Stem cell therapy: Reversing cell death

There has been extraordinary progress in the application of stem cell biology to studying neurodegeneration in ALS, which has significant implications for processes such as drug screening. Stem cell biology has made huge advances in the last five years, which have clearly accelerated ALS research and the quest for therapy.

Stem cells may offer a variety of benefits for a disease like ALS. In present studies, they permit sophisticated analyses of different types of interactions between motor neurons and surrounding cells, some of which contribute to cell death in motor neuron disease. In the long term, stem cell technologies may facilitate replacement of lost motor neurons, although this is many years away. Stem cells may also be useful as vehicles for delivering drugs to the nervous system.

It is now possible to generate stem cells from skin biopsies of living patients, which means for the first time, scientists are able to study motor neurons derived from living ALS patients’ stem cells. This is especially significant because scientists can now study motor neurons that have the exact genetic makeup and constituents of the patients under assessment. This huge advance is advantageous, both as a biological tool and because it bypasses ethical issues surrounding fetal-derived stem sell research.