Word: snyders
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stem cell in bone marrow. These chameleon-like stem cells transform themselves into whatever kind of blood cells the body needs. The skin and liver have their own stem cells. "Maybe there is a brain stem cell, a mother cell that gives rise to all types of brain cell," Snyder says he wondered. "I wanted to find this cell and harness it to repair injured brains...
...Snyder announced in print that his lab had removed stemlike cells from mouse brains and had grown them in a culture. Snyder then teamed up with Dr. Jeff Macklis, a colleague at Harvard Medical School who had engineered a strain of mouse whose neurons died off in a tiny region of the cortex where cells were not known to regenerate. Snyder injected the stem cells into the mice. Like heat-seeking missiles, the cells rapidly sought out the injured part of the cortex and transformed themselves into healthy neurons. "That's the beauty of stem cells," says Snyder...
...Where was this all leading?" Snyder says he asked himself many times. "In 20 years would I have done nothing more than create a thriving colony of healthy, smart mice that are free of brain disease? You can't take it for granted that every medical advance in mice will also benefit people." But the evidence started mounting. Over the past three years, researchers have discovered that brain cells regenerate in primate-like tree shrews, marmoset monkeys and rhesus monkeys, all of which are closer to us on the evolutionary scale than are mice (except in Kansas). The real payoff...
Gage's finding--coupled with Snyder's report that same month of stem cells in the fetal human brain--has stood neuroscience on its head, so to speak. As has the latest finding, announced last month by researchers at Princeton, that adult macaque monkeys are constantly growing new cells in the highest and most complex area of the brain, the cerebral cortex. Snyder is now flush with confidence that neuroscience will ultimately cure many, if not all, diseases of the human brain. "By the year 2020 I hope we will have an active way of treating damaged brains...
...idea of implanting brain stem cells, while not as dramatic as swapping whole brains, also raises intriguing philosophical questions. "Sometimes at seminars when I talk about my work," says Snyder, "somebody will ask me whether the introduction of these stem cells will alter memory." Do the newly generated cells distort or erase old memories? Or will the transplanted stem cells bring with them memories of their upbringing in a Petri dish...