Dear all,
Below is an article that came in Times of India on Aug 2nd, 08.

Nerve cells from new-style stem cells
2 Aug 2008, 0010 hrs IST,REUTERS

WASHINGTON: Ordinary skin cells taken from patients with a fatal and
incurable nerve disease have been transformed into nerve cells in a
first step toward treating them, US researchers reported.

They transformed the cells from two patients with amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, into motor neurons - the
cells that waste away and die in ALS. There is no immediate medical
use for the cells, taken from two sisters aged 82 and 89, the
researchers reported in the journal Science.

"Now we can make limitless supplies of the cells that die in this
awful disease. This will allow us to study these neurons, and ALS,
in a lab dish, and figure out what's happening in the disease
process," said Kevin Eggan of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who
helped lead the study.

"We can generate hundreds of millions of motor neurons that are
genetically identical to a patient's own neurons," added Chris
Henderson of Columbia University in New York, who also worked on the
study. "This will be an immense help as we try to uncover the
mechanisms behind this disease and screen for drugs that can prolong
life."

There is no cure for ALS, also called motor neuron disease or Lou
Gehrig's disease after the New York Yankees baseball player who died
of it in 1941. The causes are not clear and it kills by gradually
paralyzing patients. About 120,000 new cases are diagnosed each
year, according to the International Alliance of ALS.

"It is our lack of understanding of that disease process which is
preventing us from developing more effective (treatments),"
Henderson told reporters. "There is no way we could go to an ALS
patient and take a sample of their motor neurons," he added, because
the affected cells are in the spinal cord.