The Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is an academic center affiliated with the Division of Toxicological Sciences in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Research Grants 1998-1999

Dopamine Neurons from Progenitor Cells: An Alternative to the Use of Fetal Tissue

Paul M. Carvey, M.S., PhD
Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois

Every year, thousands of animals are killed in order to provide cells for study in tissue culture. These cells are taken from fetuses and then grown in a dish (tissue culture) so that their function can be studied in a very controlled fashion. This is a labor-intense procedure that is also very expensive. Carvey and colleagues recently discovered a cell in the brain (called a progenitor cell) that will divide in the laboratory like a tumor cell. They also discovered that if they add certain chemicals to the media in which these cells are growing, they can force them to turn into a certain type of nerve (called the dopamine neuron) that is widely studied in tissue culture situations. Carvey proposes to fully characterize the dopamine resulting from the conversion process so that the scientific community will feel comfortable using these cells instead of taking cells from pregnant animals. Specifically, Carvey and colleagues plan to demonstrate that the converted dopamine neurons exhibit seven of the major characteristics natural dopamine neurons have. The dopamine neurons yielded by progenitor cells are less expensive and less time consuming to produce than cells derived from fetal tissue.