TG盗号软件黑产破解技术|【唯一TG:@heimifeng8】|谷歌快照劫持教程✨谷歌搜索留痕排名,史上最强SEO技术,20年谷歌SEO经验大佬✨Stem cells to treat Parkinson’s? 2 small studies hint at success : Shots

Patients suffering from Parkinson's disease may soon benefit from a powerful treatment option: stem-cell transplants.

In a pair of small studies designed primarily to test safety, two teams of researchers found that stem cells transplanted into the brains of Parkinson's patients began producing the chemical messenger dopamine and appeared to ease symptoms like tremor, researchers reported in the journal Nature.

The results indicate that "now we have the potential to really, really halt this disease in its tracks," says Dr. Mya Schiess, a neurology professor at UTHealth Houston who was not involved in either study.

The Food and Drug Administration has cleared one of the stem-cell treatments for a Phase 3 study, the last hurdle before approval.

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About 1 million people in the United States are living with Parkinson's, a brain disease that attacks neurons that make dopamine. As those neurons die, patients can develop a range of disabling symptoms, including tremor, rigidity, fatigue, difficulty walking and cognitive problems.

Stem cells are immature cells that can develop into many different cell types — including neurons that make dopamine.

Positive results

One of the new studies involved 12 people in the U.S. and Canada living with Parkinson's.

Surgeons administered either a low or high dose of a stem-cell product from BlueRock Therapeutics, a subsidiary of biotech and pharmaceutical giant Bayer. The treatment was derived from human embryonic stem cells, which researchers had coaxed into becoming immature brain cells called neuron progenitors.

During surgery, these cells were injected into a structure on each side of the brain that's involved in movement.

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"The idea is to place these neuron progenitors right where you need them to connect with other neurons in the brain," says Dr. Viviane Tabar, a stem-cell scientist and chair of neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Tabar is also a founding investigator at BlueRock.

PET scans taken 18 months later showed that the transplanted cells were producing dopamine. An assessment using a standard rating scale of Parkinson's progression suggested the treatment was also easing symptoms.

For a typical Parkinson's patient, "you would expect every year to get two to three points worse," says Dr. Lorenz Studer, who directs the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York and is a scientific adviser to BlueRock.