Human stem cells help brain-impaired mice

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Injecting human stem cells into the brains of mice helped them recover almost fully from a neurological condition similar to a group of childhood diseases in people, researchers said on Wednesday.

Some, but not all, of the mice in the study made major improvements after a one-time injection of stem cells, leading the scientists to express hope that the same approach might be tried in children within just a couple of years.

The treatment, in essence, fixed defective wiring throughout the brain and spinal cord, the researchers said.

"We were just waiting for them to die day by day, but they just didn't. They got better day by day," said Dr. Steve Goldman of the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York, who led the study.

"They started to shake less. They started to regain strength. They started to move around more. They started to explore more. They started to have shorter seizures and then fewer."

The incurable diseases for which this kind of stem-cell injection might work include cerebral palsy, Tay-Sachs, Krabbe's, Canavan's disease and Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease, according Goldman.

"Potentially it may give us a means of treating, using cell transplants, a number of diseases," Goldman, whose study is in the journal Cell Stem Cell, said in a telephone interview.

Doctors have long struggled to find ways to help children with these conditions.