[Infowarrior] - Researchers Flesh Out Parkinson's Treatment Using Skin Cells

[Richard Forno]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=researchers-flesh-out-par&print=true

News -  April 9, 2008
Researchers Flesh Out Parkinson's Treatment Using Skin Cells
New study shows that adult skin cells made to differentiate like embryonic
stem cells may reverse neurological damage

By Nikhil Swaminathan

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) report that
they silenced symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats using skin cells from
an adult mouse that they reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells.

The M.I.T. group was one of three teams that last year created embryoniclike
stem cells by introducing four genes into adult mouse skin cells. They then
used the so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells) to reverse a
mouse version of the genetic disorder sickle-cell anemia, which causes
normally circular red blood cells to form sickle-shaped, thereby impeding
blood flow. The key is that embryonic stem cells are able to differentiate
into other types of tissue in the body, whereas adult stem cells can only
generate they type of tissue from which they hail.

Study co-author Marius Wernig, a postdoctoral biologist at M.I.T., reports
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, that this is the
first time scientists have successfully manipulated such cells to integrate
into brain tissue and reverse damage caused by a neurodegenerative disease.

The team initially prepared the IPS cells in the lab and then injected them
into the brain cavities of a developing mouse in the womb. Nine weeks after
receiving the injections, long after the animal was born, the scientists
examined its brain to see where the cells, which they'd labeled with a
fluorescent marker, had gone. "They were all over the place and they were
electrically integrated," says team leader Rudolf Jaenisch, a biology
professor at M.I.T.'s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and study
co-author. "They looked like they were really functional cells."

Next, the group injected a toxin called 6-hydroxydopamine, which
preferentially kills neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine,
into one side of the brains of adult rats. The solution was targeted to each
animal's striatum, a brain region involved in motor control; it is the
dopamine-producing nerve cells in this area that die during Parkinson's
disease. As a result, the rats began having trouble balancing. "They rotate
like hell" when they try to walk, Jaenisch says, because one side of their
body has disrupted movement control.

After treating the IPS cells in a petri dish to set them on a path to mature
into dopaminergic neurons, the cells were grafted into the
dopamine-deficient hemispheres of the parkinsonian rats' brains. Four weeks
after the transplant, the researchers noted less circling behavior in eight
of nine treated rats. One even showed greater dopamine activity in the
injured side of the brain than on the normal side, indicating, says
Jaenisch, that "these IPS cells could be used also for generating function
of dopaminergic neurons that could have therapeutic value."

But, Jaenisch notes, "there are many issues that need to be resolved" before
the procedure can be adapted for use in humans. For one, scientists have yet
to mimic the exact effects of Parkinson's in mice and rats, because the
disease‹which strikes an estimated 60,000 Americans per year‹is so complex.
But perhaps the biggest stumbling block is that the technique can also cause
cancer. The reason: a carcinogenic gene is among those used to nudge adult
skin cells to morph into embryoniclike stem cells. (The reprogramming
process has been done without that gene but it yields far fewer IPS cells.)
In addition, the retroviruses used to ferry the genes into the cells (where
they copy their genes into cells they infect) may also be cancerous.
Scientists are searching for a smaller molecule to replace them.