MOSCOW, may 26 — RIA Novosti. Scandinavian scientists have created a stem cell model of the brain of the human embryo to the example to see how different regions of the brain are formed during early development. This will help to accelerate the development of new methods of stem cell treatment of a number of serious neurological diseases. The results were published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Studies of the development of the human brain in its earliest stages — from the second to the seventh week after fertilization — is still absent, since scientists did not have access to fetal human tissues at such early stages. Therefore, all conclusions were based on experiments on flies, chickens and mice.
However, the composition of the human brain differs from animal brain, and the knowledge of how every single nerve cell in the brain is formed the embryo, is necessary in order to develop an effective treatment of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and stroke.
Knowing how to form nerve cells in different stages of development, researchers will be able to develop therapies for each specific disease. For example, in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease requires a specific type of nerve cells that are lost in this disease, dopaminergic nerve cell.
the Danish scientists from the Center for stem cell biology Novo Nordisk in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Copenhagen and bioengineers from the Lund University in Sweden have created a stem cell model that mimics the early stages of development of the human brain. Cells were grown in a special microfluidic chamber, which created conditions similar to the environment in which the fetal brain is developing.
the Researchers plan to use a new model for mapping the development of brain cells — a kind of “tree of development” of the brain, where it will be seen how different nerve cells in the brain develop at an early embryonic stage.
“as soon As we have map, we will be better able to reproduce in the laboratory of neural human cells that can be used for transplantation, regenerative therapy, and for treatment of various diseases,” says study leader associate Professor the Agnete Kirkeby (Agnete Kirkeby).
Kirkeby understands the importance of the problem being solved, as it is for ten years, together with colleagues from Lund and Cambridge worked on the development of stem cell therapy in Parkinson’s disease. When a new model the researchers expect that in the future such studies will be much faster.
“If we can accurately understand how the brain develops in the early stages, we will be better of eg��lyat stem cells in the right direction in the production of nerve cells in the laboratory. This will allow us to quickly and efficiently develop cell therapies,” says Kirkeby.
the Authors note that the model can serve other useful purposes. It can be used for studying how the brain cells of the embryo react to certain chemicals surrounding us in everyday life — in environment, consumer products or medicines taken by pregnant women.
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