New Stem Cell Research Technique Could Change the Field

Scientists at The New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute have found a way to make living brain cells from deceased Alzheimer's patients' brain tissue.

Alzheimer's disease is a deadly neurological disorder that eventually causes long-term memory loss, mood swings, difficulty in speech, and abrupt changes in behavior in patients. Only definitively diagnosed post-mortem, Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause in death in the United States and has no cure. New research involving induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from bio-banked brain tissue of patients with Alzheimer's disease, however, may change that.

Researchers have recently figured out a way to make living human cells from frozen tissue samples of deceased patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which were stored for eleven years at the New York Brain Bank at Columbia University. These iPS cells, cells that have been genetically reprogrammed back into an embryonic-like state, have now given researchers the tools to "turn back the clock" and analyze the growing stages of Alzheimer's in the brain, possibly even long before any symptoms arise. Scientists will now not only be able to compare these regenerated brain cells with brain cells of people who don't have Alzheimer's, but they will also be able to perform drug testing on these cells from patients who were diagnosed to further improve existing therapies.

This new advance, that bio-banked tissue from Alzheimer's patients can generate "disease-specific" iPS cells, paves the way for iPS cells indicative of other diseases to be studied as well, specifically for diseases that can only be confirmed post-mortem. This new discovery changes the face of regenerative medicine for future generations.

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