Posts tagged neuronal transplantation

The unexpected survival of embryonic neurons transplanted into the brains of newborn mice in a series of experiments at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raises hope for the possibility of using neuronal transplantation to treat diseases like Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.

The experiments, described this week in the journal Nature, were not designed to test whether embryonic neuron transplants could effectively treat any specific disease. But they provide a proof-of-principle that GABA-secreting interneurons, a type of brain cell linked to many different neurological disorders, can be added in significant numbers into the brain and can survive without affecting the population of endogenous interneurons.

The survival of these cells after transplantation in numbers far greater than expected came as a shock to the team, which was led by UCSF professor Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, PhD, and former UCSF graduate student Derek Southwell, MD, PhD.

The prevailing theory held that the survival of developing neurons is something like a game of musical chairs. The brain has limited capacity for these cells, forcing them to compete with each other for the few available slots. Only those that find a place to “sit” (and receive survival signals derived from other cell types) will survive when the music stops. The rest die a withering death.

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