Brain cell transplant successful

STEM CELLS Neural links grow after procedure

A specific type of human brain cell manufactured by UCSF scientists in a lab and transplanted into a mouse brain was able to continue to grow and develop neural connections in the rodent.

The work suggests that similar transplants may be possible someday in humans and could provide treatments, or at least open avenues of research, for diseases like Parkinson's and epilepsy.

The scientists started with human stem cells that they carefully directed to become medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) cells. These cells are progenitors themselves, meaning that they further develop to become a type of cell called an interneuron that controls communication between neurons.

After scientists developed the MGE cells, they transplanted them into the mouse brains, where over a period of seven to nine months the cells became interneurons and connected seamlessly with the mouse neurons.

The experiments show that scientists may be able to develop mouse models to study diseases in which interneurons malfunction. Plus, they suggest that scientists may be able to use similar laboratory manufacturing processes to grow large amounts of MGE cells to treat humans.

The research was published May 2 in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

- Erin Allday

EPILEPSY Cell transplant controls seizures

In other MGE news, UCSF researchers were able to control epileptic seizures in mice that did not respond to drugs by transplanting the specialized cells into the brain, according to a new study.

Researchers transplanted the medial ganglionic eminence cells into the hippocampus. They found that the cells stopped seizures in half the mice and lowered the frequency of seizures in the others.

Different types of transplanted cells had failed to halt seizures in previous studies.

Seizures occur when nerve cells in the brain fire uncontrollably, leading to severe muscle contractions. One cause of seizures is the loss of inhibitory neurons, which the study found were replaced with new cells generated by the transplanted MGE cells.

The mice had a version of epilepsy that was similar to the human version of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, which is rooted in the hippocampus.

The study was published this month in Nature Neuroscience.

- Drew Joseph

SKIN CANCER Surgery option re-evaluated

Doctors typically remove skin cancers with surgery, but a UCSF-led study suggests they might reconsider that approach for older, frail patients who have common non-melanoma forms of skin cancer.

The study found older, sicker patients often experience complications and may not live long enough to benefit from treating the less aggressive forms of the disease such as basal and squamous cell carcinoma.

About 2.2 million Americans - mostly older people - are diagnosed each year with non-melanoma skin cancer, making it the most common type of cancer. Melanoma, an aggressive and potentially deadly form of the disease, needs to be treated.

The researchers followed more than 1,300 San Francisco patients with non-melanoma skin cancer for about 10 years. About a quarter of the patients had limited life expectancies because they were at least 85 years old or had a number of serious health conditions.

While most patients were treated surgically, many patients suffered from surgical complications such as poor wound healing, itching and pain. Nearly half the patients with limited life expectancies died within five years, but none from skin cancer.

The study was published online last month in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

- Victoria Colliver

CHILDBIRTH Mom's diabetes affects baby's weight

Developing gestational diabetes during pregnancy increases the chances that a woman will give birth to a large baby, but that increased risk varies greatly by both the weight and the race of the mother, according to a large Kaiser Permanente study.

The study looked at 7,468 women with gestational diabetes who gave birth between 1995 and 2006 at Kaiser hospitals in Northern California. Women who were obese or very obese - defined as a body mass index of 30-34 or 35 and up, respectively - were more likely to deliver large babies than normal weight women.

But the risk varied depending on race. Asian women at opposite ends of the weight spectrum - those who were normal weight and those who were very obese - had the highest rates of delivering large babies compared with similarly size women in other ethnic groups. About 9 percent of normal weight Asian women had large babies, but that rate jumped to 44 percent for very obese Asian women.

Meanwhile, black women who were normal weight had the lowest rate of delivering large babies - 4.4 percent. But their chances of having a large baby shot up - varying from 25 to 31 percent - whether they were simply overweight or very obese.

Delivering large babies can put both infants and mothers at risk, both from injury during childbirth and, for the babies, later development of childhood obesity or diabetes. The research suggests weight alone is not the best predictor of which women will deliver large babies.

The study results were published May 8 in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

- Erin Allday

PROSTATE CANCER Molecule key to disease's survival

A single molecule appears to be at the heart of the survival tactics of prostate cancer cells, UC Davis researchers have found.

The researchers found that a specific microRNA that is highly expressed in prostate cancer has the ability to thwart treatment efforts by turning off some tumor genes that would, if they were left alone, make the therapy more effective. MicroRNAs are small, single strands of ribonucleic acid, which plays a role in transferring information from DNA to the cells.

The research, published last month by the Public Library of Science, or PLOS, suggests the microRNA, called miR-125b, could be an important potential target in stopping prostate cancer from growing, particularly in patients who have developed resistance to standard hormone treatments.

- Victoria Colliver