Larry Goldstein: Stem cells are giving us a way, for the first time, to have true human brain cells in a dish that carry the genetic changes that we know can contribute to or cause disease.

University of California professor Larry Goldstein uses embryonic stem cells in his research on Alzheimer’s disease. Although stem cell research is controversial, Goldstein said that using stem cells has enabled him to look at the behavior of human brain cells.

Larry Goldstein: It’s very difficult to do experiments on live humans. I can’t just go into your head and take a sample of your brain cells and extract them and study them.

Dr. Goldstein explained that embryonic stem cells are so useful in research because they’re self-renewing and can be used to imitate different kinds of cells in the body – from skin cells to heart cells to brain cells. For example, Goldstein said that his team can generate stem cells that imitate changes in Alzheimer’s patients’ brain cells.

Larry Goldstein: We’re making stem cells that have lots of different patients’ unique genetic constitutions and converting those into brain cells to study whether or not they develop Alzheimer-like phenotypes.

Goldstein said that this stem cell research is bringing scientists closer to being able to test drugs for Alzheimer’s – a disease that afflicts more than five million Americans. Goldstein said although there are drugs available that can slow memory loss, sleep problems or behavioral changes in Alzheimer’s patients, there is no cure for the disease. As the population continues to age, Goldstein said, research is crucial to understanding how to combat the disease.

Goldstein: Very important scientific advances have been made with embryonic stem cells. But it can take many years to go from the blackboard to the laboratory bench and then onto the clinic. For example, bone marrow derived stem cells, which are now a common treatment for leukemia, took quite awhile to turn that into a useable therapy. We shouldn’t let impatience with the pace of the process divert us from following lines of inquiry and lines of experimentation that have a great deal of future promise. We just have to remember that it takes time.