February 3, 1997
SCIENTISTS GROWING NEW CELLS IN BRAIN
LAB BREAKTHROUGH COULD HELP MILLIONS
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CANADIAN PRESS
CALGARY -- Canadian medical scientists have caused lab animals to grow
new brain cells in what could be a major step toward treating
conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.
"We've been able to make new brain cells in the brain," says Brent
Reynolds, research director at NeuroSpheres, a private company. The
cells were regenerated in laboratory animals without transplanting
brain tissue, Reynolds says. And researchers at the University of
Calgary have regenerated all three major cell types present in a
healthy human brain in a laboratory culture. The cells were grown
using 65-year-old brain tissue obtained during a biopsy, says Samuel
Weiss, a member of the university team. "All of a sudden it doesn't
seem impossible any longer to replace brain cells," says Weiss, whose
team published a paper in the summer 1996 Journal of Neuroscience on
regenerating animal brain cells in culture. The research also opens
the door to repairing brains and spinal cords damaged in accidents.
Weiss says the challenge will be to target the healthy new cells
toward precise locations inside the brain. The scientists say they are
within two years of trying their technology in brain-injured patients.
30 MILLION SUFFER More than 30 million people in North America suffer
from Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, stroke, head and spinal injuries, Lou
Gehrig's and other neurological disorders. Their health-care costs
amount to $164 billion a year. "It's important work ... the chance to
actually regenerate neurons in an injured brain is really exciting,"
says University of Toronto neuroscientist Derek Van der Kooy, who has
collaborated with Weiss. But Van der Kooy also cautions it's a big
leap from growing cells in lab animals to an effective treatment in
patients. It's long been thought that there were no stem cells - cells
that grow new brain cells - in adult mammals. That's why brain injury
or disease causes permanent impairment - new cells aren't regenerated.
In March 1992, Weiss and Reynolds stunned the world scientific
community by finding a stem cell in the adult mouse brain. When
stimulated by growth chemicals, the so-called stem cell produced new
neurons, the nerve cells that "wire" the brain. Since that discovery,
NeuroSpheres has isolated human stem cells, grown millions of brain
cells in the laboratory, and transplanted cells into several hundred
test animals, Reynolds says. "I'll be really surprised if these
(lab-grown brain cells) don't go into people in two years," he adds.
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