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Brain Breakthrough After Eggs Create Nerve Cells
Bristol Evening Post
23 March 2005
Chicken eggs have been turned into factories to create human nerve cells in what could be a breakthrough for brain disease treatment, it has emerged.
Scientists from the University of Oslo in Norway have discovered stem cells taken from human bone marrow spontaneously changed into neurons when implanted into damaged chicken embryos.
The embryos' internal repair mechanism appeared to create the right conditions to trigger the transformation.
Stem cells are master cells with the ability to form different kinds of tissue. Those from adult bone marrow normally produce blood and immune system cells.
But experiments have suggested it might be possible to coax them into becoming nerves. Attempts to achieve this have, in the past, been relatively unsuccessful.
Although in about one or two per cent of cases scientists have managed to identify the molecular hallmarks of neurons, they have not been able to create properly formed interconnected cells.
However bone marrow stem cells implanted into chicken eggs developed functional physical features including synaptic networks. They were also converted at a high rate of about 10 per cent.
The researchers, led by Dr Joel Glover, from the University of Oslo in Norway, wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: "This may open new possibilities for a high-yield production of neurons from a patient's own bone marrow."
Laboratory-manufactured nerve cells could be used to treat brain diseases such as Parkinson's for which there is currently no cure.
The scientists first used a micro-surgery technique to cut out a small section of the developing spinal cord within the chicken egg.
Human haematopoietic stem cells (hHSCs) from bone marrow were then implanted into the damaged area. The eggs were incubated before the embryos were removed, and spinal cord slices containing human cells dissected out and analysed.
Damage to the developing brain and spinal cord of the chicken embryo is automatically repaired through a process called regulative regeneration.
Signals from this repair mechanism provided the crucial instructions to the stem cells.
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