Don’t know if this has been posted, just read today. One time treatment.

[ParlePark]

medicalxpress.com/news/2020...

[WinnieThePoo]

Oh to be a mouse...

Sounds more than promising as strand 3 of a cure (reversing damage already caused by the disease). I guess a minimum of 10 years to market, but that would still be something to look forward to.

[Gioc]

This is the kind of discovery that makes the history of research and medicine. Congratulations ... it's fantastic. Thank you.

[Kevin51]

Amazing results 🙂 " Using a chemically induced model of Parkinson’s disease in mouse, we show conversion of midbrain astrocytes to dopaminergic neurons, which provide axons to reconstruct the nigrostriatal circuit." It's the wiring that matters, of course. nature.com/articles/s41586-...

[felixned]

Although it is very interesting research I wouldn't get excited. The fundamental problem is that mice don't have Parkinson disease. The simulation of the pd they use doesn't have much in common with the Parkinson we have. This simulated pd was cured in mice many times but unfortunately never produced a single treatment for us

[Hidden in reply to felixned]

This has to be a factor. It would seem that the MPTP induced parkinsonism in mice is not the same as PD.

[WinnieThePoo in reply to Hidden]

I think this is different because it's a simple case of generating dopamine producing neurons. There's no need to model the disease process, just inflict the damage it causes. This is the equivalent of stem cells. Only part of the solution. Ideally you still need to drop disease progression and neuro protect.

But a really useful tool in the box potentially

[Hidden in reply to WinnieThePoo]

Can't disagree with any of that, besides your definition of 'simple', since I suspect it will be anything but, lol.

[WinnieThePoo in reply to Hidden]

Yes, i did smile at simple when I wrote it

[Gioc in reply to felixned]

No, in this case it is different, it is whole new strategy. The mechanism of action has nothing to do with the method by which PD is caused in mice, but we will have to wait for the outcome on humans, I hope soon.

I would like to quote a passage, which in my opinion is very interesting, which gives a great deal of hope:

"I was stunned at what I saw," said study co-author William Mobley, MD, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "This whole new strategy for treating neurodegeneration gives hope that it may be possible to help even those with advanced disease."

[Rhyothemis in reply to Gioc]

Exactly. The main point is that it replaced neurons and that the new neurons functioned normally. The whole 'neurons aren't replaceable' thing has been a major issue of debate in radical life extension circles - they will be encouraged, I think.

[Parkinsonjisung]

I doubt this will ever get to human trials but its amazing discovery non the less. Theres a really good explanation of it on alzforum website

[Gioc in reply to Parkinsonjisung]

Here the link, I think:

alzforum.org/news/research-...

[ParlePark in reply to Gioc]

Thanks for this Gio!

[TL500]

Thanks. Interesting and hopeful info!

[JerMan22]

A few things about this approach seem more hopeful to me than other approaches. First, it's based on several things that are already working (to some degree) in humans:

"Antisense oligonucleotides, also known as designer DNA drugs, are a proven approach for neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases—study co-author, Don Cleveland, Ph.D., pioneered the technology, and it now forms the basis for a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved therapy for spinal muscular atrophy and several other therapies currently in clinical trials."

Also, the story about how this was discovered talks about a post-doc who noticed "something odd after a couple of weeks—there were very few fibroblasts left. Almost the whole dish was instead filled with neurons."

Even if he wasn't using human fibroblasts at the time, human cells are easy to come by for researchers (people donate their remains to science all the time), so it would be nearly inconceivable if they didn't repeat this experiment with human fibroblasts. If that hadn't worked, it surely would've been mentioned. In fact, onne of the references says as much: "47.

Caiazzo, M. et al. Direct generation of functional dopaminergic neurons from mouse and human fibroblasts. Nature 476, 224–227 (2011)."

Finally, compared to stem cells, the number and complexity of steps involved suggests to me that there are simply many fewer things to go wrong with this approach. Much less expensive too, I would expect.