Urine cells are converted into brain cells

Stem cell research: Brain cells from urine raise new hope for Alzheimer's patients

11/12/2012

Urine as a remedy? What sounds strange at first, researchers from China's Guangzhou Biomedicine and Health Institute have recently revealed in a new study - raising hopes for patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

For the study, which took place on December 9 in the science magazine „Nature Methods“ has been published. Duanqing Pei, a professor of stem cell biology and President of the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health (GIBH) and his team of human urine, isolates cells that can be transformed into brain cells, creating a way to bypass the field of embryonic stem cells.

Alternative to embryonic stem cells
The issue of embryonic stem cells in research and medicine is considered critically ethically questionable - because to win human embryonic stem cells, it is necessary to destroy earlier human embryos. One possible solution here is the so-called „induces pluripotent stem cells“, Cells that are artificially produced by turning a patient's stem cells back into cells of an earlier stage of development. So far, blood or skin cells have been the basis for this research - but the Chinese research team led by Prof. Duanqing Pei now used urine as a basis for the first time, which offers the great advantage that it is less complicated and faster to use.

For their study, scientists from the urine of three volunteers aged 10, 25 and 37 years extracted cells and converted them into cells that induce pluripotent stem cells “strongly resembled“ - and this in a relatively short period of 12 days, other methods had previously taken twice as long.

Already in 2011 first successes with urine
Already last year, the Chinese team of researchers succeeded in producing pluripotent stem cells from urine - but at the time the scientists used retroviruses, including the HIV virus, to bring in the necessary genes, and they had a clear disadvantage: These viruses have a transformative effect on the genome of the cells and make them more unpredictable, which may also mean that they can proliferate and, in the worst case, cause cancer.

New method with fewer risks
For their current investigations, the researchers have now modified their method: They used tiny pieces of a DNA of a bacterium, which although the state of the cell change, but not permanently affect the genome - and thus minimize the risk of unpredictable developments.

In order to ascertain the results, the Chinese scientists additionally allowed the cells obtained to continue to grow in a nutrient solution and found pleasing results. In fact, functional nerve cells (neurons) had developed in this way, which were then injected into the brains of newly born rats. The result: After four weeks, the cells had entered the neuronal network without forming tumors.

But the research of Duanqing Pei and his colleagues is not yet over: In a next project is planned to isolate cells from the urine of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients, to investigate how they may „Restoration“ attacked neurons could serve.

Method promises great potential for research
The findings of the Chinese experts are highly popular in professional circles, because the applied method offers great potential for research: "It could significantly speed things up," said the opinion of autism specialist James Ellis of the Children's Hospital in Toronto (Canada) on demand of the magazine „Nature“. Because he also relies on pluripotent stem cells for the study of possible genetic causes of autism - and especially when working with children, a urine sample is much easier to get than a blood or skin sample.

And while an actual use of the method in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases would certainly take a great deal of time and further study, perhaps the Chinese scientists have pioneered new approaches to research in this area. A short abstract of the study "Generation of integration-free neural progenitor cells from cells in human urine" can be found here. (Sb)

Picture: Gerd Altmann