I watched a TED Talk given by Siddharthan Chandran who is a neurologist. I watched this talk because we have recently learned, or will learn, about the diseases he discussed, such as dementia and multiple sclerosis. In his talk he wanted to offer hope for people who live with untreatable brain diseases. He used Alzheimer's disease as an example of an untreatable disease. In Alzheimer's there is obvious atrophy, damage, and scarring of the brain that has not been treatable. Chandran stated that there are over 35 million people living with brain diseases and the numbers are rising; this is because people are living longer, so these brain diseases are age-related. There are still no effective treatments for most brain diseases. Chandran said that the brain is made up of four types of cells, and each of the four cells, either alone or together, can go rogue and die; this results in various brain diseases depending on the cell(s) involved. If the dying cell is a motor neuron, then a person will have motor neuron disease, which progresses at a shocking pace. If myelin cells die, then a person will have multiple sclerosis. Chandran stated that the brain can heal itself; it just doesn't do it well enough, which I found really interesting. When we talk about neurodegenerative diseases, we never really consider that the brain could be trying to heal itself. He showed images of a brain of someone with multiple sclerosis, and you can see the lesions; however, there were pale blue areas in the slide that were spontaneous repair of the myelin by stem cells, but the rate of repair was not fast enough to match the progression of the disease. Chandran believes that we can find ways to promote the spontaneous endogenous repair that occurs in small amounts anyway.
Chandran conducted a clinical trial that looked patients with multiple sclerosis to see if stem cells from the bone marrow would grow to protect the nerves. They took bone marrow from a patient with MS and grew stem cells in the lab, and injected those stem cells back into the veins of the patient from which they came. To see if they had been successful, they measured the size of the optic nerve, which is a good thing to measure in patients with MS because they suffer from problems with vision. Before they injected the patients with the stem cells, the optic nerve was shrinking because cells were dying. After injection, they saw an increase in the size of the optic nerve, which showed that the stem cells were working. Chandran and his team showed that it is possible to promote endogenous stem cells to do their job by "waking them up" to make new myelin. Chandran ended is talk by stating the stem cells offer real hope, and after listening to his talk, I agree. In class, we have learned about drugs and therapies that help with symptoms, but none that cure these neurodegenerative diseases. Stem cells could be the key to unlocking new drugs and therapies that could cure these terrible diseases. As occupational therapists, it is important that we know current research, so that we are able to better help our clients.
Chandran, Siddharthan. (2013, July). Can the damaged brain repair itself [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/siddharthan_chandran_can_the_damaged_brain_repair_itself#t-938009
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