Stem Cell Breakthrough Raises Hope to Treat Parkinson's Disease

Stem Cell Breakthrough Raises Hope to Treat Parkinson's DiseaseWith many new inventions every day, scientists have made a bigger one this time, which, in a positive aspect, could be helping medical professionals to find the newest treatment for Parkinson's disease.

Certain cells that produce the chemical `dopamine' die in brain's part called the substantia nigra which causes tremors, rigidity and slowness of movement in the body of the patient; it is known as Parkinson's disease.

According to a team of researchers involved in the entire research, they have found a newer way to regrow brain cells that usually die due to Parkinson's disease. The scientists have claimed that with the help of the stem cells, they have succeeded in regrowing the affected cells, which they then grafted into monkeys' brain to find the possibilities of any step towards a new treatment.

From the findings of the above mentioned procedure, US researchers noticed that the procedure has helped them big in overcoming some of the previous difficulties that they were earlier facing majorly while coaxing human embryonic stem cells to become the neurons killed by the disease.

Tests have shown positive results because the cells have survived the treatment of reversing movement problems caused by Parkinson and are functioning normally in Monkeys. The latest breakthrough has majorly raised the hopes of the medical professionals, who are now preparing all the aspects to transplant freshly grown dopamine-producing cells into human patients to treat the Parkinson disease in their body.

"The cells produced in the past would produce some dopamine but were not quite the right type of cell, so there were limited improvements in the animals. Now we know how to do it right, which is promising for future clinical use", said Dr. Lorenz Studer, at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.