Swedish researchers have successfully reprogrammed a type of cell in the brain into another that can help stop disorder in the brain's signals in diseases such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's. The research was conducted by Daniella Rylander Ottosson, a neurophysiology researcher at Lund University. The method involves a new way to produce cells that is also much faster.
The discovery originated from a failed experiment where Rylander Ottosson initially aimed to reprogram support cells, or glial cells, into a different cell type important for Parkinson's disease, but instead produced parvalbumin interneurons. Parvalbumin cells are an elite group among neurons that act as brakes in brain activity, and when they function poorly, the balance in the brain's signals can be disrupted, which researchers link to diseases like schizophrenia, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's. In the lab, the research group has developed a recipe for how the gene expression of glial cells can be redirected so that they develop into new parvalbumin cells.
The research is still in an experimental stage, and it is a long way before the method could become relevant for humans. The researchers hope that a future treatment could involve a form of gene therapy where the new cells are created directly in the brain, using the patient's own cells to reduce the risk of rejection. Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric disease involving recurrent psychoses, with heredity as the biggest risk factor, and it is not clearly established what happens in the brain, but research suggests changes in the brain's signaling system and fewer synapses in patients.
Epilepsy is a collective term for several types of seizures with various causes and severity, diagnosed after recurrent unprovoked epileptic seizures, often involving overactive nerve cells in the brain.