Context Memo

To: Kimberly Freeman and College Writing 161 students

From: Luis Valencia

Subject: Advances in stem cell therapy for stroke

My popular audience piece is an “explainer article” that is written for publication the

science section of a newspaper like The New York Times. It will briefly explain some of the

advances in the development of stem cell therapy for stroke treatment. The audience will likely

be of middle class and likely have some sort of college education. Since stroke is more likely to

affect older people, it might interest an older audience who knows of someone that has suffered

from a stroke.

For citations, I have added links to online abstracts of the paper I am referencing to.

When mentioning a specific study, I will indicate where the study was done and sometimes will

name the principle investigator. The articles I have seen in The New York Times on stem cells

are generally around 600-1000 words long, so I made my article in between those values at 887

words.
 Promising Stroke Treatment: Stem Cells for a New Brain

Imagine you see an older loved one, one of you grandparents perhaps. You go to say hello and
notice something strange. They try to respond, but the what comes out of their mouth is a blurb.
Then you notice that as they try to smile at you, their face is drooping to the left. Immediately,
you know what is happening and call for an ambulance. After reaching the hospital, you are left
to wonder if your loved one will ever recover from the stroke they were having.

Stroke is currently the number one cause of disability in the United States. Ischemic stroke, the
most common type of stroke, occurs when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain. This
prevents oxygen from reaching parts of the brain, causing those parts to die if the clot isn’t
removed quickly. It is estimated that 32,000 brain cells die per second after ischemic stroke and
1.9 million brain cells die in 59 seconds.

Despite the increase in survival of stroke patients in the past decade and the development of
drugs that effectively remove blood clots from the brain, no medical treatments have been
developed that help regain loss of function. In the United States, two thirds of stroke survivors
are disabled. Symptoms include loss of movement, speech and sensation. Though some
symptoms go away or lessen with time, many victims experience lifelong disability.

However, there has been one promising experimental treatment that has been the center of many
scientists’ research in the past decade: stem cell therapy.

Stem cells have the ability to turn into any cell type in the body, including any of the diverse
neurons in the brain. Because of this, stem cells are an interesting target for developing
regenerative therapies. Stem cells can be turned into specific neurons to replace damaged ones
after stroke.

The ethics of using embryonic stem cells has been the topic of much debate, as they must be
taken out of unborn human embryos. This debate hindered the development new therapies until
scientists discovered how to transform human skin cells into stem cells with very similar
characteristics to embryonic stem cells. These stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells,
have demonstrated to be effective in experimental therapies.
The application of stem cell therapies in the brain has been studied extensively in mice.
Researchers at Shanghai Medical College were able to replace lost function in mice with
Huntington’s disease model by injecting human embryonic stem cells.

Studies have shown that stem cell injections into mice brains with ischemic stroke reduce the
size of stroke damage. Scientists have confirmed through imaging that some stem cells injected
actually formed working brain cells and seem to have successfully replaced neurons that died
from lack of oxygen. These same studies also document that the treatment improved movement,
vision and sensation responses in mice with different stroke models targeted at various regions of
the brain.

Despite the promise of stem cell therapy for stroke treatment, there are several challenges that
need to be overcome. For example, in order to feasibly design a treatment for humans, a method
has to be developed to generate large amounts of stem cells. Also, to ensure that the stem cells
turn into the brain cells that need to be replaced instead of turning into a cell type that is
unwanted, scientists must learn how to influence the stem cell to turn into specific neurons.

Even though lots of progress has been made in identifying the processes that influence the fate of
stem cells, much of this research is limited by the medium in which the stem cells are grown.
Usually, stem cells are studied on a two-dimensional plate that are not representative of the cells’
natural environment. So even if scientists figure out how the human body directs stem cells to
turn into specific neurons, it will be difficult to mimic that same result in a medium so distinct
from the cell’s usual environment. This requires the use of better mediums in which to grow
stem cells.

New developments in the design of 3D-cell cultures that mimic neural stem cell environments
have been made in the last few years. A 3D cell culture developed by David Schaffer, a professor
of bioengineering at the University of California Berkeley, has proven to be able to differentiate
stem cells into many of the precursor cells found in the brain. In a later study, he was able to use
this cell culture to fate stem cells into precursor cells for a specific type of neuron which had
been destroyed in mice due to Huntington’s disease. Injection of these precursor cells into the
mice showed even better cell replacement than stem cells developed in 2D cultures.

This new way of growing stem cells allows scientists to develop larger amounts of stem cells and
makes fating them into specific neuron types much more effective. With further research, it is
possible that doctors may one day be able to order fated stem cells developed with these cell
cultures and transplant them into a stroke survivor. Paired with physical therapy, these stem cell
treatments will help decrease lifelong disability due to brain damage from stroke can be greatly
decreased.

Though there is still a lot of research to be done before the approval of a stem cell therapy for
stroke on humans, these new developments have sparked much hope in scientists, doctors and
stroke victims. Maybe in the future, you won’t have to worry about your loved one being
permanently disabled by stroke.