Scientists 'seed' cells, make new organs

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/07/building.new.urethras/index.html

By Stephanie Smith, CNN Medical Producer

March 7, 2011 6:41 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- Engineering organs begins with something missing -- a phantom organ in the body that causes a patient incredible discomfort, dysfunction or pain. It ends with a Star Trek-esque feat of engineering where missing organs are replaced using cells culled from a patient's own body.

In a small pilot study, published Monday in the Lancet, scientists reported successfully reconstructing urethras in five young patients, using their own cells.

"We were able to create patients' own tissue that actually belongs there," said Dr. Anthony Atala, lead author of the study and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "If the tissue is supposed to be there, hopefully we will do better by the patient."

Patients had their engineered urethras implanted between March 2004 and July 2007 at the Federico Gomez Children's Hospital in Mexico City. Their urethras continued to function after several years' follow-up.

The urethra is a narrow tube that connects the bladder with the genitals, providing a conduit to usher waste out of the body. When it is damaged -- sometimes congenitally, or as result of disease, pelvic fractures or other traumas -- it is usually replaced using tissue harvested from the lining of a patient's cheeks or using skin grafted from another area of the body, according to Atala.

"Unfortunately for the narrow structures in the body (like urethras), they are kind of complex because they tend to collapse," said Atala, who added that conventional urethra replacement fails more than half the time. "Every organ has its own challenges."

The challenge with traditional urethra replacement is creating a viable tube, one that will not easily collapse. And that is where engineering urethras may offer some benefit.

The first step for engineering a new urethra is to take a very small piece of the patient's own tissue (around half the size of a postage stamp) from the bladder area. Cells are scraped from the biopsied tissue, allowed to multiply, after which muscle cells are separated from urethral cells.

It is the next few steps in the process that sound like science fiction. When there are a sufficient number of cells, scientists "seed" them -- much like you would seed a new lawn -- onto a mesh scaffold that is shaped like a urethra. The inside of the mesh is coated with urethral cells while the outside gets muscle cells.

"It's like baking a layer cake, but doing it one layer at a time," said Atala.

The seeded structure is placed in an incubator for about two weeks, in a "cooking" process that Atala says simulates how cell growth occurs inside the body. After that, the newly engineered urethra is ready to be implanted into the patient.

"During the surgery, we go to the area that has been damaged, clean out scar tissue and plug in a new, engineered urethra," said Atala. "It sounds easy but it is a fairly complex surgical procedure. This is a narrow structure and it has to fit just right."

According to the study, the engineered grafts appeared normal about three months after they were implanted. Patients' urethras functioned normally within a few weeks after surgery and maintained that function for up to six years.

"This is an exciting study showing that tissue engineering can be a viable option for complex urethral repairs," said David A. Vorp, a professor of bioengineering and cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved with this study. "It shows that the patient's own cells can be utilized, which will eliminate the possibility of rejection."

Vorp added that biopsies carry their own risks, such as infection and other complications, and that the study needs to be replicated in a larger study group. Although the current study had few patients enrolled, Vorp said it represents "a significant step toward an important new means for urethral repair."

Atala concedes that it will be several years before engineering organs becomes the norm, and that it is not yet clear whether this same technology will work in adults. He said that in addition to patients with urethra dysfunction, patients with other, complex small vessel problems -- such as blood vessels that collapse after heart bypass surgery -- could one day profit from this technology.

"There is a huge population with small vessel disease where the vessels keep collapsing and occluding," said Atala. "The main concept here is a narrow tubularized, complex structure that doesn't collapse long-term."

Atala and colleagues reported similar success in seven spina bifida patients to replace their dysfunctional bladders in 2006. Scientists at Wake Forest have successfully engineered more than 30 tissues and organs, including miniature livers, heart valves -- even printing organs such as human skin and kidneys -- in the lab.

Scientists like Atala say regenerative medicine represents a new frontier in medicine that could see doctors curing, rather than merely treating, diseases using the body's natural ability to heal itself. Autologous cells -- or cells that come from a patient's own body -- allow organs to be transplanted without rejection.

Still, all of that is many years away. Most of these burgeoning technologies are not yet ready for widespread implantation, and the cost of regenerative medicine at this early juncture is often much higher than conventional procedures.

"An interesting challenge with a lot of these technologies and with regenerative medicine is you have to go slow," said Atala. "The key is to go slow and have long-term follow-up. Keep patient safety first."

Stem Cell Breakthrough: Pigs could grow human organs

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/167205/20110622/stem-cell-breakthrough-pigs-could-grow-human-organs.htm

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 10:54 AM EST

Stem Cell Breakthrough: Pigs could grow human organs

By G.G. Denia

At the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics, Professor Hiromitsu Nakauchi, director of the center for stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the University of Tokyo in Japan, led the new stem cell research breakthrough.  Professor Nakauchi called the new technique as blastocyst complementation.
The technique included injecting stem cells from rats into the embryos or blastocysts of mice that could not grow their own organs. Results have shown that the mice were indeed able to grow rat organ.
Professor Nakauchi said: "Our ultimate goal is to generate human organs from induced pluripotent stem cells.
"The technique, called blastocyst complementation, provides us with a novel approach for organ supply. We have successfully tried it between mice and rats. We are now rather confident in generating functional human organs using this approach."  Furthermore, he said they hoped to further test the technique by growing other organs and were also seeking permission to utilize human stem cells.
He said: "For ethical reasons we cannot make an organ deficient human embryo and use it for blastocyst complementation.
"So to make use of this system to generate human organs, we must use this technique using blastocysts of livestock animals such as pigs instead."
"Blastocyst complementation across species had never been tested before, but we have now shown that it can work."
The researchers, apparently, already managed to produce pigs that were able to generate human blood by injecting blood stem cells from humans into pig fetuses.
Stem cells are said to be biological cells found in all multi-cellular organisms, divide through mitosis or cell division and differentiate into diverse specialized cell types. This self-renewing capability to produce more stem cells could provide the abundant supply or organs for transplant with possible minimized risk for transplant rejection.

Test that tells you how long you'll live

DNA testing

The £400 test that tells you how long you'll live

DNA breakthrough heralds new medical era – and opens ethical Pandora's box

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Monday, 16 May 2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-163400-test-that-tells-you-how-long-youll-live-2284639.html

A blood test that can show how fast someone is ageing – and offers the tantalising possibility of estimating how long they have left to live – is to go on sale to the general public in Britain later this year.

Graphic: How the test works

The controversial test measures vital structures on the tips of a person's chromosomes, called telomeres, which scientists believe are one of the most important and accurate indicators of the speed at which a person is ageing.

Scientists behind the €500 (£435) test said it will be possible to tell whether a person's "biological age", as measured by the length of their telomeres, is older or younger than their actual chronological age.

Medical researchers believe that telomere testing will become widespread within the next five or 10 years, but there are already some scientists who question its value and whether there should be stronger ethical controls over its wider use. In addition to concerns about how people will react to a test for how "old" they really are, some scientists are worried that telomere testing may be hijacked by unscrupulous organisations trying to peddle unproven anti-ageing remedies and other fake elixirs of life.

The results of the tests might also be of interest to companies offering life-insurance policies or medical cover that depend on a person's lifetime risk of falling seriously ill or dying prematurely. However, there is a growing body of scientific opinion that says testing the length of a person's telomeres could provide vital insights into the risk of dying prematurely from a range of age-related disorders, from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimer's and cancer. "We know that people who are born with shorter telomeres than normal also have a shorter lifespan. We know that shorter telomeres can cause a shorter lifespan," said Maria Blasco of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, who is the inventor of the new commercial telomere test. "But we don't know whether longer telomeres are going to give you a longer lifespan. That's not really known in humans," she added.

"What is new about this test is that it is very precise. We can detect very small differences in telomere length and it is a very simple and fast technique where many samples can be analysed at the same time. Most importantly, we are able to determine the presence of dangerous telomeres – those that are very short."

Dr Blasco's company, Life Length, is in talks with medical diagnostic companies across Europe, including the UK, to market the test and collect blood samples for analysis in Spain. A deal with a company operating in Britain is likely within a year, she said.

"We need to have a clinical company to send us the blood [samples]. We are in contact with several groups in the UK who are interested," Dr Blasco said.

Life Length is anticipating hundreds of requests from people wanting to have their telomeres tested and is expecting demand from thousands more once the company is able to bring down the cost of the test as public demand increases.

Although Life Length is not the only company selling telomere tests, it is the only one gearing up for over-the-counter sales to the public and the only company with an accurate-enough test to be of practical use, said Professor Jerry Shay of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas.

"This test devised by Blasco is so accurate that it is likely to provide more useful information than some of the other tests out there right now," said Professor Shay, who is a scientific consultant for Life Length. "What's important in ageing is the shortest telomeres. What makes cells stop growing is the shortest telomeres, not the average telomere length, which is what other tests look at.

"Everyone talks about the chronological age, but there is also a biological age, and telomere length is actually a pretty good representation of your biological age. Telomeres are important – there is no question of that," he said.

Asked why the general public would be interested in taking a telomere test, Dr Shay said: "I think people are just basically curious about their own mortality. If you ask people what they worry about, most people would say they are worried about dying."

He added: "People might say 'If I know I'm going to die in 10 years I'll spend all my money now', or 'If I'm going to live for 40 more years I'll be more conservative in my lifestyle'. The worrying thing is that if this information ever got to a point where it is believable, insurance companies would start requiring it in terms of insuring people.

"If you smoke or you're obese your insurance rates are higher, and if you have short telomeres your insurance rates might be higher too."

Scientists do not yet believe they can narrow down the test prediction to calculate the exact number of months and years a person has yet to live, but several studies have indicated that individuals with telomeres that shorter than normal are likely to die younger than those with longer telomeres. Telomere research is considered to be one of the most exciting areas in biomedical science and last year the Nobel Prize in medicine was shared between three scientists who are pioneers in the field.

Interestingly, one of the Nobel laureates, Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California San Francisco, is an enthusiastic proponent of telomere testing while another of the prize-winners, Carol Greider of Harvard Medical School, is more sceptical of its benefits.

"Do I think it's useful to have a bunch of companies offering to measure telomere length so people can find out how old they are? No," Dr Greider recently told the journal Science.

Dr Blasco, a former post-doctoral student in Dr Greider's laboratory, is more certain of the benefits. "It will be useful for you to know your biological age and maybe to change your lifestyle habits if you find you have short telomeres," she said.

Telomeres: a short history

* 2003 Scientists studying 20-year-old blood samples from 143 people show that telomere length is good indicator of whether someone is likely to live for 15 years or more once they reach 60.

* 2004 Women living with stress of having a sick child are found to have shorter telomeres. Other research suggests that meditation or other forms of stress reduction may lengthen telomeres.

* 2007 Study of men in Scotland shows those with the longest telomeres were half as likely to develop heart disease than those with shorter telomeres. Telomere length was as good as cholesterol levels at predicting the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

* 2009 Short telomeres linked with inherited bone marrow disease.

* 2010 GM mice with no telomerase, an enzyme that elongates telomeres in some cells, age prematurely compared to normal mice. The ageing effects were reversed after injections of telomerase.

* 2011 Study of civil servants in the UK shows that those with few educational qualifications have shorter telomeres than those with higher educational qualifications. People with poor backgrounds are known to age faster and suffer more age-related diseases.

Cancer Cure?

http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice

Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.

Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic drug. The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects.

This drug doesn’t require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies.

Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone. It was tested on Rats inflicted with severe tumors; their cells shrank when they were fed with water supplemented with DCA. The drug is widely available and the technique is easy to use, why the major drug companies are not involved? Or the Media interested in this find?

In human bodies there is a natural cancer fighting human cell, the mitochondria, but they need to be triggered to be effective. Scientists used to think that these mitochondria cells were damaged and thus ineffective against cancer. So they used to focus on glycolysis, which is less effective in curing cancer and more wasteful. The drug manufacturers focused on this glycolysis method to fight cancer. This DCA on the other hand doesn’t rely on glycolysis instead on mitochondria; it triggers the mitochondria which in turn fights the cancer cells.

The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can't be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.

With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn't break down and seed new tumors.

Pharmaceutical companies are not investing in this research because DCA method cannot be patented, without a patent they can’t make money, like they are doing now with their AIDS Patent. Since the pharmaceutical companies won’t develop this, the article says other independent laboratories should start producing this drug and do more research to confirm all the above findings and produce drugs. All the groundwork can be done in collaboration with the Universities, who will be glad to assist in such research and can develop an effective drug for curing cancer.

This article wants to raise awareness for this study, hope some independent companies and small startup will pick up this idea and produce these drugs, because the big companies won’t touch it for a long time.

Exercise: In Women, Weight Training for a Sharper Mind

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/health/research/26exer.html?_r=1
January 26, 2010
VITAL SIGNS


By RONI CARYN RABIN
Older women who did an hour or two of strength training exercises each week had improved cognitive function a year later, scoring higher on tests of the brain processes responsible for planning and executing tasks, a new study has found.

Researchers in British Columbia randomly assigned 155 women ages 65 to 75 either to strength training with dumbbells and weight machines once or twice a week, or to a comparison group doing balance and toning exercises.

A year later, the women who did strength training had improved their performance on tests of so-called executive function by 10.9 percent to 12.6 percent, while those assigned to balance and toning exercises experienced a slight deterioration — 0.5 percent. The improvements in the strength training group included an enhanced ability to make decisions, resolve conflicts and focus on subjects without being distracted by competing stimuli.

Older women are generally less likely than others to do strength training, even though it can promote bone health and counteract muscle loss, said Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a researcher at the Center for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver General Hospital and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Jan. 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Blocking Rogue Gene Could Stop Spread of Cancer, New Research Suggests

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110124073903.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2011) — Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have discovered a rogue gene involved in the spread of cancer in the body. By blocking the gene, they believe, cancer could be stopped in its tracks.

Published in the journal Oncogene, the discovery is a breakthrough in our understanding of how cancer spreads. It is hoped the research will lead to new drugs that halt the critical late stage of the disease when cancer cells spread to other parts of the body.

The culprit gene -- known as WWP2 -- is an enzymic bonding agent found inside cancer cells. It attacks and breaks down a natural inhibitor in the body which normally prevents cancer cells spreading. The UEA team found that by blocking WWP2, levels of the natural inhibitor are boosted and the cancer cells remain dormant.If a drug was developed that deactivated WWP2, conventional therapies and surgery could be used on primary tumours, with no risk of the disease taking hold elsewhere.

Lead author Andrew Chantry, of UEA's School of Biological Sciences, said the discovery could lead to the development of a new generation of drugs within the next decade that could be used to stop the aggressive spread of most forms of the disease, including breast, brain, colon and skin cancer.
"The late-stages of cancer involve a process known as metastasis -- a critical phase in the progression of the disease that cannot currently be treated or prevented," said Dr Chantry.
"The challenge now is to identify a potent drug that will get inside cancer cells and destroy the activity of the rogue gene. This is a difficult but not impossible task, made easier by the deeper understanding of the biological processes revealed in this study."
The research was funded by UK-based charity the Association of International Cancer Research (AICR), with additional support from the Big C Charity and the British Skin Foundation.
Dr Mark Matfield, scientific co-ordinator of AICR, said: "This is a very exciting new discovery and a perfect example of the way that basic research into cancer can open up ways to develop new ways to treat cancer."
The initial discovery was made while researchers were studying a group of natural cancer cell inhibitors called 'Smads'.
Dr Surinder Soond, who spearheaded the experimental work in the laboratory, said: "This is a very novel and exciting approach to treating cancer and the spread of tumours which holds great potential."