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WASHINGTON, April 9, 2002 (LSN.ca) – A man who developed Parkinson's disease has been seemingly cured after a transplant of his own brain stem cells. Dr. Michel Levesque of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles led a team of scientists who extracted a pea-sized portion of the patient's brain and then nurtured stem cells from it. Once reinjected into the patients brain the cells began producing dopamine and his Parkinson's symptoms subsided.

More than two years after the experimental treatment, the man has no symptoms of Parkinson's. Scientists are puzzled that while the man's dopamine production, as measured by PET scans, has returned to the levels seen prior to the transplant, his Parkinson's symptoms have not returned.

Levesque and colleagues formed a company to develop the technique, called Neurogeneration. It has been bought out by California-based CelMed Bioscience, a subsidiary of Canada-based Theratechnologies.