At the Power Over Parkinson’s Conference in Phoenix, November 10, 2007, Dr. Joseph Rogers, Sun Health Research Institute, talked about how he had succeeded in growing dopamine producing neurons from human stem cells – from adult stem cells taken from human brains.

Dr Rogers and his team worked with donated progenitor cells gotten human brains. These cells were actually excess tissues gotten after some people had gone through brain surgery. Rather than the surgeons tossing these cells (given with permission from the people who had undergone brain surgery), Dr Rogers and his team had these human brain cells available for experiments.

They found progenitor adult stem cells in the brain tissue. And from these Dr Rogers and his team grew neural – dopamine producing stem cells. We saw amazing photos of both types of cells.

His next stem cell experiments will be on primates. And if that testing is successful, then he and his team will begin trials on humans –with initial brain surgery on the PWPs to retrieve some brain cells. Those cells will be used to grow dopamine-producing neurons. And then later there will be surgery to implant those autologous cells in the PWP’s brain.

I was told that he has received a 3.5 million grant from the MJFox Foundation, but I couldn’t find any reference to it on the MJFox website. I'll keep trying using other search terms.

He believes there will be a cure in his lifetime (he looks like he is in his 60s).