Author | Rachelle Wu
Editor丨Valuri Yang
The secret of neurons regeneration
As many people know, almost all the people’s brain stop growing after they finish their adolescence, which mean the ability of nerve regeneration is greatly reduced, and even the regeneration of neurons is stopped. Therefore, when people suffered severe neurological damage after the age of 18, it will be hard for them to recover from the damage and go back to the normal function. For example, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system that typically occurs in old age and or pre-old age. This disease is caused by the irreversible cranial nerve death, it is still one of the incurable diseases. If there is a way to regenerate neurons in the brain, this could be a new opportunity for many patients, including those with Alzheimer's disease.
Fortunately, neuronal regeneration is not completely impossible, and scientists have found a type of resting or dormant cell called neural stem cells (NSC) in certain areas of the adult brain. These stem cells can be activated and regrown to differentiate into a variety of cell lineages, including astrocytes, neurons, and more. Despite this, little is known about the activation of these dormant cells. How do we activate them? Can NSC be activated in the elderly? How can these NSC be harvested and used effectively? What diseases could this technology be used to treat?
A team led by scientists from the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva has discovered that cellular metabolism is important in the activation of NSC and has found a way to activate these stem cells. Scientists have found NSC in parts of the adult brain that can give rise to new neurons over the course of a lifetime. This biological phenomenon is known as adult neurogenesis. The scientists then successfully increased the number of new neurons in the brains of adult and even old mice in the laboratory.
However, adult neurogenesis decreases significantly with age. The laboratory led by professor Jean-Claude Martinou ( Emeritus Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the UN IGE Faculty of Science) and Marlen Knobloch (Associate Professor in the Department of Bio medical Sciences at the UNIL Faculty of Biology and Medicine) discovered a special metabolic mechanism through which NSCs can be activated.
They found that mitochondria, organelles that produce energy within cells, are involved in regulating the level of adult NSC activation. Eleven years ago, Professor Martinou’s group found a protein called mitochondrial pyruvate transporter (MPC). MPC plays a special role in this regulation. Its activity affects the metabolic choices available to the cell. By understanding the metabolic pathways that distinguish active and dormant cells, dormant cells can be waken up by modifying mitochondrial metabolism. Professor Jean-Claude Martinou concludes:"These results shed new light on the role of c ell metabolism in the regulation of neurogenesis. In the long term, these results could lead to potential treatments for conditions such as depression or neurodegenerative diseases."
Due to the low number of NSC in the adult human brain, stem cell transplants are necessary when large numbers of neural stem cells are required for treatment. The number of cells required for NSC transplantation is huge, and the source of cells has become the primary problem that must be solved in clinical treatment and scientific research. Research has shown that NSC with the ability to self-renew can be isolated from rodent embryonic tissue and human brain tissue. Nowadays, it is clear that there are three sources to get NSC, including direct extraction from primary tissues, differentiation from pluripotent stem cells, and trans differentiation from somatic cells.
Currently, NSC transplant technology has the potential to cure many diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, spinal cord injury (SCI), traumatic brain injury (TBI), Parkinson's syndrome (PD) and other diseases caused by the reduced or damaged neurons. At present, patients with these diseases are rarely able to get effective treatment, which troubles many people, and more people will benefit from NSC transplant technology after it is more perfect and popularized.
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