Mighty Morphed Brain Cells Cure Parkinson’s in Mice, But Human Trials Are Still Far Off

April 11, 2017

(STAT News) – Mice that walk straight and fluidly don’t usually make scientists exult, but these did: The lab rodents all had a mouse version of Parkinson’s disease and only weeks before had barely been able to lurch and shuffle around their cages. Using a trick from stem-cell science, researchers managed to restore the kind of brain cells whose death causes Parkinson’s. And the mice walked almost normally. The same technique turned human brain cells, growing in a lab dish, into the dopamine-producing neurons that are AWOL in Parkinson’s, scientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute reported on Monday in Nature Biotechnology.