Scientists reprogram injured brain cells to tackle damage

It is indeed a huge step in Neuroscience that scientists have taken the first step towards reprogramming the brain cells which are injured due to the loss of neurons. The first experiment towards achieving this goal was carried out on living mice and the results have been presented in the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience held in California.

Scientists were astonished when the experiment conducted on mice turned out positive. “Everybody is astonished at the moment, that it worked,” says Nicola Mattugini, a neurobiologist at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, who presented the results of one such experiment in the meeting.

Mattugini’s team, led by neuroscientist Magdalena Götz, and two other groups presented evidence at the meeting that the reprogrammed astrocytes at least in some respects, impersonate the neurons which in course of time became inactive, perished, and caused cell death. Two more groups of scientists also shared evidence on the fact that reprogrammed astrocytes help mice recover movement which was lost after a stroke.