Skin Stem Cells Can Create Neural Cells in Mice

Skin Stem Cells Can Create Neural Cells in Mice

Researchers at the University of Calgary and the Hospital for Sick Children, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto, have issued a press release reporting that neural cells have been successfully derived from human skin cells and transplanted into mice. The researchers were able to differentiate the skin stem cells (also called SKPs) into glial cells, which were able to restore myelin to damaged axons and also provided an environment in which the axons were able to regenerate. (Under usual circumstances they don’t; once a neuron is gone, it’s gone.)

The study is the first in which SKPs have been used to create neural cells that were then transplanted into an animal. Obviously human treatment is a long way away, but the potential for it is less of a dream now. The researchers have two prongs of further research to follow; one is trying the neural cells in other animals and, eventually, people; the other is deriving other types of cells from the skin cells.

Lupus News

Lupus News

For some reason television stations are picking up on the studies of using stem cells to fight lupus (and other autoimmune disorders). I blogged about this quite some time ago (1/19/06), and the stories haven’t added anything to what I wrote then, but if you are interested in lupus you might want to look at these. One is from the Austin, Texas Channel 8; another is from the Charlotte, North Carolina Channel 14. Essentially stem cells are harvested from the patient prior to chemotherapy or radiation treatment which destroys the white blood cells mistakenly attacking the body’s own system, and the stem cells are then transplanted in with the hope that they will make new white cells that don’t attack the patient. The results have looked good over a period of several years.