A MAN with Parkinson鈥檚 disease seems to have recovered after cells grown from his own neural stem cells were implanted in his brain. If further transplants are equally successful, the technique could rival other cell-based therapies already under investigation.
Parkinson鈥檚 disease involves damage to cells in the brain that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. Doctors have long searched for a way to replace the damaged neurons. One option is to use neural cells from aborted fetuses. This alleviates the Parkinson鈥檚 symptoms in some, but can cause serious side effects such as a worsening tremor. The patient鈥檚 own neural stem cells鈥攑rimitive cells that can develop into other types of brain cells鈥攕eem like an ideal alternative if they could be grown to produce the right sort of cells.
Now Michel Levesque, a neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, claims his team has done just that. They extracted neural stem cells from the patient鈥檚 brain and grew the cells in the lab for several months under conditions that favoured the development of neurons that make dopamine. They then implanted the cells back into the patient鈥檚 brain.
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Before the operation, the man鈥檚 condition had been deteriorating, despite drug treatment. But now, three years after the treatment, the patient has no symptoms, says Levesque, who is also principal investigator at Celmed BioSciences in Canada. He revealed the work at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in Chicago, and is now moving the work into phase 2 trials.
But neurologist Arnold Kriegstein of Columbia University warns that it鈥檚 too early to be sure the technique works. For instance, the neurons must be the kind that make dopamine, since other forms could cause seizures, he says.