Lab Finds Way to Grow Large Number of Neurons from Stem Cells

Newswise &emdash; A team at the Albany Medical College has found a way to use neural stem cells in animal studies to generate large numbers of neurons - one important step on the way to developing treatments for humans to reverse a wide variety of neurological diseases and conditions from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's to spinal cord injuries. The groundbreaking technique is detailed in a paper just published in the journal Science.

The landmark paper, titled 'Endothelial Cells Stimulate Self-renewal and Expand Neurogenesis of Neural Stem Cells,' appears in the current issue (April 1) of Science. Researchers working under Sally Temple, Ph.D., professor in the Center for Neuropharmacology and Neuroscience at Albany Med, have discovered that neural stem cells, when co-cultured with endothelial cells found in blood vessels, produce large amounts of both neurons and glial cells.

Previous research had produced large amounts of glial cells, which are the maintenance and support cells in the brain, but only small amounts of neurons, which are the 'excitable' cells that carry nerve impulses and are responsible for controlling thought, memory and body functions.

Post-doctoral students Qin Shen and Natalie Abramova and graduate student Yu Sun, with lab manager Susan Goderie, lab tech Li Jin and medical student Nithin Karanth, conducted the successful experiments during the past two years using stem cells taken from the nervous system of mice.

The research project arose from Dr. Temple's observation that neural stem cells can often be found adjacent to blood vessels. Perhaps the endothelial cells lining the blood vessels played a role in the production of neural stem cells and ultimately in the production of neurons, she conjectured. In the experiments conducted, the neural cells were grown in a petri dish beneath a membrane-lined container with endothelial cells. Soluble factors or molecules leaking from the endothelial cells spurred the growth of large amounts of both neurons and glial cells, confirming her hypothesis, Dr. Temple explained.

'The hope is that eventually we will be able to transplant these neurons into humans afflicted with a wide variety of neurological disorders and see improvement in function,' stated Dr. Temple. While we're a long way from that, our laboratory has now become the first to devise a practical way to grow significant amounts of neurons from stem cells in a cultured laboratory medium, an important first step in this exciting effort. 'Our next step will be to see if transplanting these neurons into mice improves their neurological functioning', she explained.

During Temple's postgraduate work at the University of Miami in Florida in the
early 1990s, she became the first researcher to discover stem cells in the embryonic brain and to prove that these cells could be cultured and grown outside of the body. Her findings have paved the way for continued research into brain stem cells worldwide.

Albany Medical Center is northeastern New York's only academic health sciences center. It consists of one of the nation's oldest medical schools, the Albany Medical College; one of New York's largest teaching hospitals, the Albany Medical Center Hospital; and one of the Capital Region's most active fundraising organizations, the Albany Medical Center Foundation, Inc.



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