Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine
Posted: June 20, 2006
Summary:
A team of Johns Hopkins scientists reports that they’ve engineered new, completed, fully-working motor neuron circuits -- neurons stretching from spinal cord to target muscles -- in paralyzed adult animals. The research, in which mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells were injected into rats whose virus-damaged spinal cords model nerve disease, shows that such cells can be made to re-trace complex pathways of nerve development long shut off in adult mammals, the researchers say.
