Researchers from Iowa State and Harvard Medical School currently are working on a joint project to study stem cells, which could soon prove to help people with nervous system damage.

Don Sakaguchi, ISU associate professor of zoology and genetics, has been working to “transplant stem cells using animal models,” he said. “Our ultimate goal is that we can not only treat human eye disease but treat neurological diseases for humans as well.”

Stem transplants are a current hot topic in biology, said Philip Haydon, ISU professor of zoology and genetics, who is working with Sakaguchi on the stem cell research.

“This whole field of stem research is the most interesting in the field of biology right now,” he said.

Although they are using animals to study the effects of the transplants, the scientists must consider ethical and legal limitations. Haydon said “ethics are currently not an issue,” but they currently are barred from using embryonic cells by federal law.

Instead of using rats or mice to complete his study, Sakaguchi is working with Brazilian opossums.

“We are using the opossum because their brain is much less mature at a younger age than that of a rat or a mouse,” he said.

The opossums allow them to compare a whole aging spectrum rather than the partial aging spectrum that they would receive with any other mammal, he said.

Sakaguchi is collaborating with Michael Young, an instructor in ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School.

“We are working together in the way that I provide the cells, and Don performs the transplants,” Young said. “The research will relate to glaucoma and any central nervous system injury.”

Young said he predicts this study will prove helpful for eye disease that may become increasingly prominent as the population ages.

Young said he originally started working with Sakaguchi because, “we can ask developmental questions about the opossums.”

Sakaguchi said the research will take several years to finish, but he said humans should have treatment available within the next 10 years.