It is for the first time, a human embryonic stem cell has successfully treated a fatal brain and nerve disease in mice. This study is published in the journal Nature Medicine. Now the scientists will be testing their successfully mice-applied method in children suffering form a fatal and incurable brain disease — called Sandhoff disease.
This new approach could open up new ways for treating a range of neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — which is also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
According to the researchers,
Children with the disease have severe mental retardation and motor dysfunction, and death typically occurs in infancy. (It is marked by inflammation that kills cells in the brain).
Dr. Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California, who led the study said,
They just don’t seem to get rejected. This shows that stem cells engage in cross-talk.
They collaborate ... to try to restore a system to balance. They secrete factors that are healthy. They try to restore the health of other cells and detoxify the system.
