Experimental Parkinson’s Disease Repair

Another exciting potential of stem cells is in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease.

Recently, researchers coaxed human embryonic stem cells to become the type of cells damaged in Parkinson’s disease and grafted them into the appropriate brain area of mice with a deficit similar to Parkinson’s disease. The results were encouraging—the neurons integrated themselves into the host tissue and made proper connections.

Some of the grafted cells, however, took on the appearance of cells that might become cancerous. Embryonic stem cells have a high potential to divide, a characteristic shared by cancer cells.

Because we do not completely understand the biology of stem cells or cancer, one of the fears of using stem cells for therapy is that cancer may be an inadvertent by-product.