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Study Shows Stem Cells May Prevent and Cure Alzheimer’s

Posted in In the News |

SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 26, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ -- In the first study of its kind, researchers at Korea's leading university announced this week the results of a study suggesting that adult stem cells may not only have a positive effect on those suffering from Alzheimer's disease, they can prevent the disease. Using fat-derived adult stem cells from humans [scientific term: adMSCs, or human, adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells], researchers were able to cause Alzheimer's disease brains in animal models to regenerate.  The researchers, for the first time in history, used stem cells to identify the key mechanism that is key to treatment of Alzheimer's disease, and demonstrated how to achieve efficacy as well as prevention of the symptoms of Alzheimer's with adult stem cells, a "holy grail" of biomedical scientists for decades. Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia (loss of brain function), is the 6th leading cause of death, and affects 1 in 8 people -- more than breast cancer.  As of 2010, there were 35.6 million people with Alzheimer's disease in the world, but this number is expected to double every 20 years. According to the results of this first major study, Alzheimer's may soon be a preventable disease, or even a thing of the past.  Equally important, the safety of the kind of adult stem cells used in this experiment has been established in multiple articles and government-approved clinical trials. The study was jointly led by Seoul National University Professor Yoo-Hun Suh and RNL Bio Stem Cell Technology Institute (SCTI) director Dr. Jeong-Chan Ra, and published in peer-reviewed U.S. medical journal PLOS ONE.