New lead to brain neuron regeneration
Barinaga, M.
Science 282(5391): 1018-1019
1998
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 9841441 Document Number: 493656
Two sets of findings reveal new leads to brain regeneration. Neurobiologists have long believed that neurons in the adult brain diminish with age and illness and are probably impossible to rebuild, and that no new human brain neurons are formed after birth. Research teams led by Evan Snyder at Harvard Medical School in Boston and Ronald McKay at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke independently isolated what appear to be the first human cells that can differentiate into all the cell types found in the brain--so-called neural stem cells. Work by Fred Gage of the Salk Institute in San Diego and Peter Eriksson and his colleagues at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Goteborg, Sweden, has uncovered evidence of new neurons being formed in the dentate gyrus of human brains.