Dr. Paula Dore-Duffy, professor of Neurology in the School of Medicine, was recently awarded a $44,000 grant from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for her research on a potential cell replacement therapy for people with multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a condition in which a patient’s immune system becomes overactive and attacks the central nervous system, causing neurons and supporting brain cells, called glial cells, to deteriorate. Since brain cells have only a limited ability to repair themselves after injury, there is a significant interest in finding stem cells that can serve as replacements for these damaged cells. Both embryonic and bone marrow stem cells have been considered as candidate replacement cells, but both have associated problems hindering their clinical use. Embryonic stem cells have ethical and availability issues, and bone marrow stem cells have poorly defined population numbers. Dore-Duffy may have found a more suitable cell type in pericytes. Pericytes are stem cells that normally provide support for the walls of capillaries in the central nervous system, but have also shown potential to take on the characteristics of neural cells. They do not pose the ethical issues associated with embryonic stem cells, and unlike bone marrow stem cells, large populations can be generated in a short amount of time.

Using a physiological model of mulitple sclerosis in humans, Dore-Duffy will test pericytes’ ability to take on the functions of neural cells. If pericytes prove adequate, it could result in replacement therapies for people with degenerative diseases of the central nervous system.