Big volume brain repair through escaped neural stem cells in mice

In the 15th, December Cell issue Kuo et al. published a study according to which “mice whose brains were severely damaged by loss of the genes “Numb” and “Numblike” in one region just after birth showed substantial mending within weeks. The researchers attributed that repair to neural stem cell “escapees” that had somehow retained or restored the genes’ activity and, with it, their regenerative potential.” Effectively a big brain hole was largely repaired. The finding casts a light on the amplification of the neural plascticity in the subventricular zone stem cell niche. Here you can read the abstract.

Redifferentiating brain tumour stem cells: the concept of cancer regenerative medicine

The trendy cancer stem cell theory highlights that there is a functional hierarchy between different tumour cells and only a small portion, the so called cancer stem cells have crucial role in initiating tumour growth. This assumption was confirmed in the case of blood, breast and brain for example. Based on that a new therapeutic approach of cancer is delineated which can induce differentiation of tumour cells rather then killing them. Indeed a very natural and useful stem cell targeted therapy by concept: redifferentiate cancer stem cells into harmless and in some cases useful functional tissue cells. I call it the concept of cancer regenerative medicine: redifferentiate all the tumour initiating cancer stem cells in a patient into functional tissue and organ cells. In Nature, 7 December Issue Piccirillo et al. addressed the question whether the stem-like tumour initiating cell subpopulation of a glioblastoma, marked with a specific antigen, CD 133+ can be differentiated with Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) into a functional type of brain cells? Ok, vocabulary first: glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common adult malignant brain tumour, CD133+ is a neural precursor cell marker and the members of the BMP family make neural precursor cells differentiatie into mature astrocytes, glial cells. So the lab guys were dissociating solid tumour samples into single-cell suspensions and were testing their response to BMP. The large picture is that BMP treatment (specially BMP4) reduced cancer cell proliferation, induced astrocyte-like differentiation, effectively blocks the tumour growth and prolonges survival.