Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Even brain cells can grow
By Breakthroughs
Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
“All growth,” says Henry Miller, author of the highly controversial book, Tropic of Cancer, “is a leap in the dark.”
The same is true with brain cells; growth has been considered not possible for adults. Once destroyed, they can never be regenerated or replaced. But that is no longer true today.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, led by Jeffrey S. Flier, M.D., proved in a recent study that brain cells in the hypothalamus can grow and multiply. Flier is dean for academic programs at the Harvard Medical School (HMS).
The key to this brain-cell growth is a new group of compounds called ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF). The accidental discovery of CNTF came when Regenero tested the drug, Axokine, in the 1990s as a treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rapidly progressing disease that attacks the nerve cells responsible for controlling muscle movement.
Axokine, however, failed in the study. But surprisingly, participants reported a loss of appetite.
To further investigate this unusual effect, Flier and colleagues used a CNTF compound (like Axokine) to inject into the brains of mice, specifically the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is a small cone-shaped region of the brain known to influence appetite, body temperature, water balance, and blood pressure. To detect newly developed brain cells, they injected Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU), a chemical which tags newly formed cells with a green color.
After five weeks, the researchers dissected the animals’ brains. The mice injected with CNTF had roughly five times as many BrdU-tagged brain cells in their hypothalamus than non-injected mice, showing that the treatment stimulates new cell growth. The researchers report their findings in this year’s issue of Science.
In another CNTF study, led by Fred H. Gage PhD, new cells were also generated even in the brains of terminal cancer patients. Gage is a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies in San Diego, California, USA.
“All of the patients showed evidence of recent cell division,” says Gage. “It’s interesting to note that this was not a particularly young or healthy group of people.”
Humans are born, it appeared, with the capacity to grow beyond what we presently can understand. “There are no such things as limits to growth,” said the late former US President Ronald Reagan, “because there are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder.” (For comments and suggestions, email to ztliteratus6046@lycos.com.)
(November 16, 2005 issue)
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