Speed of Comprehension

June 11, 1998

BALTIMORE (Johns Hopkins)
- In an unusual experiment, Johns Hopkins researchers have clocked the speed of understanding. They did it with the cooperation of a patient whose brain was covered with dozens of electrodes. It was actually part of an epilepsy treatment but he agreed to help them out.

The man was shown a series of pictures and asked to identify objects in each one. Doctors measured response time and determined that it took him about a quarter of a second to begin to understand what the objects were, and another quarter second to fully comprehend what he was seeing. The process was faster when the pictured object was already familiar to him. Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. John Hart led the work and says it may shed light on how things like stroke or dementia leave some people unable to recognize objects.

"I think now we might see that it could be a timing issue involved," explains Hart," and that this might have implication for rehabing people."

Hart says the experiment indicates that the brain comprehends in stages, not all at once. Understanding each step in more detail
is the next big challenge.

© The Johns Hopkins University, 1998. All rights reserved

WORLD'S FIRST PROCEDURE TO REPAIR BRAIN DAMAGE FROM STROKE PERFORMED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH MEDICAL CENTER

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LBS-Neurons for Treating Stroke

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Research Shows That OP-1 May Play an Important Role In The Treatment of Stroke

HOPKINTON, Mass., July 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Creative BioMolecules, Inc.
(Nasdaq: CBMI) announced today the results of preclinical studies with a
potential new stroke therapy.  These preclinical studies have indicated the
ability of this therapy to enhance recovery of motor function after stroke in
an animal model.  Motor function recovery is one of the important predictors
of outcome in stroke rehabilitation.  The findings, reported by Dr. Seth
Finklestein of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, may
lead to the development of an important therapy for stroke patients.
    In the study, Dr. Finklestein measured the neurological recovery of
rodents following a stroke.  Animals treated with OP-1 twenty-four hours after
the stroke recovered approximately 80 percent of motor function within the
first week.  This was contrasted by the control group, which experienced a
recovery of approximately 50 percent of motor function within one month.  OP-1
is one of a family of morphogenic proteins in which Creative BioMolecules has
established a substantial proprietary position.
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First attempt to repair stroke damage

UPI Science News PITTSBURGH, July 1 (UPI) - Researchers have implanted manufactured neurons into the brain of a stroke patient in the first attempt to repair the damage that causes paralysis. In the ground-breaking operation, doctors at the University of Pittsburgh said Wednesday they hoped the specially processed cells will eventually graft to the brain and form a connection to the patient's healthy areas and reverse the effects of the stroke. Researchers performed the procedure on a 62-year-old healthcare worker who suffered a major stroke last fall, leaving her with a paralyzed right arm and leg and the inability to speak.

Patient Alma Cerasini is at home and so far is doing fine. Researchers said have no indication yet about the effectiveness of the procedure, performed June 23. She is the first of 12 patients in this earliest phase of the human trial, which tests for safety. Later trials would test the effectiveness, although scientists often get clues about the potential value of a procedure during the safetey phase. The human trial follows research published in February, in which a rat, who had received an implant of these same processed human cells, seemed to recover from its stroke in about a month. Last week, 2 million of these thawed out cells were implanted into the Cerasini's brain. "We've opened a door that's never been opened," Dr, Douglas Kondziolka, the performing surgeon, "because there's been no treatment for stroke on one hand and there's never been use of manufactured nerve cells on the other." Scientists have theorized since the mid-1980s that if healthy neurons could be implanted into damaged brain tissue that it might be possible to recover from stroke. One great hurdle to doing this was to get a large enough supply of specialized cells so they could do their job. Gary Snable, CEO of Layton BioSCience of Aptherton, Ca., said researchers solved that by using fast dividing tumor cells taken from a man who died of testicular and lung cancer 25 years ago. They then transformed a sufficient volume of them into non-dividing neurons that  "had never seen a brain," said Snable. Research was carried on for eight years to determine if these neurons converted from cancer cells carried any danger of transferring cancer to animal transplant recipients. That did not happen. Except that the procedure put something in the brain instead of cutting something out, Kondziolka said, the procedure was relatively routine. The surgery involved drilling a hole in the head about the size of a tip of a ballpoint pen and implanting the neurons in the area of the brain that controls motor function. Cerasini was conscious throughout the procedure with a local anesthetic. If the operation works, Snable said he hopes it could become a common procedure in three to five years, Snable said. Because these cells are manufactured in a lab and not taken in a comparative rush, from either recently deceased donors or aborted embryos they can be more easily screened for impurities, Snable said. The plan, Snable told UPI, is to use manufactured cells that trace back to that one cancer victim who died in the 1970s.