The study, led by researchers at NYU School of Medicine, is published in the January 2, 2004 issue of Science magazine.
"What we found was a complete surprise," says Gordon Fishell, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at New York University School of Medicine. "No one had believed that it was possible to push back the birth date of a cortical neuron. There is this central tenet governing the process of brain development, which says that late progenitor cells [forerunners of mature cell types] cannot give rise to cell types produced earlier in development," he explains.
"Consequently, while some populations of stem cells exist in the adult brain, these cells are restricted to producing only a subset of cell types," notes Dr. Fishell. "If one's goal is to produce cells for replacement therapy, some method must be found to turn back the clock and allow adult stem cells to give rise to the wide variety of cells made during normal brain development."
Eseng Lai, Ph.D., of Merck & Co. and one of the study's co-authors, cloned the Foxg1 gene while he was working at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He also did seminal work in the late 1990s showing that when the gene is eliminated in embryonic mice, the brain's cerebral hemispheres barely develop. Subsequent work demonstrated that the gene played a role in the early phases of cortical development.
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Contact: Pamela McDonnell
Pamela.Mcdonnell@med.nyu.edu
212-404-3555
New York University Medical Center and School of Medicine
1-Jan-2004