Stem Cells for the Brain



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Yesterday, I was listening to the radio, 103.5 FM, with my dad in the car and I heard a news story on stem cells acting on the brain. Scientists (at one university I can't recall the name of) injected embryonic stem cells into a human with brain cancer. The hES cells were injected with medication needed to target the brain cells. These injected cells were attracted to the mutated cells in the brain, being the cancerous cells, and changed the fate of the cells. They became specialized as fully functioning neurons, and because the medication was targeted specifically to that area, the hopes are that the tumor will diminish greatly, if not disappear completely. This was really interesting to me because hES cells are powerful in that they are totipotent. They can become anything, relating to autonomous specification that we learned about previously in class. The really unique feature of these cells, however, is that they also exhibit conditional specification because they become the cells they are around. For example, hES cells in the brain become neurons. It will be interesting to see if this experiment works, and if so, how much cancer will be treated in the future.