Clinical Progress of Neural Stem Cells Treatment for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Motor Neuron Disease

- by Wu Medical Center
Currently Wu Medical Center (WMC) has achieved some good progress for ALS/MND treatment, such as doctor Li-Ke Wu discovering that the ALS/MND patient’s abnormal protein accumulation is related to tau protein degeneration, and based on this knowledge, there is an option to treat and improve the motor neurons’ anti-disease fighting ability. For example: motor neurons have tau proteins which are a kind of functional protein. When tau protein gene mutation occurs, there will be a faulty transformation from α-helix to β-pleated sheets, leading to heterodimer formation and a gradual accumulation of abnormal proteins. This can affect neighboring motor neurons via the axon nerves’s conduction and the motor neurons will start the programmed cell necrosis. WMC doctors use implanted neural precursor cells which have healthy genes to build interneurons among the genetically mutated nerve cells. They can provide molecular chaperones, and change the methionine into valine, correct the faulty β-pleated sheet transformations, allowing normal nucleoprotein to be produced to repair the nerve cells. The therapy can help patients restore their motor neuron functioning, improve the capability of disease resistance, and provide a new effective method to deal with ALS. However, this neural stem cell therapy requires a series of clinical monitoring and control processes toward the cells in-vivo in order to achieve effective treatment outcome.