Neurons derived from schizophrenic patients.
CREDIT: Dr. Kristen Brennand, Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
Posted on 04/13/2011 6:16:22 PM PDT by decimon
Skin cells taken from four individuals with schizophrenia have been turned into brain cells, or neurons, and grown in lab dishes, the first time a complex mental disorder has been examined using living brain cells.
The lab-grown neurons showed fewer connections between each other than was found in healthy brain cells, the researchers said.
The research not only will assist scientists in understanding the causes of a mental disease that plagues about 1 percent of the world's population (and about 3 million people in the United States), but also takes a step toward personalized medicine for those afflicted.
"What's so exciting about this approach is that we can examine patient-derived neurons that are perhaps equivalent to a particular patient's own neural cells," said researcher Gong Chen, an associate professor of biology at Penn State. The method would also allow researchers to test which drugs might work best for a particular patient without that person having to try it out first, Chen added.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Ping.
I can hardly wait for part 2.
Good. Maybe I can be cured. :)
Ya gotta have some skin in the game.
I mean synthetic insanity.
People will go nuts for it.
Start a whole new craze.
People will go nuts for it.
Start a whole new craze.
Did you miss the '60s, Fred? ;-)
Hah. I live in Idaho. That was only 20 years ago.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Cheers!
And I always thought schizophrenic brain cells
were created at Democrat party conventions.
Who da thunk?
Schizophrenia 'in a dish' links the Nature News' version of the story.
Modelling schizophrenia using human induced pluripotent stem cells links the abstract.
The sixties were only twenty years ago in Idaho. Ya lost me.
Because of the heavy Mormon influence here, people joke that Idaho is 20-30 years behind “the times”.
BTTT
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