Question by candy: can someone tell me how stem cells can help parkisons disease?
Can you make it simple but pretty not tooo but pretty detailed

Best answer:

Answer by Mags
The goal of stem cell therapy in Parkinson’s disease, a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disease, is to replace the dopamine neurons which have been destroyed leading to the onset of the disease. The idea is to replace the stem cells for this neurotransmitter thus decreasing the symptoms and improving the health and quality of life for these patients.

Parkinson’s disease patients are not the only ones who would benefit from successful long term treatments. People who have ALS, MS, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s disease would also benefit…not to mention the many people with spinal cord injuries.

Certain issues are of key importance, safe modification of the stem cell (no matter the origin) safe delivery toward the properly identified target area of the brain. These become nano-rocket science and are very specialized and exacting.

Rather than write all of this out, I’m going to refer you to a few articles I’ve already written. They were written in a way that should be an easy read. Although these links might appear to be the same link, they are separate articles.

http://parkinsonsfocustoday.blogspot.com/2009/03/parkinsons-disease-research-basics-part.html

http://parkinsonsfocustoday.blogspot.com/2009/03/parkinsons-disease-research-part-ii.html

The basic concept behind use of stem cells is they have the potential to develop into a variety of cell types. They have no specific function originally suchs as being a red blood cell or being a specific brain cell; they are in essence open to suggestion.

Stem cells also are the internal mechanic who repairs damaged tissue. The cell has the potential to become a different type of specialized cell as needed. And that is where their beauty lies in being adapted to address diseases.

One of the biggest problems with stem cell implantation has been the delivery system which introduces the cells to the body. Another serious setback is the potential to develop cancer(s) with this kind of therapy. Solving this problem is the work of many research labs around the world. One very respected area is in the Boston, MA area. In Cambridge at Whitehead Institute, there has been serious progress made in finding a way around such issues:

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/03/05/breakthrough.produces.parkinsons.patient.specific.stem.cells.free.harmful.reprogramming.genes

http://www.wi.mit.edu/news/archives/2009/rj_0305.html

About this research: “PD is an ideal candidate for stem cell treatment. Brilliant research by Wernig et al. (conducted in the Jaenisch laboratory at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research) demonstrated successful treatment of PD in adult rats using neurons derived from stem cells. These authors derived iPS cells by reprogramming rat connective tissue cells. The stem cells were then transformed into neuronal cell types and transplanted into the brains of adult rat models of PD. The nerve cells were successfully transplanted and led to functional recovery in eight of nine rats. Importantly, no cancers that might have been caused by the transplants were detected up to eight weeks following transplantation”

http://ezinearticles.com/?Diabetes-and-Parkinsons-Disease-Stem-Cells-May-Make-Treatment-Possible&id=3553071

There are also scientists who have reprogrammed skin cells from a person’s own body so that the skin cells will behave as stem cells in order to treat the person’s Parkinson’s disease.

There have been a number of people treated with use of stem cells but the anecdotal evidence shows that the successful treatments only last for about 4 years before the symptoms begin to reappear.

http://www.righttoliferoch.org/wscparkinsonsturner.htm

You might also get some understanding of PD and the short term results of stem cell surgery from this video about a gentleman who was treated in China.

You really should read the article below for a good understanding. It is written well but it is an easy read.

http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics1.asp

I’m sorry that it is difficult to write about stem cells and the current research in a simple but “pretty” way. I hope the information and most certainly the resources will help you.

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