Researchers continue to find great promise in the use of stem cells in the treatment of disease. Stem cells are immature or "uncommitted" cells which differentiate to become specific types of cells.
Researchers at the Harvard Medical School used neural stem cells to treat mice with a specific nerve defect which causes tremors. They describe their work in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The cells were injected into the mice at birth and spread throughout the brain, in part compensating for the deficiency caused by the defect and reducing tremors by about half, according to the researchers. They found that most of the stem cells became the type missing in the mice, which suggests there might be potential for stem cell transplantation to overcome these difficult neurological diseases.