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UC Irvine researchers say they used neural stem cells to partially restore memory in brain-damaged mice, an advance that suggests that a similar treatment might eventually be developed for humans.

“In the study, mice with brain injuries experienced enhanced memory — similar to the level found in healthy mice — up to three months after receiving a stem cell treatment,” UCI says in a news release.

“Scientists believe the stem cells secreted proteins called neurotrophins that protected vulnerable cells from death and rescued memory. This creates hope that a drug to boost production of these proteins could be developed to restore the ability to remember in patients with neuronal loss.” (The neural stem cells are green in this image. The red areas are neurons.)

The study was led by UCI neuroscientist Frank LaFerla, who was aided by researchers Mathew Blurton-Jones and Tritia Yamasaki. They published the results in the Journal of Neuroscience, one of the leading journals in the field. And they used a type of stem cells that do not involve the destruction of human embryonic stem cells.

Blurton-Jones told me in an e-mail: “We designed a new transgenic mouse that allows us to kill only a very specific set of brain cells located in the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is critically involved in memory. Our lesion is therefore much more limited and specific than prior models of stroke or traumatic brain injury.

“As a result, when we found improvement in memory, we knew that it was specifically due to benefits occurring to the brain circuitry that mediates memory not by an unrelated benefit such as improved movement.

“As further evidence for this, we also found significantly more connections (synapses) in the hippocampus of stem cell treated mice versus controls.

“There has previously been a conception in the field that while stem cells may be able to repair locomotion, that tey may not be as useful to treat more complex behaviors such as memory. Our data is the first to clearly show that stem cells also benefit these complex behaviours as well.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 3:00 am and is filed under Ain't that interesting?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.