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The Augusta Chronicle Scientists re-grow nerve cells Web posted Tuesday, July 3, 2001 2:30 p.m. By Troy Goodman Salt Lake Tribune/Scripps Howard News Service Scientists have found a way to re-grow nerve cells that have usually stopped their development, an advance that could lead to treatments for stroke, Alzheimer's disease and spinal injuries. The petri dish-bound nerve regrowth ''was very, very dramatic ... 10 times larger than anything seen before,'' said University of Utah neuroscientist Maureen L. Condic, who led the research. Condic and colleagues began by manipulating a single gene important during nerve development and inserting it into critical nerves, called neurons, taken from adult rats. The neurons were then cultured in a lab under conditions mirroring the body's central nervous system, where the nerve fibers began to spread out over time like the branches of a tree sapling. The study, reported in the new issue of Journal of Neuroscience, was supported by grant money from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Condic's method has some advantages over the use of embryonic nerve cells, which researchers covet because of the stem cells' ability to keep growing and turn into any cell type in the body. However, grant money for studies with embryonic cells is difficult to come by because the federal government refuses to finance experiments using stem cells taken from embryos. Condic also said the pattern of growth seen in adult neurons manipulated into regrowth appears to have more organization than normally seen in embryonic neuron regrowth. The adult neuron sense of organization offers great hope for nervous ystem treatments that aim to stop or repair nerve damage caused by disease or injury. ''You want to avoid wholesale re-organization of the adult brain or you'll create havoc'' for the body's ability to see, feel, touch and hear things around it, Condic said. The concept of nerve regeneration is one of the hottest research fields in science. Last year, for example, scientists at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey announced they had converted bone marrow cells into neurons in the test tube. That finding was important because bone marrow cells are easier to obtain than drawing certain kinds of cells from brain tissue. ''Repairing the injured neurons is going to be the biggest challenge over the next century,'' Condic predicted. Submit Your Opinion http://augustachronicle.com/stories/070301/tec_124-4913.shtml * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn