Pain-relieving stem cells
Researchers from the University of Sydney used induced pluripotent human stem cells to create pain-relieving neurons that provide long-term pain relief in mice in a single procedure without side effects.
Nerve damage can lead to debilitating neuropathic pain; there are no effective treatments for it for most patients. Previous studies have shown that stem cells-precursors of GABA-ergic (transmitting a signal using the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid) neurons can provide relief from pain. However, multipotent status, i.e. the ability to differentiate into different types of neurons, makes them unsuitable for therapeutic use.
This study gives hope to some of the patients with chronic pain to receive pain-relieving transplants from their own cells, which will be able to eliminate the underlying cause of pain.
The group used human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) taken from bone marrow, created pain–relieving cells from them in the laboratory - the final derivatives of GABAERGIC neurons, and then placed them in the spinal cord of mice with severe neuropathic pain. Neurons from stem cells contributed to long-term pain relief without side effects. GABAERGIC neuron transplants survived in the spinal cord for a long time. Moreover, they showed signs of synaptic integration. This means that transplant therapy can be an effective method of long-term treatment of neuropathic pain.
Since it is possible to choose where to place the analgesic neurons, theoretically it is possible to target therapy only on those parts of the body that carry the source of pain. This means that the approach will have fewer side effects.
The next steps for the next five years are numerous safety tests on rodents and pigs, and then on people suffering from chronic pain. According to the researchers, if the result in patients is successful, this method could be a major breakthrough in the development of new non-addictive strategies for treating pain in humans.
Article by G.Neely et al. Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived GABAergic interneuron transplants attenuate neuropathic pain is published in the journal Pain.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on Neuroscience News: First treatment for pain using human stem cells a success.