Development of retinal transplantation as an animal model to test stem cell therapies for myelin diseases

科学家可以使用干细胞来形成构成人体的许多不同类型的细胞。它们为治疗多发性硬化症等人脑疾病提供了令人兴奋的新可能性。通过使用人类干细胞在培养皿中培养新的神经细胞，然后将它们移植到患者的大脑中，我们希望修复疾病造成的损害。困难在于，我们必须完全确定这些细胞的行为不会使大脑损伤变得更严重，例如无法控制地生长和形成肿瘤。科学家们认为，已经完全转化为神经细胞的细胞不会导致这些问题，并将有效地修复损伤，但每次他们想要使用一套细胞来治疗一组患者时，他们确实需要证明这一点。目前，这将通过将细胞移植到大鼠或小鼠的大脑中来完成。然而，由于大脑是一个非常复杂的结构，要完全确定所有细胞都在正常运行是极其困难的。该项目提出了一种新的测试细胞的方法，将细胞放置在大鼠的眼睛后面。眼球后部的神经纤维与多发性硬化症等疾病中受损的神经纤维非常相似。在这里，与大脑不同，移植的细胞很容易被看到和测试。如果成功，该项目将减少测试干细胞疗法所需的动物数量，并加快这些疗法在目前无法治愈的脑部疾病中的应用。

Stem cells can be used by scientists to form many of the different cell types that make up the human body. They offer exciting new possibilities for treating diseases of the human brain such as multiple sclerosis. By using human stem cells to grow new nerve cells in a dish, and then transplanting them into the brains of patients, we hope to repair the damage caused by the disease. The difficulty is that we have to be completely sure that these cells will not behave in a way that might make the brain damage worse, for example by growing uncontrollably and forming a tumour. Scientists believe that cells that have been completely turned into nerve cells will not cause these problems and will be effective at damage repair, but they do need to prove this each time they want to use a set of cells for treating groups of patients. At the moment this would be done by transplanting the cells into the brains of rats or mice. However, as the brain is a very complicated structure, it is extremely difficult to be completely certain that all the cells are behaving normally. This project proposes a new way of testing cells by placing them in the back of the eye of rats. The nerve fibres at the back of the eye are very similar to those damaged in diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Here, unlike the brain, the transplanted cells can be easily seen and tested. If successful, the project will both reduce the number of animals needed for testing stem cell treatments and also speed up the use of these treatments for brain diseases for which there is presently no cure