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This is Great news!

So, if you haven't heard yet there was a Huge breakthrough in PWS Research yesterday. Basically, some very Smart scientists are now able to research and study PWS live brain cells. (Thank the Lord for them!)

"These cells (which were made by transferring a special set of genes into skin cells from a person with PWS) have the ability to change into a variety of cell types in a dish - muscle cells, pancreatic islet cells, and importantly, neurons. Thus, we now have an ongoing supply of PWS neurons - we can study how their gene expression differs from normal, whether their metabolism is altered, whether neuronal migration and/or interaction is altered, and how their neurochemistry differs from normal. Once they figure out how PWS neurons are different, they can throw some small molecules, existing drugs, new drugs, etc onto them and see if they can get them to behave more like typical neurons. This is an "in vitro" (in the dish) system, so there are some limitations (just b/c a drug works on neurons in a dish doesn't mean it will be able to get into the brain and work the same way), but it gives us so much more to work with than we've had before."

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