Embryonic Stem Cells
Can Become Motor Neurons

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently announced in Nature Biotechnology that they’ve developed a chemical recipe to coax human embryonic stem cells to develop into motor neurons, the muscle-controlling nerve cells that are lost in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Xue-Jun Li and colleagues used two federally approved lines of stem cells and exposed them to retinoic acid early and to several other compounds later on.

Vassilis Koliatsos, an MDA-supported neuropathologist studying stem cells at Johns Hopkins University, says the Wisconsin researchers’ recipe works well in laboratory containers, but that putting them into animals will likely “hold many surprises.”

Koliatsos said it’s unclear that the new motor neurons would survive in the face of an overwhelming degenerative process like that seen in ALS. And, he notes, even if they did survive, getting them to “talk to” muscle cells is another unmet challenge.

In ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases, Koliatsos says, every neuron lost increases the chance that more neurons will be lost. “It’s theoretically possible that we can put in the right number of cells such that the neurodegenerative process can be delayed significantly,” Koliatsos said, adding that not much else can yet be predicted.