�A team of researchers from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and Columbia University, in a collaboration catalyzed by the Project A.L.S./Jenifer Estess Laboratory for Stem Cell Research, has demonstrated that pluripotent stem cells generated from a affected role with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) canful be directed to mark into motor neurons - the very brain cells destroyed by ALS. The results of the team's study seem in the online issue of Science. This is the first published story to exhibit that disease-specific stem cells may be derived from an individual patient.
In the study, lED by Kevin Eggan, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, skin cells taken from a patient with a familial form of ALS were induced to become pluripotent stem cells. Scientists then differentiated the pluripotent cells into motor neurons and glia (accompaniment cells in the brainpower) that featured an ALS genotype.
"This is a seminal discovery," aforesaid Valerie Estess, director of research for Project A.L.S. "The ability to infer ALS motor neurons through a simple skin biopsy opens the doors to improved dose discovery. For the first time, researchers will be able to look at ALS cells under a microscope and see wherefore they die. If we can figure out how a person's motor neurons die, we will design out how to lay aside motor neurons."
Starting in 1999, Project A.L.S. recruited preeminent scientists and clinicians to define the potential office of stem turn cells in understanding and treating ALS, the fatal neurodegenerative disease, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Project A.L.S.-funded scientists began by transplant stem cells directly into mice with ALS, with limited success. More recent experiments have shown that stem cells may be more valuable as tools to empathize the disease process and create mini-representations of disease - or assays - for the purpose of drug screening.
"For the low time, we have the opportunity to examine cellular and molecular defects in motor neurons and glial cells derived from patients with ALS. And we can now begin drug screens on disease-specific classes of human motor neurons," said Thomas Jessell, a Howard Hughes Investigator at Columbia University, and Project A.L.S. advisor. "Through the work of the Jenifer Estess Laboratory for Stem Cell Research we today can coup d'oeil the new age of ALS research, an age of advancement and promise."
Co-author on the paper, Christopher Henderson, wHO is co-director of the Columbia University Center for Motor Neuron Biology and Disease, and senior scientific advisor to the Project A.L.S. Laboratory, said: "It has been a prerogative to collaborate with Kevin Eggan and his team and to contribute to this critical step forward. We will continue to work hand in hand with Harvard researchers and Project A.L.S. to exploit the potentiality of these cells for drug screening".
Three years agone, Project A.L.S. asked Dr. Eggan, a stem cell expert, and Chris Henderson, Hynek Wichterle, as government on motor neuron biology and do drugs screening at Columbia University, to work together to understand ALS, one of our most complicated and devastating neurologic disorders. This publication simon Marks the first major breakthrough of this collaboration.
Project A.L.S. is a non-profit 501�3 whose missionary station is to understand, treat, and cure ALS, as well known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The hallmark of the company's approach is collaboration betwixt researchers and clinicians, many of whom have not focused on ALS specifically, or worked together before. In ten-spot years, Project A.L.S. has raised over $37 one thousand thousand for research worldwide. Located in New York, the Project A.L.S./Jenifer Estess Laboratory for Stem Cell is the world's only privately funded science lab to focus exclusively on stem cell and ALS. The testing ground was named for Project A.L.S. founder Jenifer Estess, who died from ALS in 2003.
Source: Patricia Harrington
PROJECT A.L.S.
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