NERVE cells with huge potential for treating paralysis could be made from a person's own skin or hair follicles, making spinal repair a more realistic prospect.
Studies in rats and dogs have already demonstrated that olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), which insulate bundles of nerve cells, can help repair damage to the spinal cord and nerves leading to animals' paws.
In rats and dogs, these cells can repair damage to the spinal cord and nerves leading to animals' paws
The prospects for using them in treatments have been limited, however, because their only sources were thought to be the lining of the nose and the olfactory bulb in the brain where smell signals are processed. Biopsies from the human nose lining have only yielded tiny numbers of OECs, and obtaining them from the olfactory bulb would be invasive and potentially dangerous.
Clare Baker of the University of Cambridge and colleagues injected chicken and mice embryos with neural crest cells genetically engineered to glow green under ultraviolet light. Neural crest cells are primordial cells that have the potential to develop into nervous system cells, among others. By visually tracking the cells in the growing embryos, they found some became OECs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1012248107).
Because neural crest cells can also be isolated from skin and hair follicles, OECs could potentially be grown from a patient's own cells.
Geoffrey Raisman, who is developing treatments based on OECs at the Institute of Neurology in London, says the work could lead to a better source of the cells. "But the problem is not the source, it's whether you can generate enough cells for treatment," he says.
Baker agrees, and says the challenge now is to find out how to turn neural crest cells into huge quantities of OECs in the lab.
