Researchers now say they can create an unlimited number of these neurons that could help in a better understanding of the disease and, one day, lead to new treatments or even the production of healthy cells that can replace the diseased ones.
Neural cells, brain cells that degenerate in patients with Lou Gehrig's disease, were derived by the researchers using a method first developed by Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan. The method involves inserting four different genes into skin cells, causing them to revert to a primordial state similar to embryonic stem cells.
The motor neurons were taken from skin cells obtained from two elderly sisters who are 82 and 89 years old and among the oldest living patients with ALS. The researchers inserted the nucleus of a patient's skin cell into a woman's egg cell in which genetic material has been removed, Bloomberg reports.
However, the actual therapeutic potential of this approach is still years away as the method, which uses viruses, can trigger cancer and other undesired effects. Scientists are now working on alternative methods of reprogramming cells without using viruses.
Lou Gehrig's disease is caused by the degeneration and death of spinal motor neurons, which carry messages from the spinal cord to the body's muscles. This leads to paralysis of muscles and, eventually, death.
ALS is one of the most common neuromuscular diseases worldwide, and people of all races and ethnic backgrounds are affected. One to two people per 100,000 develop ALS each year. ALS most commonly strikes people between 40 and 60 years of age, but younger and older people can also develop the disease. Men are affected slightly more often than women. Some 30,000 people in the United States suffer from the disease, which has no cure.
The new findings are reported in Friday's edition of the Journal of Science.
