Stem-cell therapy can reduce seizures in epileptic mice.

Some forms of epilepsy are thought to be caused by dysfunctional cells in the hippocampus region of the brain. The affected cells, called inhibitory interneurons, help to regulate neural circuits. Robert Hunt, Scott Baraban and their colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, harvested progenitors of inhibitory neurons from embryonic mice and injected them into the hippocampi of epileptic adult mice.

In the brain, the cells matured into functioning inhibitory interneurons. Mice that received cell transplants had many fewer seizures than untreated mice. The transplants also reversed some behavioural problems that epileptic mice often develop, such as hyperactivity and poor spatial learning.

Nature Neurosci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.3392 (2013)