The brain's mechanisms for repairing injuries caused by trauma or degenerative diseases are not yet known in detail. Now, a study by the University of Barcelona describes a new strategy based on stem cell therapy that could enhance neuronal regeneration and neuroplasticity when this vital organ is damaged. The results reveal that the use of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), combined with stem cell-based cell therapies, could help in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases or brain injuries.
The study, published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences , is led by Professor Daniel Tornero and researcher Alba Ortega, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Institute of Neurosciences of the University of Barcelona (UBneuro). The study involves the decisive participation of a group of UB students who were awarded one of the gold medals in the international synthetic biology competition iGEM 2024, the most important international synthetic biology competition for young researchers.
Combining cell therapy with BDNF production
BDNF is a protein that is synthesised mainly in the brain and plays a key role in neuronal development and synaptic plasticity. Several studies have described its potential to promote neuronal survival and growth, findings that are now extended by the new study.
"The findings indicate that BDNF can promote the maturation and increase the activity of neurons generated in the laboratory from donor skin cells. The skin cells must first be reprogrammed to become induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and then differentiated to obtain neuronal cultures," says Daniel Tornero, from the UB's Department of Biomedicine and the CIBER Area for the Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED).
In this way, the study combines cell therapy with the production of BDNF in the same cells. This study confirms the beneficial effects of this growth factor in neuronal cultures derived from human stem cells, the same cells that are used in cell therapy to treat, for example, stroke in animal models.
"This strategy is being applied at an experimental level to design cell therapies and to generate laboratory models to help study brain diseases," says Tornero. When these neural progenitor cells (NPCs) are modified to continuously overexpress the BDNF protein, "we obtain more mature and active neuronal cultures, without altering the normal organization of their connections or the functional networks," explains researcher Alba Ortega.
