Dopaminergic Stem Cells from Bone Marrow

Israel21c - Israeli therapy uses adult stem cells to treat Parkinson's Disease

Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics has developed a novel stem cell therapy to treat Parkinson's Disease - using a patient's own bone marrow stem cells to produce the missing chemical that enables restoration of motor movement.

The process - which successfully alleviated symptoms of Parkinson's in rats - will be tested on monkeys next year, with human clinical trials scheduled for the following year....

'The breakthrough here is that, first of all, our source material is bone marrow. Second, they showed not only neuronal markers and electro-physical functions, but the in-vitro expression and release of dopamine,' BrainStorm's President and CEO, Dr Yaffa Beck told ISRAEL21c.

This sounds very promising - circumventing the whole embryonic stem cell debate. A caution is that past research implanting dopaminergic neurons into Parkinsonian brains has yielded mixed results and short-term improvements. Sources of dopamine producing cells have always limited the applicability of this kind of procedure - however if the technique for producing dopamine neurons really works, I suspect other researchers will be tempted to try it, giving the possibility of further improvements...