From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Tue May 23 2000 - 22:54:02 MDT
Ya just gotta love those stem cells. Just add a splash of retinoic acid
and you're half way to a neurohacker's dream.
The full article can be found at:
http://medicine.wustl.edu/~wumpa/news/2000/mcdonaldpnas.html
"Now scientists have trained a workforce of cells to go into the injured
spinal cord and rewrap the lines. Using simple and inexpensive techniques,
they turned
embryonic stem cells into nervous system cells called oligodendrocytes.
When the
oligodendrocytes were injected into the spinal cord of injured or mutant
rats, they reinsulated
naked nerve axons. These long arms of nerve cells carry messages up and
down the spinal cord."
"This is the first demonstration that oligodendrocytes derived from
embryonic stem cells can
remyelinate in the injured adult nervous system," says John McDonald, M.D.,
Ph.D. "That is
relevant because conditions that result in myelin loss, such as spinal cord
injury, stroke,
multiple sclerosis and transverse myelinitis, occur mainly in adults."
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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