maybe a breakthrough in brain repair
Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 12:15 pm
http://news.psu.edu/story/298921/2013/1 ... alzheimers
So several years ago, Chen's lab tested new ways to transform glial scar tissue back to normal neural tissue.
"There are more reactive glial cells and fewer functional neurons in the injury site," Chen said, "so we hypothesized that we might be able to convert glial cells in the scar into functional neurons at the site of injury in the brain. This research was inspired by the Nobel Prize-winning technology of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) developed in Shinya Yamanaka's group, which showed how to reprogram skin cells into stem cells."
That is a shared dream if ever there was one. Let's say angioplasty stops some of the ongoing damage and DMDs stops another type of ongoing damage and something like this NeuroD1 retrovirus discovery repairs damage. The life of a person with MS could be drastically fundamentally improved."Our dream is to develop this in vivo conversion method into a useful therapy to treat people suffering from neural injury or neurological disorders," Chen said. "Our passionate motivation for this research is the idea that an Alzheimer's patient, who for a long time was not able to remember things, could start to have new memories after regenerating new neurons as a result of our in vivo conversion method, and that a stroke victim who could not even move his legs might start to walk again."