America
Indian-origin scientist turns blood into nerve cells
Toronto, May 22
Stem cell scientists led by
Mick Bhatia from the McMaster University have successfully converted
adult human blood cells into neural cells.
The team directly
converted adult human blood cells to both central nervous system (brain
and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in the peripheral nervous
system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain, temperature and
itch perception.
This means that how a person's nervous system cells react and respond to stimuli can be determined from his blood.
"Now
we can take blood samples and make the main cell types of neurological
systems - the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system -
in a dish that is specialised for each patient. Nobody has ever done
this with adult blood. Ever," explained Bhatia, director of the McMaster
Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute.
Bhatia's team successfully tested their process using fresh blood as well as frozen blood.
Scientists
can actually take a patient's blood sample and with it, can produce one
million sensory neurons that make up the peripheral nerves in short
order with this new approach.
"We can also make central nervous
system cells, as the blood to neural conversion technology we developed
creates neural stem cells during the process of conversion," Bhatia
noted.
The revolutionary, patented direct conversion technology has "broad and immediate applications".
It
allows researchers to start asking questions about understanding
disease and improving treatments such as: Why is it that certain people
feel pain versus numbness? Is this something genetic? Can the neuropathy
that diabetic patients experience be mimicked in a dish?
It also paves the way for the discovery of new pain drugs that do not just numb the perception of pain.
In
the future, the process may have prognostic potential, explained
Bhatia, in that one might be able to look at a patient with Type 2
diabetes and predict whether they will experience neuropathy by running
tests in the lab using their own neural cells derived from their blood
sample.
"This bench to bedside research is very exciting and will
have a major impact on the management of neurological diseases,
particularly neuropathic pain," added Akbar Panju, medical director of
the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Pain Research and Care.
This
research will help scientists provide personalized medical therapy for
patients suffering with neuropathic pain, the authors concluded.
The breakthrough was detailed in the journal Cell Reports.