Researchers Make Stem Cell Breakthrough In Lou Gehrig's Disease

[flashl]

August 1, 2008

Nidhi Sharma - AHN News Writer

Columbia, OH (AHN) - Researchers from Columbia University have achieved a breakthrough in treatment of the progressive, usually fatal Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease. The skin cells from patients with this neurodegenerative disease are turned into motor neurons that are genetically identical to the patients' own neurons.

Researchers now say they can create an unlimited number of these neurons that could help in a better understanding of the disease and, one day, lead to new treatments or even the production of healthy cells that can replace the diseased ones.

Neural cells, brain cells that degenerate in patients with Lou Gehrig's disease, were derived by the researchers using a method first developed by Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan. The method involves inserting four different genes into skin cells, causing them to revert to a primordial state similar to embryonic stem cells.

The motor neurons were taken from skin cells obtained from two elderly sisters who are 82 and 89 years old and among the oldest living patients with ALS. The researchers inserted the nucleus of a patient's skin cell into a woman's egg cell in which genetic material has been removed, Bloomberg reports.

[Frustratedlady]

1. That is the first encouraging news I've heard on ALS

I hope it pans out and they can stop that awful disease/condition.

[Happyhippychick]

2. Thank you for this. My father died from ALS and I like to see any progress.

[opihimoimoi]

3. SCR is a Promising Feild...IE: look at this new development...just think of other ailments

:toast:

[alstephenson]

4. Good news.

[Steven_S]

5. It's just one more step in a long journey....

They have a long way to go before they reach therapeutic efficacy, and it's all tilting at windmills anyway until they find the mechanism that causes cell death.

Probably too late for me. :(