U.S. scientists have created the first human model for studying a devastating nerve disease, which allows them to watch how the disease develops and could help researchers find a way to treat it.
Using skin cells from a child with spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disease that attacks motor neurons in the spinal cord, researchers grew batches of nerve cells with the same genetic defects. The finding allowed scientists to watch the nerve cells die off.
“Now we can start from the beginning of development and replay the disease process in the lab dish,” Clive Svendsen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in a telephone interview.