Human Stem Cells Aid Stroke Recovery In Rats
Stem cell jabs reverse damage after strokes, doctors claimNeural cells derived from human embryonic stem cells helped repair stroke-related damage in the brains of rats and led to improvements in their physical abilities after a stroke, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
This study marks the first time researchers have used human embryonic stem cells to generate neural cells that grow well in the lab, improve a rat’s physical abilities and consistently don’t form tumors when transplanted.
Though the authors caution that the study is small and that more work is needed to determine whether a similar approach would work in humans, they said they believe it shows the potential for using stem cell therapies in treating strokes.
Senior author Gary Steinberg, MD, PhD, the Bernard and Ronni Lacroute-William Randolph Hearst Professor of Neurosurgery and the Neurosciences, said that with 750,000 people having strokes in the United States each year, the disease creates a massive burden for stroke victims, their families and the medical system.
Stroke patients could receive stem cell injections to help repair damage to their brains within the next five years, a team of American doctors claimed yesterday.
Hopes that a therapy may be on the horizon were boosted by experiments which showed human embryonic stem cells could be turned into a variety of brain cells, which helped animals recover from strokes without causing dangerous side effects.
Researchers led by Gary Steinberg at Stanford University took a dish of human embryonic stem cells and treated them with natural chemicals called growth factors, to nudge them into forming early-stage neurons and other brain cells called astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. The scientists screened these cells to make sure that any genes which could make them grow into cancers were switched off.
To test the cells the scientists injected them into the brains of 10 rats that had experienced strokes. The cells moved through any healthy brain tissue and collected in the region damaged by the stroke, where they began to connect up with other healthy brain cells.
The strokes induced in the animals impaired their ability to use one of their forelimbs, but during tests at four and eight weeks after their therapy the scientists noticed significant improvement in the animals' movement.
"This is the first report demonstrating that the transplantation of human neural stem cells derived from human embryonic stem cells can improve neurologic behaviour after experimental stroke," the authors write in the journal PLoS One.
