Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Alzheimer's Disease and Stem Cell Therapy
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a type of dementia due to formation of amyloid plaques
in the brain tissue. More than 500,000 people in Britain for example, suffer from
Alzheimer's disease, for which there is currently no cure. This figure is expected to
increase dramatically in the coming years as the population ages. Therefore, the
advance in adult stem cell regenerative therapy of this type of dementia would open
the perspective to a broad range and high number of patients.
Researchers at the University of California in Irvine successfully used injections
of neural stem cells to repair damaged brain cells [ 43 ] . Although the experiment
was only done on mice, the researchers are confident that the technique may one day
be used on humans to restore memory lost during the late stages of Alzheimer's.
Doctor Frank LaFerla, Director of the University's Institute for Memory Impairments
and Neurological Disorders, said there is “a lot of hope” that the findings could lead
to “a useful treatment for Alzheimer's” [ 43 ]. A research team led by University of
Central Florida professor Kiminobu Sugaya has discovered a compound related to
DNA (staurosporine) that could improve the results of stem cell treatments for
Alzheimer's patients [ 44- 51 ]. The research team found that treating bone marrow
cells with the compound made adult stem cells more likely to turn into brain cells in
experiments with rats.
The granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) is a blood stem cell growth
factor or hormone routinely administered to cancer patients whose blood stem cells
and white blood cells have been depleted following chemotherapy or radiation.
G-CSF stimulates the bone marrow to produce more white blood cells needed to
fight infection. It is also used to boost the numbers of stem cells circulating in the
blood of donors before the cells are harvested for bone marrow transplants. Advanced
clinical trials are now investigating the effectiveness of G-CSF to treat stroke, and
the compound was safe and well tolerated in early clinical studies of ischemic stroke
patients. G-CSF has been used and studied clinically for a long time, but this is the
first group to apply it to Alzheimer's disease [ 52 ]. This growth factor could poten-
tially provide a powerful new therapy for Alzheimer's disease—one that may
actually reverse disease, not just alleviate symptoms like currently available drugs.
The researchers showed that injections under the skin of filgrastim (Neupogen ® )
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One of the three commercially available G-CSF compounds.
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Mobilized blood stem cells in the bone marrow and neural stem cells within the
brain and both of these actions led to improved memory and learning behavior in
the Alzheimer's mice on the basis of reactive microglia derived from stem cells
that are destroying deposits of amyloid plaques in brain tissue.
So far, a human growth factor that stimulates blood stem cells to proliferate in
the bone marrow reverses memory impairment in mice genetically altered to develop
Alzheimer's disease [ 52 ]. The G-CSF significantly reduced levels of the brain-
clogging protein beta-amyloid deposited in excess in the brains of the Alzheimer's
mice increased the production of new neurons and promoted nerve cell connections.
The beauty in this less invasive approach is that it obviates the need for neurosurgery
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