Lead researcher Gary Steinberg, a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, and his team tested human stem cells from the brains of donated terminated fetuses and how they reacted with growth factors to be stable.
These human cells were injected into the brains of the 10 rats that had strokes. They found that the cells moved periodically to the damaged areas and connect to repair the damaged tissue. The rats' movements improved significantly after eight weeks of therapy.
"This is the first report demonstrating that the transplantation of human neural stem cells derived from human embryonic stem cells can improve neurologic behaviour after experimental stroke," the authors write in the journal PLoS One.
A stroke leaves an irreversible gap in the brain that damages person's ability to move and speak normally. Steinberg said that these human embryonic stem cell-based therapies have the potential to treat this complex disease.
