Is Grey’s Anatomy’s Parkinson’s ‘Cure’ Real?

It’s commonplace for TV to fast-track medical innovation. Take the present season of Grey’s Anatomy, which featured a significant storyline a couple of “cure” for Parkinson’s illness. The drama collection adopted a staff of researchers and docs as they used a groundbreaking surgical process utilizing skin-derived stem cells.

In actual life, regardless of many years of analysis and large positive aspects in technical information round stem cell therapies for Parkinson’s illness, these therapies stay out of attain for most individuals with the illness. Parkinson’s is a mind dysfunction that worsens over time and causes the demise of sure nerve cells that usually produce dopamine, which helps coordinate muscle motion. The mostly used surgical therapy for Parkinson’s is deep mind stimulation, which delivers electrical pulses to mind areas affecting motor signs, comparable to tremors and rigidity.

Still, given the stakes of this continual progressive neurological illness dealing with about 1 million Americans, it’s price unpacking simply how far-fetched the Hollywood depiction is – or isn’t.

A TV-Ready Stem Cell Breakthrough

On the present, docs take stem cells from a pores and skin biopsy of a personality with Parkinson’s illness and, “through a complex process,” remodel these cells into dopamine-producing cells. People with Parkinson’s usually have low dopamine ranges within the putamen, part of the mind concerned in motion. By injecting new dopamine-producing cells into the character’s forebrain, the place the putamen is discovered, the docs goal to spice up dopamine ranges.

The process kicks off with a CT scan, which provides the surgical staff pictures of what’s described as “an interactive 3D roadmap” of the character’s mind. After a number of extra fast steps – together with drilling of burr holes to stop strain from build up within the mind – a robotic arm brings a hole needle into place. A researcher then removes the stem cells from a cooler and examines them underneath a microscope to verify that sufficient cells are alive. Finally, the cells are injected into the character’s forebrain, beginning with one facet after which transferring to the opposite.

Much of what’s depicted on the present is sensible – if simplified and futuristic – in accordance with Willard Kasoff, MD, an affiliate professor of neurosurgery on the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University and director of stereotactic and useful neurosurgery at Temple University Hospital.

“It’s not science fiction, but it’s a future show,” he says.

The Reality of Stem Cell Treatments for Parkinson’s Disease

There have been a number of thrilling stem cell improvements concentrating on Parkinson’s lately that, on the floor, are paying homage to Grey’s Anatomy’s televised “cure.”

In 2017 and 2018, as an example, docs reprogrammed pores and skin cells taken from an individual with Parkinson’s to create “replacement dopamine neurons,” which got implanted into the person’s brain. More recently, a clinical trial involved injecting stem cells into the brains of people with Parkinson’s in order to restore their dopamine levels, complete with a GPS-like brain scan showing neurosurgeons where to inject the cells. Upcoming clinical trials will also use Parkinson’s patients’ skin cells to produce replacement dopamine neurons for transplantation.

But such treatments won’t necessarily be widely available anytime soon, according to Kasoff. “Cell transplantation is incredibly difficult and complicated,” he says. “It’s been worked on for decades, and it’s still early, early research trials. So even that kind of therapy is likely years and years away.”

Some of the therapies depend on genetic engineering to transform stem cells into neural progenitor cells, which might turn into numerous cell varieties discovered within the mind – a course of often called differentiating. Neurosurgeons also can direct how neural progenitor cells change, comparable to guiding them to develop into dopamine neurons. The hope is that after these cells are transplanted into the mind, they’ll “figure out what to do, or be told what to do by the surrounding cells,” says Kasoff.

A Future Cure?

Even if the trials succeed, they could not characterize a treatment. Because the therapies are directed on the putamen and the substantia nigra (an space the place neuron loss can have an effect on dopamine ranges), they solely tackle motor signs. Parkinson’s illness additionally impacts considering abilities, steadiness, and different features all through the physique. Cognitive decline can result in dementia and demise.

“The idea that you can cure Parkinson’s by putting cells in the substantia nigra or the putamen is probably not true,” Kasoff says.

Also, Parkinson’s is usually considered a illness of 1 cell sort: the dopaminergic cells within the substantia nigra. But in actuality, Kasoff explains, it’s doubtless a illness with “thousands of cell types,” which makes any potential stem cell-derived treatment extraordinarily advanced. Type 1 diabetes, alternatively, is a illness of just one cell sort, and new therapies utilizing insulin-producing cells derived from stem cells may quantity to a treatment.

As for Parkinson’s, says Kasoff, “it may be that the next stem cell trial hits the jackpot, and then we’ll be on to the next step.” That may imply determining the place to transplant stem cells for the cognitive and balance-related signs of the illness, as an example.

Ultimately, he says, “the hope is that what happens on the show is exactly what will happen at some point in the future.”