Dr. Gary Steinberg

So if an infant has a stroke and is paralyzed on one side, usually they can make an excellent, if not complete, recovery.

So, I mean, you notice this too.

When I cut myself now, it can take a week for that cut to heal.

When my granddaughter, who's six years old, cuts herself, the next day it's totally healed.

And that's what we're trying to develop are new ways of promoting plasticity in the adult brain, as an example.

So we think stem cells injected through various mechanisms, stimulation of the brain or the vagal nerve, as an example, can promote plasticity.

In a sense, we think what's happening is that these methods...

can turn the adult brain into an infant brain in some ways.

Where are the stem cells coming from in these experiments?

It depends.

There are different sources.

So some of the studies I've done previously with other companies, they made the stem cells either from bone marrow donors,

so they were mesenchymal, or another group made the cells from fetal neural tissue.

Actually, that was the initial notion 20 years ago when we started doing this, was that these cells you put in...

these exogenous cells you inject become neurons and astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, all the cells in the brain, and that the neurons reconstitute circuits.

That is not how they work.

The way they work, and this is why it may not matter what particular type of stem cell you put in,

The way they work primarily is by secreting very powerful proteins, molecules, growth factors that promote native recovery.

So they promote angiogenesis, they promote native neurogenesis, endogenous gliogenesis, synaptogenesis, but the main benefit may be that they modulate the immune system.

That's what we're finding.