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Neurobiology

Stem cells on the brain

Nature volume 412, pages 690–691 (2001)Cite this article

Stem cells have great potential for treating a variety of diseases and seem to hit the headlines almost every week. An extremely pure population of brain stem cells has now been obtained from adult mice.

Many of us were taught in school that we are born with a certain number of nerve cells, which cannot renew themselves. But, after some initial indications in the 1960s, it is now known that our brains are much more capable of change than was previously thought, and that neurons are continuously replenished in some regions of the adult brain1. These new neurons are derived from immature cells called stem cells. Stem cells have the potential to generate not only new stem cells but also several types of mature cell; neural stem cells, for example, can produce both neurons and supporting cells called glia. This potential has fuelled hope that brain stem cells might be used in the treatment of, for instance, neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease2. Yet first we must be able to isolate these cells, and this in turn requires a knowledge of their defining features. On page 736 of this issue3, Rietze and colleagues tackle the problem, describing how they achieved a high degree of purification of neural stem cells.

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Figure 1: A source of brain stem cells.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Medical Nobel Institute, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, SE-171 77, Sweden

    Robert Cassidy & Jonas Frisén

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  1. Robert Cassidy
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  2. Jonas Frisén
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Cassidy, R., Frisén, J. Stem cells on the brain. Nature 412, 690–691 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35089165

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