Parkinson's artificial brain bank

17 June 2011 Last updated at 16:12 GMT By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News Brain cells grown from the skin cells of a Parkinson's patient are likely to deteriorate Researchers in Oxford have begun creating a bank of artificially grown brain cells from Parkinson's patients, BBC news has learned.

They are using a new stem cell technique that allows them to turn a small piece of skin from the patient into a small piece of brain.

This is the first time this has been done in a large-scale study aimed at finding cures for the disease.

Researchers say they can analyse nerve cells as they start to deteriorate.

The first batch of nerve cells have been grown from a 56-year-old Oxfordshire man, Derek Underwood.

He had to take early retirement because of the progression of the disease.

Mr Underwood will be the first of 50 patients whose skin cells will be grown into brain cells as part of a five year study.

According Dr Richard Wade Martins of Oxford University, who is leading the study, the aim is to build up a "brain bank" which will enable researchers to study how the disease develops in unprecedented detail.

"The brain is an inaccessible organ and you can't get bits of people's brain to study very easily," he said.

"But what we have here is a disease in a dish, that are just like Derek's brain cells but are accessible and can be produced in unlimited quantities"

Lab brain

The first step, according to Dr Michelle Hu of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, is to compare the brain cells grown from Parkinson's patients, with those grown from healthy volunteers and see how they differ.

"For the first time we can look at the cells before they deteriorate and look at the earliest changes," she said.

"We can look at what cellular processes are happening that make the cells die and learn why it is that the cells get sick. And we want to see if there are any treatments we can offer to reverse that process and help patients regain normal function."

This is the first large scale clinical study to use a technique which was developed by Japanese scientists three years ago, called "induced pluripotent stem cell" or IPS for short.

Genes are inserted into the skin cells, reprogramming them to become something else.

IPS is similar to the embryonic stem cell technique which was used to create Dolly the Sheep, but IPS does not result in the creation of an embryo and so is regarded by some as an ethically more acceptable approach.

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Bacteria 'linked' to Parkinson's

22 May 2011 Last updated at 23:03 GMT Could this bacterium cause Parkinson's disease? The bacteria responsible for stomach ulcers have been linked to Parkinson's disease, according to researchers in the US.

Mice infected with Helicobacter pylori went onto develop Parkinson's like symptoms.

The study, presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, argues that infection could play "a significant role".

The charity Parkinson's UK said the results should be treated with caution.

Parkinson's disease affects the brain and results in slow movements and a tremor.

Middle-aged mice, the equivalent of being between 55 and 65 in humans, were infected. Six months later they showed symptoms related to Parkinson's, such as reduced movement and decreased levels of a chemical, dopamine, in the brain.

These changes were not noticed in younger mice.

Toxic

Dr Traci Testerman, from the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, said: "Our findings suggest that H. pylori infection could play a significant role in the development of Parkinson's disease in humans.

"The results were far more dramatic in aged mice than in young mice, demonstrating that normal ageing increases susceptibility to Parkinsonian changes in mice, as is seen in humans."

The researchers believe the bacteria are producing chemicals which are toxic to the brain.

They said H. pylori was able to "steal" cholesterol from the body and process it by adding a sugar group.

The bacteria responsible for stomach ulcers may have a role in Parkinson's say researchers.

Dr Testerman said this new chemical was almost identical to one found in seeds from the cycad plant, which had been shown to trigger a Parkinson's-like disease among people in Guam.

She told the BBC: "H. pylori eradication in late stage Parkinson's disease is unlikely to result in significant improvement.

"Certain neurons are killed before symptoms begin, and more are killed as the disease progresses. Those neurons will not grow back."

Dr Kieran Breen, director of research at Parkinson's UK, said: "We believe Parkinson's is most likely caused by a combination of environmental factors together with an individual's genetic susceptibility to developing the condition.

He said there was some evidence that bacteria can prevent the main drug to treat Parkinson's, levodopa, being absorbed, but there was no strong evidence that people who have H. pylori in their gut are actually more likely to develop Parkinson's.

He added: "The current study is interesting and suggests that the bacteria may release a toxin that could kill nerve cells.

"However, the results should be treated with caution. The research was carried out in mice that were infected with relatively high doses of the bacterium or its extract.

"While they developed movement problems, we don't know whether this was actually due to the death of nerve cells. Further research needs to be carried out".

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