11/30/2011 PERMALINK
Clinical trial for muscular dystrophy demonstrates safety of customized gene therapy. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that it is safe to cut and paste together different viruses in an effort to create the ultimate vehicle for gene therapy. In a phase I clinical trial, the investigators found no side effects from using a chimeric virus to deliver replacement genes for an essential muscle protein in patients with muscular dystrophy. "This trial demonstrates that gene therapy is no longer limited by the viruses we find in nature, and should usher in the next generation of viral delivery systems for human gene transfer," said senior study author R. Jude Samulski, PhD, professor of pharmacology and director of the Gene Therapy Center at UNC.

11/29/2011 PERMALINK
Scientists mod muscle cells into stem cell-like state to regenerate muscles in mice. A team of scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and CellThera, a private company located in WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, have regenerated functional muscle tissue in mice, opening the door for a new clinical therapy to treat people who suffer major muscle trauma.
The team used a novel protocol to coax mature human muscle cells into a stem cell-like state and grew those reprogrammed cells on biopolymer microthreads. The threads were placed in a wound created by surgically removing a large section of leg muscle from a mouse. Over time, the threads and cells restored near-normal function to the muscle, as reported in the paper "Restoration of Skeletal Muscle Defects with Adult Human Cells Delivered on Fibrin Microthreads", published in the current issue of the journal Tissue Engineering. Surprisingly, the microthreads, which were used simply as a scaffold to support the reprogrammed human cells, actually seemed to accelerate the regeneration process by recruiting progenitor mouse muscle cells, suggesting that they alone could become a therapeutic tool for treating major muscle trauma.

11/29/2011 PERMALINK
Auditory hair cell replacement and hearing improvement by Atoh1 gene therapy in deaf mammals. In the mammalian auditory system, sensory cell loss resulting from aging, ototoxic drugs, infections, overstimulation and other causes is irreversible and leads to permanent sensorineural hearing loss. To restore hearing, it is necessary to generate new functional hair cells. One potential way to regenerate hair cells is to induce a phenotypic transdifferentiation of nonsensory cells that remain in the deaf cochlea. Here we report that Atoh1, a gene also known as Math1 encoding a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor and key regulator of hair cell development, induces regeneration of hair cells and substantially improves hearing thresholds in the mature deaf inner ear after delivery to nonsensory cells through adenovectors. This is the first demonstration of cellular and functional repair in the organ of Corti of a mature deaf mammal. The data suggest a new therapeutic approach based on expressing crucial developmental genes for cellular and functional restoration in the damaged auditory epithelium and other sensory systems.

11/21/2011 PERMALINK
Lab tweaked stem cells can produce neurons for direct brain to computer interface. In a major advance towards brain/machine interface, researchers have tweaked lab modded stem cells to produced neuronal communicators and successfully implanted them in mouse brains. The new study opens the door to the potential for clinicians to deploy light-based stimulation technology to manipulate transplanted tissue and cells. A new technology known as optogenetics, can use light, instead of electric current, to stimulate the activity of the neurons. Allow for a noninvasive communication connection with only engineered neurons, instead of embedded wires, handling the part of the connection inside the brain.

11/17/2011 PERMALINK
A tweak to your FOX proteins that may significantly extend your lifespan. What controls aging? Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon explains to the audience at TED her discovery that a simple genetic mutation associated with a FOX protein that controls gene expression can double the lifespan of a simple worm, C. Elegans. Tweaking the same protein in mice had the same effect, indicating that this genetic technique works in mammals and would probably work in humans.

11/15/2011 PERMALINK
A confederacy of dunces, the results of a failed meme set. The failed dogmas shared by most of the world's politicos, seem to be inexorably pushing our civilization out towards the 'worst possible' end of the spectrum of possible outcomes. From Europe this morning:

The draft law would allow the EU to temporarily ban companies such as Standard & Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s from issuing ratings changes if regulators assess that such moves would exacerbate market volatility. The plan would give the European Securities and Markets Authority, the Paris-based financial markets regulator, the power to suspend for a limited period the ratings of certain countries that are receiving a bail-out programme.

I am hard pressed to think of a better strategy for destroying the last of the confidence bond investors have in European sovereign debt. Throughout this event, politicos haven't just been ineffective in their actions. Their failed dogmas have often caused them to take precisely the actions that will most acerbate the situation. The right meme set is the key to the survival and progress of our kind.

11/10/2011 PERMALINK
Tweaking a gene makes muscles twice as strong. A team of researchers at EPFL, the University of Lausanne and the Salk Institute created super strong, marathon mice and nematodes by reducing the function of a natural inhibitor, suggesting treatments for age-related or genetically caused muscle degeneration are within reach. It turns out that a tiny inhibitor may be responsible for how strong and powerful our muscles can be. By acting on a receptor (NCoR1), they were able to modulate the transcription of certain genes, creating a strain of mighty mice whose muscles were twice a strong as those of normal mice.

11/09/2011 PERMALINK
Researchers create a pituitary gland from scratch. Last spring, a research team at Japan's RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology created retina-like structures from cultured mouse embryonic stem cells. This week, in a breakthrough towards stem cell generation of replacements for any of your organs damaged by aging or disease. The same group reports that it's achieved an even more challenging feat of organ engineering, synthesizing a stem-cell-derived pituitary gland.

11/07/2011 PERMALINK
Scientist synthesize dopamine-producing neurons using stem cells. A new method of synthesizing dopamine-producing neurons, the predominant type of brain cell destroyed in Parkinson's, offers hope for creating cell-replacement therapies that reverse the damage. The method provides an efficient way of making functional cells. When transplanted into mice and rats with brain damage and movement problems similar to Parkinson's, the cells integrated into the brain and worked normally, reversing the animals' motor issues. The finding brings researchers a step closer to testing a stem-cell-derived therapy in patients with this disorder. "We finally have a cell that seems to survive and function and a cell source that we can easily scale up," says Lorenz Studer, a researcher at the Sloan Kettering Institute and senior author on the new study.

11/07/2011 PERMALINK
Scientists engineering bioartificial replacement lungs. Key endodermal progenitors can be derived from patients and expanded in vitro. Advanced culture conditions facilitate the formation of three-dimensional functional tissues from lineage-committed cells. Bioartificial grafts that provide gas exchange have been generated and transplanted into animal models. Looking ahead, current challenges in bioartificial lung engineering include creation of ideal scaffold materials, differentiation and expansion of lung-specific cell populations and full maturation of engineered constructs to provide graft longevity after implantation in vivo. A multidisciplinary collaborative effort will not only bring us closer to the ultimate goal of engineering patient-derived lung grafts, but also generate a series of clinically valuable translational milestones such as airway grafts and disease models. This review summarizes achievements to date, current challenges and ongoing research in bioartificial lung engineering.

11/04/2011 PERMALINK
Researchers have shown that eliminating cells that accumulate with age could prevent or delay the onset of age-related disorders and disabilities. A study by the Mayo Clinic, performed in mouse models, provides the first evidence that senescent cells accumulate with age could contribute to aging and suggests a way to help people stay healthier as they age. Scientists discovered that cells undergo a limited number of divisions before they stop dividing. At that point the cells reach a state of limbo, called cellular senescence, where they neither die nor continue to multiply. They produce factors that damage adjacent cells and cause tissue inflammation. This alternative cell fate is believed to be a mechanism to prevent runaway cell growth and the spread of cancer. The immune system sweeps out these dysfunctional cells on a regular basis, but over time becomes less effective at "keeping house." "By attacking these cells and what they produce, one day we may be able to break the link between aging mechanisms and predisposition to diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancers and dementia," says co-author James Kirkland, M.D., Ph.D., head of Mayo's Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging and the Noaber Foundation Professor of Aging Research. "There is potential for a fundamental change in the way we provide treatment for chronic diseases in older people."

11/02/2011 PERMALINK
To determine just how close to the abyss the world's economy really is, don't look at what is happening in Greece, look at what is happening in Japan. Look to the fact that despite Japan's de facto state of bankrupt, with national debt exceeding 250% of their GDP, an amount far too large to ever be legitimately repaid. So many investors are still converting their dollar holdings into yen, that Japan felt forced to add a stunning half trillion dollar to their ruinous debt load in the last couple of weeks.  Taking huge losses buying dollars with newly borrowed yen, to force down the value of the yen.  Their fear is that the yen's appreciation against the dollar is making Japanese goods so pricey, the world can't afford to buy them.  
When the world's investors so badly want out of the world's reserve currency. That they are this eager to trade it for the the currency of a debt basket-case like Japan.  Then you can be sure that we are perilously close to point where a full scale dump the dollar run can breaking out.  A run that will take down the world's economic system.  Because it is based on the fatally flawed, fiat money/credit expansion meme, this had to happen one day.  Central bankers are no more competent at running an economy than were central planning  apparatchiks of the old Soviet Politburos.  To avoid economic and social collapse, the power to make economic decisions needs to be in widely dispersed.  Just like Communism, Representative Democracy spawns power elites, which use their power to shift away from free market capitalism and create a system of Crony Capitalism, to favor themselves.   
In order to stay healthy, societies must continue to foster the creation of new utility (as economists call useful products and services).  But under Crony Capitalism, as under Communism, the new always gets repressed.  Because it threatens the cash flow or power base of members of the power elite, who control all the existing utility.  Instead of favoring new over existing utility, the incentives get turned around to restrict the new in favor of the old. Causing the system to slip into stagnation and ultimately collapse.
True direct democracy and true free markets, each much more achievable today thanks to the internet, have the power to inhibit the concentration of power and wealth in too few hands. These memes make the formation of the parasitic power elites that bring on the collapse of civilizations much more difficult.