Major International Stem Cell Trials For Multiple Sclerosis Get Funding

Great news!


UK scientists getting ready to work on major international trials on the safety and effectiveness of stem cells in treating brain and spinal cord damage in people with multiple scleroris (MS) received £1 million from the MS Society and the UK Stem Cell Foundation.

Read the news report here. 

Put the breaks on using BRAIN POWER!!!

When trying to stop a fast moving car, our intent to jam break happens much earlier than the actual action of stepping on the break. 

A group of scientists in Germany found that the brain sends out unique messages during this period of "intent to jam break".

They then designed a system that reads the driver's brain signals, combines this with the muscle signals, and stops the car even before your foot touches the pedal.

Their system reacted 130 ms earlier than previous systems. For a car going at 100 km/h, this amounts to reducing the braking distance by 3.66 m!

That's pretty cool! Is it practical though?

1) Imagine looking like this everytime you drive

Image source: Mercedes 500sec.com

2) False alarm - Car stopping when it's not supposed to!

Image source: http://www.cawlocal584.com/humour.html 

3) Over reliance on the system

Methinks, neh.. not yet.

Ovarian Cancer Stem Cells

“Cases of ovarian cancer in Singapore have more than doubled from 1968 to 15.5 in every 100,000 women today. This trend is also seen in developing and newly developed countries where women place economic progress and career over procreation.”  - The Straits Times

Apparently, the more children a woman has and the earlier in life she gives birth, the lower her risk for ovarian cancer. 

Well, childbearing can’t be rushed. But we can certainly remind ourselves and our women friends to be more aware of ovarian cancer. 

More information:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001891
 

Because not much is known about ovarian cancer, scientists are pounding away in the labs trying to find out more about this devastating disease. 

For example, a recent finding by researchers from Michigan, USA, showed that   

1) Cancer stem cells (cells within the tumor that give rise to MORE cancer cells) are present in ovarian cancer. 

 

2) Ovarian cancer stem cells recruit mesenchymal stem cells to the tumour. Mesenchymal stem cells are a type of adult stem cells found throughout the body. These cells can form different specialized cells such as fat, bone or cartilage. 

3) Mesenchymal cells increases the number of cancer stem cell by increasing a signal called BMP.

 And what does this study imply?

Beauty and the brain

Beauty, be it a beautiful face, art, or piece of music, activates the part of our brain known as medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC, red area in diagram below). mOFC is also involved in our emotions, feelings of reward and pleasure, and ability to make decisions.

Diagram from  Milad et. al. PNAS 2005

In response to this finding, John Lehrer suggested in "Why Does Beauty Exist" that the feeling of beauty is useful. According to Lehrer: 

"Beauty is a particularly potent and intense form of curiosity. It’s a learning signal urging us to keep on paying attention, an emotional reminder that there’s something here worth figuring out... ... We know just enough to know that we want to know more; there is something here, we just don’t what. That’s why we call it beautiful."

A few years back, R.J. Dolan and colleagues also showed that our mOFC is more active when we are looking at a happy looking face, as manifested in a smile. 

mOFC more active                                   mOFC less active

mOFC more active                                   mOFC less active

                           mOFC more active                                           mOFC less active

So,  

SMILE AWAY!!!!!

Gentlemen, DEFEND your swimmers

Human sperms are naturally slower swimmers compared to our monkey counterparts.

                                                    http://www.physorg.com/news109934150.html

And if you have a defect in the Defensin gene (DEFB126) , you have to try even harder to get your partner pregnant. The DEFB126 protein is found on the surface of sperms. It protects the sperm and helps it swim through the woman's cervical mucus to fertilise the egg.

Scientists found that:
- About half of all men carry one copy of the defective gene
- About a quarter of all men have two defective copies
- Sperms from men with two defective copies were 84% slower in swimming through the experimental “cervical mucus”. 
- Wives of men with two defective copies are 30% less likely to give birth

Prior to this study, male infertility causes were largely unknown. With knowledge gained from such a study, couples trying to conceive could undergo genetic testing to identify the underlying problem and choose a suitable assisted reproductive method. 

Here's the paper

An old classic

Hilarious!!! So catchy I almost want to sing along. Haha,, who's your daddy!?!!??!

Lyrics
The PCR Song by Scientists for Better PCR
There was a time when to amplify DNA,
You had to grow tons and tons of tiny cells.
(Oooh) Then along came a guy named Dr. Kary Mullis,
Said you can amplify in vitro just as well.

Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers,
Nucleotides and polymerases too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending,
Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.

[Chorus]
PCR when you need to detect mutation (detect mutation)
PCR when you need to recombine (recombine)
PCR when you need to find out who the daddy is (who’s your daddy?)
PCR when you need to solve a crime (solve a crime)
[x2]

Terms simplified
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) - scientific technique in molecular biology to amplify a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude. 

in vitro - in a plate

template - small piece of DNA that you want to amplify e.g. DNA of Bill Clinton from semen on Lewinsky's dress!

primers - short sequence of DNA that matches the beginning/end of the region on the template that you want to amplify

nucleotides - DNA is made up of a chain of nucleotides

polymerases - enzyme that links nucleotides together to make DNA

What a coincidence!

Just as I finished writing the post about modeling Progeria disease with stem cells, I came across this tweet from New Scientist:

The children who grow old before they grow up>> Could they hold key to longer lives? 

 

My take on this, is that Progeria is caused by the presence of Progerin, a mutated form a LMNA. So unless old people get this mutation and accumulate high levels of Progerin protein, it is a tough call to say that we can deduce conclusive information about the normal process of ageing from studying Progeria Syndrome.

Disease in a plate

All thanks to Dr Shinya Yamanaka, we are now able to make patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). If you are a stem cell virgin, please refer to my FAQs about stem cells page. 

Diagram from http://www.rndsystems.com.

For example, let’s look at a rare congenital disease, Hutchinson Gilford Progeria syndrome. Progeria syndrome causes premature ageing in children.

Progeria patient. Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progeria

The wrinkled facial features, wasted bodies, loss of hair, and stunted growth make this heart-wrenching disease familiar to the general masses.


Movies such as “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Jack” were said to have been inspired by this disease. Progeria patients generally die in their early teens due to heart attack or stroke.

There is currently no treatment for Progeria syndrome.

In the above study, patient's skin cells were reprogrammed into iPSCs. These Progeria iPSCs were made into different cell types of the body to study how the disease emerges.


By making a "Progeria-patient-on-a-plate", they discovered which cell types were afflicted in these patients, and how. Such studies could be further used to test for drugs that treat these cell types!


Here's a cartoon to summarize the work flow for using stem cells for disease modeling.

Diagram modified from Colman and Dreesen Cell Stem Cell 2009. 

Gaga's Bad Project

This has got to be the BEST geek parody I've seen. Great effort!

Which is worse? Having a bad project or having bad romance?

Stem cell clinical trials to treat eye diseases

The highly anticipated clinical trial for stem cells-derived retinal pigmental epithelial cells (RPE) is on the way!

http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-stem-cell-trial-ucla-20110714,0,4920946.story

Minoxidil for balding?

Went for Miss Singapore Universe Gala dinner last weekend and one of the awards given out was Miss Crowning Glory. 18 year-old Amanda Leong bagged the prize.

 Amanda Leong, 1st runner up and Miss Crowning Glory of MSU 2011.

That reminded me of the bottle of Minoxidil I have sitting at home. Well, unlike Miss Leong, I have very thin and fine hair. A few months back, I consulted a skin specialist and asked if there is anything I could do to have fuller hair. I was prescribed with 5% Minoxidil and told to use it religiously twice daily everyday for the rest of my life. After 2 weeks, I gave up because I found it made my hair too oily.

However I thought I should share this article:

Here, the researchers compared the efficacy, safety, and acceptability of once daily application of 5% minoxidil topical foam (MTF) with twice-daily 2% MTS in women with hair loss problems.

113 women with female version of male-pattern baldness were given either 5% or 2% MTS for 24 weeks. The researchers conclude that once-daily application of 5% MTF just as effective as twice-daily 2% MTS, in promoting hair growth and increasing hair width.


Do note that this study was supported by a medical grant from Johnson & Johnson Consumer Co Inc. Dr Blume-Peytavi is a consultant for Johnson & Johnson Consumer Co Inc and Dr Garcia Bartels was a consultant for Pfizer GmbH Germany until 2008.

Take home message: According to this study, 5% Minoxidil once daily works. HOWEVER, my skeptical scientist brain still finds it a bit dubious. The exact mechanism of how Minoxidil works is unknown, and there has yet to be any (long enough) study on its long term effects.

Nonetheless, finding a treatment for balding is a very lucrative topic of research and there's much going on in the labs world wide. Will keep you updated on the latest advances! Have faith, ladies and gentlemen, one day we'll all have hair like JLo and Lucy Liu.

----------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Anyway, I decided to start trying out the Minoxidil again. Experiment on myself!

How does a baby come about?

Do not get carried away and think that I am going to show you ways to make baby. For that, please go to Kamasutra on Cosmo.  

I can't compare it to the process of making babies, but I find the events that happen after the sperm-egg union pretty awesome too! It is an intricately orchestrated process of cell movement, replication and transformation. 

 
Sperm meets egg to form a zygote. 

The one-celled zygote then divides.

Early beginnings of life (Diagram from Univ of Maryland Geology Website)

In humans, around 5 days after fertilization, the embryo enters the blastocyst stage. It is now a hollow ball of cells. The inner cells constitute the inner cell mass (ICM), from which the embryo proper develops. The external cells (the trophectoderm) will eventually become the placenta. The embryo acquires a fluid-filled cavity called blastocoel.

Around the end of the fifth day, the embryo implants into the uterine wall. Extensive tissues form between the blastocyst and the uterine wall. Particularly, the syncytiotrophoblast cells actively invade the uterine wall to allow for nutrient exchange between mother and foetus.

The ICM develops into the late epiblast, a layer of cells that give rise to all cell types of the body. To make the different organs, the epiblast first undergoes a process called gastrulation. This forms the ectoderm (which becomes skin, brain etc), mesoderm (becomes heart, muscle etc), and endoderm (becomes liver, pancreas etc).  

Genes for stuttering

Do you remember the scene in the movie whereby King George VI was taken to Westminster Abbey by his speech therapist to practice his coronation speech? Well, I recently found out that it was filmed at Ely Cathedral!

 

Ely Cathedral is less than 30min drive from Cambridge and is one of the most stunning piece of architecture in the region.

Another discovery that I made after watching King's Speech, is that the first genes for stuttering were only identified 1 year before the movie was screened. 

Although the underlying causes of stuttering are unknown, many studies have suggested a genetic linkage for this disorder.

In this study, Dr. Drayna's team identified mutations in 3 genes, GNPTAB, GNPTG and NAGPA. These genes make enzymes that are involved in the digestion of excess or worn out cellular components.

This finding is cool because it opens new research avenues into possible treatments for stuttering. For example, the problematic enzyme/s could be manufactured and injected it into a person’s bloodstream to help deal with the stuttering problem.

I shall end this post with a hilarious video of Ben's brother's Stuttering (Kiss Me Again) 

Information obtained from original article and NIH News.