Genetic engineering technique to investigate Tourette's

Posted on 19 October 2017

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Scientists have been using a genetic engineering technique to determine what causes Tourette's and other neuropsychiatric disorders.

Researchers have been held back previously as they have been unable to study living brain-type nerve cells but this technique can be used to create brain cells from the blood cells of individuals, which they hope will help determine what causes the disease and could be used to screen drugs that might be used in treatment. However as with all research in this field it is in its infancy and it requires that this result is replicated for researchers to be sure of the results and confident it is a useful technique. At the moment it is unclear if this kind of result will be truly significant in the future.

You can read about the study in the research paper here or about an article reporting the findings here.

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