THOSE developing advanced therapies based on neurons grown from stem cells face a perplexing new question: can cells transplanted into the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease acquire the disorder from the surrounding tissue?
The possibility is raised by post-mortems of patients who received grafts of brain tissue from aborted fetuses during the 1990s. These grafts provided a fresh supply of cells that release the neurotransmitter dopamine, to replace those which die off in patients with Parkinson’s. Two teams claim that some of the cells in the grafts are now themselves showing signs of the disease (Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm1746…
