Turning Blood into Brain: Cells Bearing Neuronal Antigens Generated in Vivo from Bone Marrow

Abstract

Bone marrow stem cells give rise to a variety of hematopoietic lineages and repopulate the blood throughout adult life. We show that, in a strain of mice incapable of developing cells of the myeloid and lymphoid lineages, transplanted adult bone marrow cells migrated into the brain and differentiated into cells that expressed neuron-specific antigens. These findings raise the possibility that bone marrow–derived cells may provide an alternative source of neurons in patients with neurodegenerative diseases or central nervous system injury.