How are stem cells significant in multiple sclerosis (MS) research?

As we go to press, we can also report on the latest reports from the January 2007 international meeting in San Francisco hosted by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS). There Dr. Anne Baron-Van Evercooren reported that in her Paris laboratory, she and her colleagues have shown that tissues damaged by multiple sclerosis (MS) attacks send distress signals which appear to trigger "endogenous" stem cells to start differentiating into immature myelin-making cells. As this is the first step in the body's natural repair process, she sees these stem cells as "candidates of great interest" in research into enhancing myelin repair.

"We need to find ways to enhance migration and recruitment by the MS lesions," she told the conference.Dr. Jeffrey Kocsis and his research team from Yale University have been studying stem cells from the human nose (OECs); cells that produce myelin outside the central nervous system and stem cells found in bone marrow. He reported that surgically transplanted OECs helped in the regrowth of broken axons (nerve fibers) and protected damaged axons. It also helped in remyelination of damaged axons in lab animals.

Dr. Kocsis is also working with a group at Tulane University Medical Center on a study of adult stem-cell use to repair spinal cord injury. Joanne Kurtzburg of Duke University reported on the healing potential of stem cells derived from umbilical-cord blood which can be readily and harmlessly retrieved right after birth. She described success in cord stem-cell transplants in children with neurological disease that may work some day as a strategy for MS.

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