Richard Wade-Martins' Parkinson's break through

Christ Church medical tutor Richard Wade-Martins' research team have begun creating a bank of artificially-grown brain cells from Parkinson’s patients to try to find a cure for the disease, reports the BBC this week. They have done so using a new stem cell technique which allows them to turn a small piece of skin from the patient into a small piece of brain, which they will then compare with brain tissue grown from healthy volunteers. Dr Richard Wade-Martins, who leads the study, said: ‘The brain is an inaccessible organ ... so now for the first time we can grow in a dish the neurons that are very closely related to the neurons inside the brain of a patient that we couldn’t get access to before.’

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13810653