Therapeutic Cloning Offers Hope of Treatment for Parkinson's

StemCellsChina.com

Montag, 24. März 2008 um 08:00 Uhr

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Source: The Guardian

By James Randerson

Scientists have shown that stem cells produced by therapeutic cloning are effective for treating Parkinson's disease, in the first convincing demonstration that stem cells derived from the subject can be used to treat a serious disease.

The technique has only been tried in mice, but scientists have hailed it as proof that a similar approach could be successful in humans.

Scientists say the proposal to allow the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos in the human fertilisation and embryology bill being debated in parliament would make the basic research needed for similar treatments easier to carry out, as it allows the creation of stem cells without using scarce human eggs.

Therapeutic cloning is controversial because it involves creating an embryo in the lab from which researchers extract the stem cells. These master cells have the ability to develop into numerous cell types and are able to replace defective or missing cells in patients. At the stem cell extraction stage, the embryo is a microscopic ball containing a handful of cells.

Dr Viviane Tabar, a stem cell scientist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, and her team used the same technique that scientists developed to create Dolly the sheep. The team extracted skin cells from the tails of mice with Parkinson's disease. They removed the nucleus from each cell and implanted these into egg cells which had their own nuclei removed. The resulting cells were genetically identical to the donor mouse.

By allowing these to develop, the scientists could extract stem cells which developed into dopamine neurons, the type that are missing in Parkinson's disease.

The team injected the stem cells into the affected region of the brains of the donor mice and monitored the animals' behaviour for 11 weeks. The treatment brought about a marked improvement in behavioural symptoms of the disease.

The study was funded in part by the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. The actor was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991.

Scientists have welcomed the study as a significant advance. "Stem cell therapy offers great hope for repairing the brain in people with Parkinson's," said Dr Kieran Breen, director of research and development at the Parkinson's Disease Society. "It may ultimately offer a cure, allowing people to lead a life that is free from the symptoms of Parkinson's."

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