A neuron transplant has rewired damaged brain areas in mice, raising hopes that similar transplants might one day help to treat spinal-cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and other brain conditions.
Jeffrey Macklis at Harvard University and his colleagues took healthy neurons from mouse embryos that had been labelled with a green fluorescent protein. They used them to repair a brain circuit involved in the regulation of food intake and body weight in response to a hormone called leptin in mutant mice born with damage to that area, which become dangerously overweight as a result.
The fluorescent neurons survived the transplant, integrated into the brain circuit, and differentiated into mature neurons that could communicate with existing neurons and respond to leptin, insulin and glucose – suggesting that they had repaired the damaged circuit. The treated obese mice went on to weigh 30 per cent less than their untreated counterparts.
"These embryonic neurons were wired in with less precision than one might think, but that didn't seem to matter," says Jeffrey Flier, dean of Harvard Medical School, who was part of the team. "They are like antennas that were immediately able to pick up the leptin signal."
The next question is whether transplanted neurons could rewire other complex brain circuits involved in diseases or brain injury, which might be more dependent on signals coming from other neurons, rather than signals coming from the blood. "In these cases, can we rebuild circuitry in the mammalian brain? I suspect that we can," says Macklis.
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1209870
Jeffrey Macklis at Harvard University and his colleagues took healthy neurons from mouse embryos that had been labelled with a green fluorescent protein. They used them to repair a brain circuit involved in the regulation of food intake and body weight in response to a hormone called leptin in mutant mice born with damage to that area, which become dangerously overweight as a result.
The fluorescent neurons survived the transplant, integrated into the brain circuit, and differentiated into mature neurons that could communicate with existing neurons and respond to leptin, insulin and glucose – suggesting that they had repaired the damaged circuit. The treated obese mice went on to weigh 30 per cent less than their untreated counterparts.
"These embryonic neurons were wired in with less precision than one might think, but that didn't seem to matter," says Jeffrey Flier, dean of Harvard Medical School, who was part of the team. "They are like antennas that were immediately able to pick up the leptin signal."
The next question is whether transplanted neurons could rewire other complex brain circuits involved in diseases or brain injury, which might be more dependent on signals coming from other neurons, rather than signals coming from the blood. "In these cases, can we rebuild circuitry in the mammalian brain? I suspect that we can," says Macklis.
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1209870
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