Blood
to Feeling: McMaster
Scientists Turn
Blood into Neural Cells
Specifically, stem cell
scientists at McMaster can now directly convert adult human blood cells to both
central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in
the peripheral nervous system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain,
temperature and itch perception. This means that how a person’s nervous system
cells react and respond to stimuli, can be determined from his blood.
The breakthrough,
published online today and featured on the cover of the journal Cell
Reports, was led by Mick Bhatia, director of the McMaster Stem Cell and
Cancer Research Institute. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Stem
Cell Biology and is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and
Biomedical Sciences of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Also playing
a key role was Karun Singh, a co-author in the study and holder of the David
Braley Chair in Human Stem Cell Research.
Currently, scientists
and physicians have a limited understanding of the complex issue of pain and
how to treat it. The peripheral nervous system is made up of different types of
nerves – some are mechanical (feel pressure) and others detect temperature
(heat). In extreme conditions, pain or numbness is perceived by the brain using
signals sent by these peripheral nerves.
“The problem is that
unlike blood, a skin sample or even a tissue biopsy, you can’t take a piece of
a patient’s neural system. It runs like complex wiring throughout the body and
portions cannot be sampled for study,” said Bhatia.
“Now we can take
easy to obtain blood samples, and make the main cell types of neurological
systems – the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system – in a
dish that is specialized for each patient,” said Bhatia. “Nobody has ever done
this with adult blood. Ever.
“We can actually
take a patient’s blood sample, as routinely performed in a doctor’s office, and
with it we can produce one million sensory neurons, that make up the peripheral
nerves in short order with this new approach. We can also make central nervous
system cells, as the blood to neural conversion technology we developed creates
neural stem cells during the process of conversion.”
His team’s
revolutionary, patented direct conversion technology has “broad and immediate
applications,” said Bhatia, adding that it allows researchers to start asking
questions about understanding disease and improving treatments such as: Why is
it that certain people feel pain versus numbness? Is this something genetic?
Can the neuropathy that diabetic patients experience be mimicked in a dish?
It also paves the
way for the discovery of new pain drugs that don’t just numb the perception of
pain. Bhatia said non-specific opioids used for decades are still being used
today.
“If I was a
patient and I was feeling pain or experiencing neuropathy, the prized pain drug
for me would target the peripheral nervous system neurons, but do nothing to
the central nervous system, thus avoiding non-addictive drug side effects,”
said Bhatia.
“You don’t want
to feel sleepy or unaware, you just want your pain to go away. But, up until
now, no one’s had the ability and required technology to actually test
different drugs to find something that targets the peripheral nervous system
and not the central nervous system in a patient specific, or personalized
manner.”
Bhatia’s team
successfully tested their process using fresh blood, but also cryopreserved
(frozen) blood. Since blood samples are taken and frozen with many clinical
trials, this allows them “almost a bit of a time machine” to go back and
explore questions around pain or neuropathy to run tests on neurons created
from blood samples of patients taken in past clinical trials where responses
and outcomes have already been recorded”.
In the future,
the process may have prognostic potential, explained Bhatia, in that one might
be able to look at a patient with Type 2 Diabetes and predict whether they will
experience neuropathy by running tests in the lab using their own neural cells
derived from their blood sample.
“This bench to
bedside research is very exciting and will have a major impact on the
management of neurological diseases, particularly neuropathic pain,” said Akbar
Panju, medical director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Pain Research
and Care, a clinician and professor of medicine.
“This research
will help us understand the response of cells to different drugs and different
stimulation responses, and allow us to provide individualized or personalized
medical therapy for patients suffering with neuropathic pain.” This research
was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ontario Institute
of Regenerative Medicine, Marta and Owen Boris Foundation, J.P. Bickell
Foundation, and the Ontario Brain Institute and Brain Canada
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