Brain-repair research team approaches crowd-funding goal: 15 days left to help speed research into clinical trials

Pushing promising new Penn State brain-repair research from the lab into clinical trials is the goal of a 30-day crowd-funding campaign that is nearly half way to achieving its goal with only 15 days to go. A video featuring Penn State's Head Basketball Coach Patrick Chambers talking about the impact that the research could have on a medical condition in his own family is on the campaign's website along with an additional video about the research. The funds will help the Penn State research team that recently discovered a new way to transform one type of cell -- called a glial cell -- into healthy, functioning nerve cells to replace nerves in the brain or spinal cord damaged by Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke, brain trauma, or spinal-cord trauma.

The research is led by Gong Chen, a professor of biology and Penn State's Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences. His research team's innovative technique for transforming glial cells into functioning nerve cells is the latest in a recent series of discoveries that have been published by highly respected scientific journals including Cell, Nature, Cell Stem Cell and Nature Communications, among others.

"Our technology is completely different from classical stem-cell therapy, where external cells that have been cultured in artificial conditions for a long time then are transplanted into the brain. A big problem with stem-cell therapy is that the patient's body often rejects the foreign cells," Chen said. "In contrast, our technology transforms a patient's own glial cells into functioning neurons. Our technology eliminates the possibility that the patient's immune system will reject the transformed cells."

Chen's lab is developing another revolutionary technique using small molecules to transform human glial cells into functional neurons, instead of using viruses or other agents typically used in stem-cell therapy. An intriguing advantage of the small molecules is that they can be packaged in a way to penetrate the blood-brain barrier in order to get inside the injured brain to help it heal. This advantage could make it possible to make drug pills that can be swallowed by patients to treat brain disorders.

"It is exciting to imagine that one day patients could take a daily pill to regenerate new neurons in their brains," Chen said. "We have made an important step toward that goal, and we are hoping that support from crowd funding will help us reach that goal much more quickly."

CONTACTS:

Gong Chen: GongChen@psu.edu

Barbara Kennedy: bkk1@psu.edu, Phone: 814-863-4682