Human Brain Regeneration

Human Brain Transplantation Protocol Approved To Reverse Nerve And Brain Damage

This is one of the coolest science pieces I’ve come across ever.

You know why brain injury is so bad? Because cells in the brain don’t regenerate. Once you kill them, they’re dead. No healing.

Now there’s a workaround on deck.

While growing cells in petri dishes has been done for more than a century, this old technique is being applied in ground-breaking new ways, and with space-age equipment, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Neurofunctional Surgery Center. The goal is to produce cures for such previously incurable conditions as spinal cord injuries, stroke, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s disease.

The project was sparked by the recent discovery of human brain cells’ potential for regeneration, contradicting previous scientific assumptions. “While it is true that brain cells don’t regenerate in situ, we have found that a very small number of brain cells, harvested and placed into a special environment, can be stimulated to regenerate, and that regeneration continues when the cells are re-introduced into the brain…”

The article goes on to say that they think they can use this technique to cure degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease relatively easily because they’d only be working with a single type of neurotransmitter cells. Other problems, such as spinal cord injuries, are much more difficult due to the large variations in cells required for repair. Still they believe they’re only about six months off of treating such patients with this technique.

The next step, they say, is to learn how to stimulate the cells to regenerate while still inside the brain. That would eliminate, I assume, the need for two surgeries — one to harvest the required cells, and one to implant the regenerating cells.

This just has huge implications for treating brain injury and disease. Imagine that yesterday you had no hope for ever improving and saw your life moving in a downward spiral, physically. Then you hear about this. The potential for serious, life-altering treatment is about 6 months away.

This is absolutely tremendous. If I’m understanding this correctly, I can’t think of a bigger medical announcement that has occurred in my lifetime.

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