Researchers in Canada have developed a new method to generate functional dopaminergic neurons, the dopamine-producing nerve cells lost in Parkinson’s disease, from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC).
The scientists used an antibody to selectively activate FZD5, a receptor, in the stem cells, which stimulated a specific molecular signaling pathway involved in generating new neurons from the cells. Human pluripotent stem cells can generate nearly all cell types, including neurons.
The method provides a more precise and controlled activation of this pathway, called Wnt, and may improve the differentiation of stem cells into dopaminergic neurons in the brain regions affected by Parkinson’s.
“We used synthetic antibodies that we had previously developed to target the Wnt signaling pathway,” Stephane Angers, principal investigator on the study and director of the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Toronto, said in a press release.
“This activation method has not been explored before.”
Again science pricking peoples interest.
The question is, will they see this avenue for treating Parkinson's Disease to the end?
Best Wishes to All
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Baron1
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😂 I want to be reincarnated as a lab mouse - they are as fit as fiddles!
"Researchers in Canada have developed a new method to generate functional dopaminergic neurons, the dopamine-producing nerve cells lost in Parkinson’s disease, from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC)."
This is encouraging but realistically it doesn't really address the fundamental issue of what kills the dopamine producing nerve cells in the first place. From a layman's POV that would seem to me to be the main issue. Solve that while replacing the lost neurons and we have a solution.
So would my wife, but you miss the point. It's a bit like a punctured tyre on a car or an oil leak, you can keep topping up the air or oil but it won't get to the root cause of the problem. What's needed is an understanding of what kills the cells in the first place together with regenerative function. That's why the Sackner-Bernstein theory of excessive dopamine being toxic needs to be tested imho! It's looking completely in the opposite direction to the orthodoxy but we'll never know unless somebody (all of us?) funds the tests.
I have no idea about timescales Ctime, but let's not be distracted from the point I am making which is it's not a cure. This might be stating the obvious to most of the Parkinsons community but the real point I'd like to make is the contrast between the amount of money, time and effort that appears to be devoted to producing circumventions or management of a disease, a disease that effects millions of people around the world and whose growth rate exceeds all others and the fact that a guy, Dr Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein, who provides an alternative theory about root cause and can't get funding to test. Why? Is it because he is a cardiologist and therefore can't possibly know what he's talking about? Is it because he publicised his theory with "what if I've found the Silver Bullet" and the sound of toes being trodden on could be heard all around? Or what? I know I'm whistling in the wind here but I've seen it all before in other arenas!!!
Jay, exactly! I know it's not easy but where there is a will there is a way (usually). It's the will that needs to be scrutinised. There's money in them there drugs!
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