RSS Feed
July 17th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) — Aiming for insights into
Alzheimer’s disease, scientists have developed a new cellular model for
research — one that’s sourced from the skin cells of patients but
genetically reprogrammed to mimic diseased brain cells.
The scientists say their approach might draw on the stem cells of
people with Alzheimer’s disease as a virtually limitless supply of
different types of diseased brain cells for laboratory study.
The results were to be presented Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association
annual meeting in Vancouver.
Theoretically, the innovation could improve upon the current method of
study, which primarily relies on mouse-based models. Researchers say that
such animal research, while often fruitful, falls short of fully
representing the disease environment found in human patients.
“Current animal models of Alzheimer’s are highly engineered to express
elements of the disease and, while valuable for research, incompletely
represent how the disease forms and progresses in people,” William Thies,
chief medical and scientific officer for the Alzheimer’s Association, said
in a news release from the meeting’s organizers.
“In order to develop better therapies and eventually prevent
Alzheimer’s, we need better, more accurate animal and cellular models of
the disease,” Thies added. “This newly reported research is a significant
step forward in that direction.”
The study was led by Andrew Sproul, a postdoctoral associate at the New
York Stem Cell Foundation in New York City. Sproul and his colleagues
noted that the telltale amyloid protein plaques that build up in the
brains of human Alzheimer’s patients also differ from those found in
mice.
With that in mind, the authors worked with cells from 12 Alzheimer’s
patients along with several healthy family members. All the patients had
been diagnosed with the most common form of a rare type of an early-onset
form of Alzheimer’s disease (representing just 2 percent of all cases)
that is known to be inherited.
After extracting skin cells from the study participants, the team used
genetic engineering to prod the cells into developing into several kinds
of “electrically active” brain cells — forebrain nerve cells, neural stem
cells and glial cells.
The team noted that because most Alzheimer’s patients suffer from a
different, late-onset type of disease, more work will have to be done to
broaden this new approach so that it covers that form of the disease.
“Over the next few years, we expect to provide substantial insight into
Alzheimer’s and valuable tools to help create the next generation of
therapeutics,” Sproul noted.
Research presented at medical meetings is typically considered
preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
For more on Alzheimer’s disease, visit the U.S. National
Institute on Aging.
Posted in 
Tags: 
