• Question: I just saw a news report on the BBC, apparently brain cells can be made from skin cells, this will then be able to help scientists discover more about the disease. This should help them find new treatments. Do you know any more about this? Are you involved? Is it of any interest to you?

    Asked by samg to Amy on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Amy Reeve

      Amy Reeve answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      Hi Sam,

      This is a brilliant story about some research being done at Oxford University. They have taken the skin from patients with Parkinson’s disease and used the stem cells to make brain cells. They hope that by doing this they will be able to find out what starts making these cells die. The trouble with Parkinson’s disease is that by the time people develop symptoms 70% of the cells in a particular part of the brain are dead 🙁 The Oxford experiments hope to give us a way to, almost go back in time, and find out why and how these cells get sick in the first place 🙂 It will be a fantastic technique that i would definitely be interested in. It would be so cool to look at the mitochondria in these cells and compare it to my own data. I wish i was involved!! 🙂

      What did you think of this experiment?

      thanks for your question 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: samg

    samg commented on :

    It seemed like the sort of thing you might be interested in 🙂

    I think it’s always a step forward when people uncover new research and develop treatments which will actually help people in the long run