Turning blood into brain: cells bearing neuronal antigens generated in vivo from bone marrow

E Mezey1, K J Chandross, G Harta

  • 1Basic Neuroscience Program, Laboratory of Developmental Neurogenetics, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. mezey@codon.nih.gov

Science (New York, N.Y.)
|December 2, 2000
PubMed

Bone marrow stem cells give rise to a variety of hematopoietic lineages and repopulate the blood throughout adult life. We show that, in a strain of mice incapable of developing cells of the myeloid and lymphoid lineages, transplanted adult bone marrow cells migrated into the brain and differentiated into cells that expressed neuron-specific antigens. These findings raise the possibility that bone marrow-derived cells may provide an alternative source of neurons in patients with neurodegenerative diseases or central nervous system injury.

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