Stem Cells & Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease is a crippling brain condition that affects up to 5.3 million Americans today, mostly elderly people. As baby boomers age, the push to discover effective treatments for this condition increases. Research into stem cells is helping doctors and scientists understand the mechanisms of the disease better, as well as providing a potential avenue for treatment.
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Alzheimer's Disease
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Alzheimer's disease is a devastating and common disease, with a new case arising every 70 seconds in the United States alone. It causes severe, progressive symptoms such as memory loss, dementia, and loss of control of bodily functions and is incurable and terminal given the current state of medicine.
Stem Cells
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Stem cells are special cells that are able to become many different types of cells. This property makes them a target for research, both for the basic scientific questions of how cells gain and lose properties, and for the potential use of these cells in medical treatments.
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Regenerative Medicine
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Regenerative medicine is a branch of medicine that seeks to replace tissue damaged by disease or injury, either by growing whole tissues in the lab or by injecting stem cells into the patient. A group that funds much research in this area is the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).
Basic Science
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Scientists do not understand what causes people to develop Alzheimer's disease. Stem cells provide scientists with neurons they can try drugs on without putting patients in danger. Information from these experiments will help develop treatments for Alzheimer's.
Medical Research
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Mathew Blurton-Jones at the University of California at Irvine discovered that mice with a condition mimicking human Alzheimer's perform better on memory tests after receiving injections of neural stem cells. Rather than becoming new neurons themselves, the injected cells promoted the growth of the neurons already there. One researcher compared this phenomenon to the action of fertilizer.
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- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Mike Seyfang
