October 2017^ DISCOVER^33BRYAN CHRISTIE DESIGN
K
ris Boesen’s life changed in an instant.
In March 2016, he was driving down
a winding road in his Nissan 350Z in
Maricopa, a tiny hamlet in California’s
San Joaquin Valley. Suddenly, the car fishtailed
on the wet street, hit a tree and ricocheted into a
telephone pole, crushing the vehicle and knocking
Boesen unconscious.
When he woke up in the hospital two days later,
Boesen was paralyzed from the neck down, his neck
broken and his spinal cord crushed. He was now
dependent on others for the simplest of tasks, such
as eating and drinking, and he needed two attendants
24/7 to help him go to the bathroom and change his
position in bed to prevent pressure ulcers.
Boesen was a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday,
a young man making his first tentative steps into
adulthood. He worked at an insurance brokerage
firm, and he spent his free time lifting weights at a
gym, tinkering with cars and hanging out with his
girlfriend and pals.
The accident brought it all to a screeching halt.
“I was basically just existing,” he later admitted.
But the neurosurgeon who fused Boesen’s neck
bones to stabilize his spine offered a ray of hope:
Boesen might qualify for an experimental treat-
ment that uses stem cells to repair damaged tissue.He is one of six patients participating in the clini-
cal trial, which is being conducted at the University
of Southern California and five other sites across
the country. The trial is in collaboration with
Asterias Biotherapeutics, a biotech company in Fre-
mont, Calif., that devised the stem cell technology.
In the past decade, a handful of discoveries have
unleashed a flood of research into ways neural stem
cells can be used for treating degenerative brain dis-
orders and for brain repair. Scores of laboratories at
universities and in private industry are uncovering
how to use these cells, which transform into neu-
rons, astrocytes (the cells that regulate transmission
of electrical impulses in the brain) and oligoden-
drocytes (which insulate nerve fibers with a fatty
coating). Neural stem cells can help mend brain
tissue damaged by strokes and spinal cord injuries
and keep neurons alive in degenerative diseases like
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s,
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Recently, tests in
humans using stem cells to treat a range of these
neurological disorders have been successful.
But some scientists remain dubious that stem cells
can be used to grow new brain tissue. “We can make
neural stem cells, but are we clever enough to put the
circuits in the right place?” wonders Clive Svendsen,
director of the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative MedicineHow neural stem cells repair damage from strokes,
spinal injuries and aging. BY LINDA MARSA