Tau Pathophysiology in Transgenic Mice. - unravelling Alzheimer's disease -

To inject adult stem cells from the marrow of a healthy patient can strengthen the bones of children with inherited damage to the skeleton and the same approach may reduce the severity of symptoms in people who suffer from Huntington's disease. Perhaps other damaged tissues such as those involved in Alzheimer's disease or diabetes might be helped. In mice, those from a normal embryo injected into a mutant animal lacking part of the sheath of insulation around certain nerves (a structure damaged in multiple sclerosis) make the missing material. Such cells injected into paralyzed rats restore movement. Stem cells are rare  - about one in ten billion in the marrow — and not all the news is good; in mice, such cells injected into adults can grow into tumours and it may be necessary to add a suicide gene to kill them off if they turn nasty. Their very malleability may cause problems — who, after all, wants teeth to grow in their brain? If stem cells pay off, a new era of medicine will begin. Perhaps everyone will keep a store of frozen cells taken at birth in the expectation that they will be needed later to repair an organ that fails with age or disease ...»