Mental Illness ‘In A Dish’
Cell culture in a petri dish. Photo:
Researchers are using skin cells from patients with mental illnesses, such s schizophrenia, to grow new tissue as neurons. The hope is to find a genetic based influence for mental disorders and recognize the early stages of such diseases. From Ewen Callaway via Nature News:
Before committing suicide at the age of 22, an anonymous man with schizophrenia donated a biopsy of his skin cells to research. Reborn as neurons, these cells may help neuroscientists to unpick the disease he struggled with from early childhood.
Experiments on these cells, as well as those of several other patients, are reported today in Nature1. They represent the first of what are sure to be many mental illnesses ‘in a dish’, made by reprogramming patients’ skin cells to an embryonic-like state from which they can form any tissue type.
Recreating neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder using such cells…
HIV Cured By Stem Cell Transplant
The first person ever successfully cured of HIV, thanks to the miracle of stem cells? Aidsmap reports:
Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.
The man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection.
The “Berlin patient,” Timothy Ray Brown, a US citizen who lives in Berlin, was interviewed this week by German news magazine Stern.
His course of treatment…
George W. Bush Shares His Secrets – With Matt Drudge!
Of course “W” fan Matt Drudge is first to crow over how wonderful our immediate past president was, with some exclusive revelations from Bush’s new book on his consistently conservative Drudge Report:
“It was a simple question, ‘Can you remember the last day you didn’t have a drink?’”
So begins President George W. Bush in the opening chapter ["Quitting"] from the most anticipated book of the season, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. With Decision Points set for release November 9, Bush pulls back the curtain with a strikingly personal work that takes very few shots at his critics.
The former president even stays clear of Obama!
From 911’s “Day of Fire” to “Katrina” to “Financial Crisis”, Bush explains how he returned to his faith, time and time again.
And the faith of others.
The president details how he bonded with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — and a magical bird!
Arriving angry at Bush’s Texas ranch over…
New ‘Designer’ Human Organs – Stem Cells + Inkjet Printing?
Organovo will distribute its $200,000 inkjet-like organ printers to medical research centers starting this year. Their “ink” comes from stem cells (from adult bone marrow) guided by growth factors into specific cell types, then packed into droplets of “ink” containing up to 30,000 cells to be printed onto sheets of organic biopaper where they self-assemble into functional tissue.
Though at first they’ll only print “very basic tissues like blood vessels”, the CSO of Organovo sees the business potential in using their bio-printers to create artificial human organs for implanting. (”You give us your cells: we grow them, we print them…”) And he also raises the possibility of “designer organs”, artificially grown into customized sizes and shapes…
British Boy Becomes First in the World to Have Stem Cell Transplant
If President Bush’s outdated theology hadn’t prevented government research with embryonic stem cells, I wonder how much further along we’d be. Pretty incredible story. Rebecca Smith writes in the Telegraph:
A ten-year-old British boy has become the first child in the world to undergo a revolutionary windpipe transplant, it has been announced.
The landmark operation involved injecting the scaffold of a windpipe, taken from a dead donor, with stem cells from the boy before implanting it in his throat.
The stem cells were removed from the boy’s bone marrow and were ready for use just four hours later.
The cells trigger regrowth to create a normal windpipe without any of the risks of normal transplantation such as the organ being rejected by the body.
The operation took place at Great Ormond Street Hospital, in London, on Monday and the boy is breathing by himself and able to speak normally.
Read More in the Telegraph
…
Man Appears Free of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant
Jacquelyne Froeber writes on CNN:
A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“The patient is fine,” said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. “Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication.”
The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany, to treat the man’s leukemia, not the HIV itself.
However, the team deliberately chose a compatible donor who has a naturally…
Medical director injects placental stem cells!
A Colorado medical director describes having placental tissue transplanted into his lower abdomen in Mexico for its rejuvenating growth factors, hormones, and especially placental stem cells, “which have powerful ‘homing’ mechanisms which enable them to hone in on areas of the body that are in need of repair.”
“Placental stem cells are, in effect, the nanobots of today,” says Terry Grossman. “Many parents today save the umbilical cord blood from their newborns so that the stem cells will be available to the child (and possibly other family members as well) if needed in the future….”
“Aside from being available in the event the child develops leukemia and needs chemotherapy along with a stem cell transplant, the value of umbilical cord stem cells lies in the future as well… Umbilical cord stem cells are being used to treat many conditions in hospitals in China and elsewhere today!”
(This article originally appeared in the fall edition…
