ORDINARY ADULT skin cells have successfully been used to improve Parkinson's disease symptoms in a rat model, providing fresh hope that a similar treatment could be devised for human patients.
The skin cells were "reprogrammed" to act like embryonic stem cells, a type of starter cell that theoretically can grow to become any of the 200 cell types found in the body. In a related experiment, reprogrammed mouse skin cells successfully integrated into the brains of growing mice, showing that the fully functional cells could become any of the different tissues found in the brain.
"This experiment shows that in vitro reprogrammed cells can in principle be used to treat Parkinson's disease," stated Prof Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of the research, published today in the online edition of the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The use of reprogrammed adult cells allows stem cell research to progress without the ethical problems posed by the use of true embryonic stem cells, which are recovered through the destruction of viable embryos.