The ability of stem cells to migrate may mean one injection could repair widespread nerve damage Neurobiologists have helped paralysed mice regain the partial use of their legs. Researchers at John Hopkins University in Baltimore gave the mice an injection of neural stem cells into the spine.
Stem cells can develop into every type of cell in the nervous system.
Some of the stem cells matured into neurons and replaced nerve cells that had died off, the researchers found. Within a few weeks more than half the mice were able to place both pads of their feet on the floor. Although the mice never fully regained the ability to walk, the study shows for the first time that it may be possible to use stem cells to repair wide spread nerve damage in people. Right on target John Gearhart and his colleagues Jeffrey Rothstein and Douglas Kerr infected mice with a Sindbis virus which destroys nerve cells in the spinal cord. The effect mimics an inherited neurological disorder in humans known as spinal motor atrophy, which affects more than 1 in 20,000 infants.