Stem cell research may unlock secrets of incurable …

With stem cells slowly making their way into common medical practice, the answer to hundreds of diseases and disabilities might be contained in one swift injection.

In his lab, David Schaffer, director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center on campus, and others are currently trying to turn the cells from unused embryos into the specific neurons lost to Parkinsons disease, a brain disorder that causes tremors and difficulty in movement and coordination. Current treatment options for Parkinsons are limited to medication, brain surgery and physical therapy, but these only treat the symptoms of the disease.

If you had the option of having to take prescription medicines for the rest of your life versus a single injection cure You can see why the fields so enthusiastic, Schaffer said.

Others, citing moral and religious convictions, have had reservations about the development of such therapies.

Still, in 2004, California passed Proposition 71, officially deeming stem cell research a constitutional right. A Center of Excellence grant allocated $20 millionto UC Berkeley to grow the field, with the money ultimately used for the construction of the Li Ka Shing Center, where the campus Stem Cell Center is housed.

The Scientific Method

The biggest question all researchers within the stem cell community strive to answer is how a stem cell can be controlled or in Schaffers case, how embryonic stem cells can be converted, or differentiated into dopaminergic neurons, those chronically lacking in the brain of Parkinsons patients.

The researchers, including postdoctoral fellows Badri Ananthanarayanan and Tandis Vazin, currently grapple with the challenge of transplanting the neurons from the petri dish, in which they are grown, to the site of injury, all without damaging the cells.

Theres a 95 percent chance of those cells dying (once you inject them into the brain), Ananthanarayanan, who works in Kumar Laboratory, headed by bioengineering professor Sanjay Kumar, said. If you generate these cells in a dish, scrape the cells off the dish, collect them and inject them, a lot of them die in the process because they go through a lot of stress.

Ananthanarayanan and his colleagues are specifically experimenting on rats, injecting dopaminergic neurons into their brains and subsequently observing whether the neurons function properly and survive. Working with a total of approximately 12 rats, the researchers hope to increase their sample size to about 30 rats once they garner positive results to iteratively test their methods on a larger scale.

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