Word: parkinsonism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Melton's confidence is testament to the extraordinary advances in stem-cell science, some of which have brought the promise of breakthrough therapies for conditions like diabetes, Parkinson's and heart disease closer than ever before. The cells filling petri dishes in freezers and incubators in Melton's lab and others around the world are so vastly different - in provenance, programming and potential - from the stem cells of just two years ago that even the scientists leading this biological revolution marvel at the pace at which they are learning, and in some cases relearning, rules of development. Until recently...
...time, he can watch Type 1 diabetes unfold in a petri dish as a patient's cells develop from their embryonic state into mature pancreatic cells. The same will be true for other diseases as well. "There is a good reason we don't have treatments for diseases like Parkinson's," says Melton. "That's because the only way science can study them is to wait until a patient appears in the office with symptoms. The cause could be long gone by then, and you're just seeing the end stages." No longer. Now the major steps in the disease...
Realizing that potential - and with it, the prospect of successful treatments for conditions like Parkinson's or diabetes - may still be a few years away. Even iPS cells have yet to prove that they are a safe and suitable substitute for the diseased cells they might eventually replace in a patient. Ensuring their safety would require doing away with dangerous genes that can also cause cancer, as well as the retroviral carriers that Yamanaka originally used. Melton's team has already replaced two of the genes with chemicals, and he anticipates that the remaining ones will be swapped...
...dream state, which explains why inside our dreams, we occasionally feel as if we can't move or are operating in slow motion. People with REM sleep disorder, however, never achieve this muscle relaxation, and researchers now believe that this could be the first sign of Parkinson's. The latest thinking on the disease holds that the uncontrolled movements that are the hallmark of Parkinson's are only the latest and most advanced sign of the disease, the final stage of a 10- or 20-year gradual decline in nerve function. In fact, experts believe that the condition actually begins...
...sleep disorder itself can be treated with medications, but those drugs won't slow the decline in nerve function that's responsible for Parkinson's. But identifying the disease at this earlier stage may help scientists come up with newer ways of protecting the motor neurons from further damage. "We don't have agents now to stop the degeneration of Parkinson's," says Postuma. "But once we have those agents, as far as I'm concerned, every patient with REM sleep disorder should be taking...