Scientists spur growth of adult brain stem cells

Research in mice shows technique to give body's own cells a kick-start

updated 6:15 p.m. ET Nov. 14, 2006

Researchers have found a way to spur the growth of neural stem cells in the brains of adult mice with an eye toward harnessing the brain’s innate capacity for repair to help people with diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Determining how these stem cells can be deployed to replace cells in mice whose brains are damaged in ways resembling Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis in people is the next key step, researchers said.

The study, appearing Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, provides a fresh example of the potential for using so-called adult stem cells to treat illness by replacing cells damaged by disease or injury.

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But Paul Patterson of the California Institute of Technology, senior author of the study, said it is important for scientists to continue to study embryonic stem cells as well.

Patterson and colleague Sylvian Bauer injected a natural protein from the body — leukemia inhibitory factor, or LIF — into a part of the brain of adult mice where stem cells reside. This fostered the production of up to six times the usual count of adult neural stem cells.

Using a person’s own cells, rather than foreign cells, in future regenerative therapies avoids the transplantation of stem cells that the body’s immune system might reject.

While this study involved mice, the researchers noted that human adults also harbor neural stem cells in their brains. The brains of neurodegenerative disease patients appear to try to marshal their own neural stem cells to replace dying cells, but not in the numbers sufficient to do the job.

'Kick it in the pants'
“The adult brain does try to repair itself by stimulating its own neural stem cells. But obviously it’s not enough. So what we’re trying to do here is kick it in the pants and increase the number of neural stem cells,” Patterson said in an interview.

Stem cells are a kind of master cell for the body, producing various tissue and cell types. If researchers can figure out how to control them and direct them into changing into specific types as needed, stem cells might be able to replace tissue harmed by illness or injury.

Those taken from days-old embryos are especially malleable, and can produce any cell or tissue found in the body, but so-called adult stem cells also have shown promise.

Some people oppose as unethical the use of cells from human embryos in research, arguing that good research can be done using adult stem cells. Scientists are trying to develop potential treatments using both kinds of cells.

Patterson said possible human therapies related to his research remain years away. He emphasized the importance of scientists pursuing work on adult and embryonic stem cells as they try to realize the potential of regenerative therapies.

“My own feeling is that lots of different approaches should be tried simultaneously because we don’t know which ones are going to be the most successful. So we have to push on all fronts,” Patterson said.