The findings, funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Wellcome Trust, have been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The scientists used skin cells donated from healthy volunteers and those with Down’s syndrome and turned them into stem cells. These stem cells were then used to generate networks of functioning nerve cells in the lab, which resemble the complex wiring of cells in the human cerebral cortex. The cortex, which makes up over three quarters of the brain, houses many of the nerve cells involved in memory and thinking and suffers particular damage during Alzheimer’s.
Image: amyloid plaques Credit: Gurdon Institute
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge