The future looks promising for the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) as a treatment or cure for PD. Stem cell research, hotly contested in the United States, has primarily been done with animal stem cells, but the use of human embryonic stem cells in animal subjects has resulted in a fatal disease called vCJD. The converse is held to be true if animal stem cells are used in human subjects. Because of the strong opposition to stem cell research by certain active political groups, researchers have been relegated to growing human embryonic stem cells in cultures of animal tissue; this can also cause cross-species contamination. Although scientists say that research using human adult stem cells originating in bone marrow should continue, as many of these political groups suggest, they claim that the use of embryonic stem cells is far more effective with the present level of knowledge. The use of a patient's adult stem cells, of course, would be beneficial as it would allow specialists to grow and customize (or tailor-make) a patient's injected stem cells without compromising the patient's immune system. For PD, in which stem cell research offers a treatment or a cure, some say within 3 to 5 years, stem cells are placed in the region of the brain, the substantia nigra, in which the stem cells develop into the dopaminergic neurons present in that region of the brain. Read more
here and
here. Click
here for an informational website on stem cells provided by the
National Institutes of Health (NIH).
