryonic stem cells from 24 Parkinsonian mice. A key finding of 
the experiment was that there were no signs of tissue rejection because the 
transplanted brain cells were derived from the same mouse that supplied the 
skin cell for the cloned embryo.
Professor Robin Lovell-Badge of the Medical Research Council said the study 
provided further proof-of-principle that therapeutic cloning was a potential 
treatment for severe disorders of the brain. He said: "The authors were also 
able to test several independent embryonic stem cell lines corresponding to 
individual mice, and could show that most seemed to work well. This is very 
encouraging as it indicates that the cloning process is a sufficiently robust 
method of reprogramming cells back to an early embryonic state, at least when 
the early embryos are used to derive embryonic stem cell lines.
"Ideally one of the next steps will be to repeat the whole procedure with a 
monkey model. This will allow much better tests of functional recovery and 
safety."
Life with the disease
"I wish one of these pontificators could get inside my body and see what it 
feels like. Parkinson's is like being locked in your own body when your mind 
is still there. I can become as rigid as a plank and my legs won't bend. It's 
as though there is a ton of cement on my chest and an army of ants crawling up 
and down my body with spears. It's like being buried alive. 
"By the age of 70, three-quarters of those in this country will have 
Parkinson's disease to some degree as it is a degenerative illness. Once you 
have it, it never goes into remission. But no one tells you how difficult it 
is to live with. 
"It makes me so angry when I hear academics, theologians or medics arguing 
about cloning. For me, it is like hearing any hopes we may have of returning 
to normality being taken away. By mixing ethics with religion and politics, 
which is a lethal concoction, they are not thinking about the people who have 
the disease. I feel like saying, 'Get off your high horse.' 
"I would not want to stop any process unless it I knew it was categorically 
not going to work for those who are suffering. I don't believe cloning embryos 
is like taking life. Parkinson's is such a desperately painful disease. You 
would have thought that everyone would support anything reasonable to find a 
cure, and I believe what is being suggested is reasonable."
Geraldine Peacock CBE is a former chair of the Charity Commission. She has had 
Parkinson's for 18 years.

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