Scientists in the U.K. are beginning to create a kind of "brain bank," made up of homegrown nerve cells, to discover what happens to these cells as Parkinson's disease progresses. The induced pluropotent stem-cell technique uses skin cells from the patient to create a small piece of the brain in a dish. It's a way to study, first-hand, what goes on inside the brain.
"We can't take bits of people's brains when they are alive, of course,' says Oxford's Richard Wade-Martins in a release. "So we never have been able to study dopamine neurons from a patient." As Parkinson's progresses, dopamine neurons die off. The research will help identify new pathways that could lead to potential targets for new therapies, he said.
A BBC report focuses on Derek Underwood, a 56-year-old Oxfordshire man who had to retire early because of Parkinson's. He's one of the first 50 patients whose cells will become a kind of "disease in a dish." In the first step, the BBC reports, Michelle Hu of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford will compare the homegrown brain cells from Parkinson's patients with those grown from healthy volunteers. "For the first time we can look at the cells before they deteriorate and look at the earliest changes," Hu said.
- read the full story in the BBC
- and Oxford's release