Monthly Archives: April 2012

A New 'Omics Emerges

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There are several reasons why some patients may or may not respond to a drug, or may exhibit a certain side effect that other patients do not. Some of those reasons are genetic, as pharmacogenomics researchers have shown certain alleles can predict response to a drug or the likelihood of an adverse reaction. But pharmacogenomics has been unable to explain all the variability in drug response, so metabolomics researchers have stepped in to see whether their discipline can help explain why some patients respond to drugs the way they do.

While metabolomics researchers look at metabolic profiles in plasma, serum, or urine to determine the differences between people with a certain disease and healthy people, pharmacometabolomics- is an extension of that, says Imperial College London's John Lindon. "Once you've got the biomarkers of the disease these are the metabolites you can go back and look for the mechanism by looking at the enzyme pathways, to see which pathways are involved in using up those metabolites," Lindon says. "We look at a group of people's urine and we look for metabolic differences in the pre-dose, which would then be predictive of what happened post-dose."

Like pharmacogenomic researchers, pharmacometabolomic researchers look for signals in a person's biology that may indicate why a drug affects a person the way it does. But instead of looking at genetic differences, these researchers look at differences in enzymes, metabolites, and small molecules. Using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and different kinds of mass spectrometry, "we look for the metabolic fingerprint that says this person would process this drug differently it might be more toxic in that person or more beneficial in that person. The idea would be to go towards personalized medicine," Lindon adds. His group published the first pharmacometabo-lomic study on pharmacometabolomic phenotyping and its potential use as a personalized medicine tool, in Nature in April 2006.

The benefit of looking at drug response on a metabolic level rather than a genomic level, Lindon says, is that while genomics reveals everything about a person's DNA, it says nothing at all about a person's environment. "Epigenetics tells you about your environment, but genetics and genomics people are largely blind to the environmental influences," he adds. "Metabolism is the endpoint of all the processes of the body, and is exquisitely sensitive to environment."

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El Paso medical school offers lessons for Austin's effort

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By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Updated: 11:08p.m.Sunday,April1,2012

Published: 8:49p.m.Sunday,April1,2012

EL PASO The Rock Kiss bar, with its neon pink walls, stands a few steps from the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, the state's newest medical school. Although a sign advertises happy hour, the bar is shuttered, having been acquired by the growing school to make way for a parking lot, trees and shrubs.

Across the street, a children's hospital opened earlier this year, as did an adjacent women's hospital within a recently renovated county hospital.

Thus, in ways large and small, a sizable medical complex is emerging in El Paso, a high-desert city of 649,000 people along the border with Mexico and New Mexico.

Political, business and nonprofit leaders reached a consensus more than 10 years ago that educating medical students, treating patients and exploring biotechnology are essential to the future well-being of this area's people and economy. Several hundred million dollars from local tax proceeds, legislative appropriations and philanthropic donations have flowed into the effort.

Probably the singular thing here was to have a very consistent message that this is the most important thing to us," said Woody Hunt, a businessman and philanthropist who helped organize a 1998 economic summit that focused attention on the health care field following the collapse of the garment industry, which had been an economic mainstay.

Hunt added, "You've got to have vision. You've got to be organized. You've got to be patient."

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El Paso medical school offers lessons for Austin's effort

Eckstein's exhibition for fifth title

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VICTORY CHARGE: Shannon Eckstein on his way to winning a fifth Australian ironman title at the national championships at North Kirra. Picture: Michael Ross Source: Gold Coast Bulletin

SHANNON Eckstein has taken a step closer to lifesaving immortality by claiming his fifth Australian ironman title on the Gold Coast.

On an emotional final day of the Australian championships at North Kirra, Eckstein moved to second on the all-time winners' list, while Metropolitan Caloundra's Rebecca Creedy erased the pain of last year's near miss to win the ironwoman race.

Eckstein led the men's race from start to finish to win from Tugun's Hugh Doherty and Mooloolaba's Ali Day and skip clear of Ky Hurst and Grant Kenny on the all-time leaderboard.

Only legend Trevor Hendy has more, with six.

Eckstein battled numerous injuries during a disappointing Kellogg's series (won by his brother Caine), but he was back to his best today, completing successive national titles for the first time in his stellar career.

It was also his first win as a dad after the birth of his baby daughter two weeks ago.

Eckstein grew up idolising Hendy and said it was surreal to be on the cusp of dethroning him as the most decorated national champion in history.

"That's the next challenge," he said.

"In this sport you need to find a new challenge to keep getting out of bed at five o'clock in the morning.

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Gene variations linked to intestinal blockage in newborns with cystic fibrosis

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ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2012) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers working as part of the International Cystic Fibrosis Consortium have discovered several regions of the genome that may predispose cystic fibrosis (CF) patients to develop an intestinal blockage while still in the uterus.

A report of this international study appears online April 1, 2012 in the journal Nature Genetics. It was the work of the North America CF Gene Modifier Consortium, which brought together dozens of investigators from the United States, Canada, and from France, to identify genetic variations that could be linked with meconium ileus (MI), an intestinal obstruction that usually requires emergency surgery for treatment, and can result in a substantially increased rate of serious health problems.

MI affects roughly 15-20 percent of all patients with CF, a genetic condition that causes scarring throughout the body, especially the lungs and pancreas. Though every CF patient carries mutations in both copies of the same gene -- coding for a protein called cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator, or CFTR -- symptoms can vary widely from patient to patient.

The genome-wide association study (GWAS) of more than 3,700 CF patients identified non-CFTR genetic variants in the cell membrane that separates the interior of cells from the outside environment. More specifically, the variants involved genes responsible for ion transport in the lower end of the small intestine.

"These variants involve cells in the small intestine that predispose CF patients to develop MI while still in the womb," said one of the senior study authors Michael Knowles, MD, professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at UNC and a member of UNC's Cystic Fibrosis-Pulmonary Research and Treatment Center.

"The discovery provides new understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms underlying MI. In addition, it offers the possibility of developing therapies to intervene in utero," Knowles said. "Further, it provides molecular insight into the role of genetic variation in ion transporters in CF, which may be applicable to more commonly, and severely, involved organs such as the lungs."

Other UNC study coauthors are Wanda K. O'Neal, Rhonda G. Pace, Jaclyn R. Stonebraker, Sally D. Wood, and Fred A. Wright. In the U.S., the study was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the U.S. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

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Study finds protective gene in fat cells

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Public release date: 1-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Bonnie Prescott bprescot@bidmc.harvard.edu 617-667-7306 Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

BOSTON -- In a finding that may challenge popular notions of body fat and health, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have shown how fat cells can protect the body against diabetes. The results may lead to a new therapeutic strategy for preventing and treating type 2 diabetes and obesity-related metabolic diseases, the authors say.

In the last decade, several research groups have shown that fat cells in people play a major role in controlling healthy blood sugar and insulin levels throughout the body. To do this crucial job, fat cells need a small portion of the sugars derived from food. Obesity often reduces the dedicated sugar transport molecules on fat cells, blocking the glucose from entering fat cells. As a result, the whole body becomes insulin resistant, and blood sugar rises, leading to diabetes.

The new study shows why glucose is so important to fat cells. The team discovered a new version of a gene inside fat cells that responds to sugar with a powerful systemic effect.

"If we change that one gene, that makes the animal more prone to or more protected from diabetes," said senior author Barbara Kahn MD, the George R. Minot Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at BIDMC. "Many foods get converted into sugar, so there is no need to eat more sugar."

The paper is published online April 1 in the journal Nature. In the study, the BIDMC researchers pinpointed the fat gene and its effect in mouse models of human obesity and insulin resistance and reported supporting evidence from fat tissue samples from both lean and obese people.

"Two things were surprising first, that a lone gene could shift the metabolism of the fat cell so dramatically and then, that turning on this master switch selectively in adipose tissue is beneficial to the whole body," Kahn said. Twelve years ago, Kahn first demonstrated that fat cells are a master regulator of healthy levels of glucose and insulin in mice and require sugar to do the job.

"The general concept of fat as all bad is not true," said first author Mark Herman MD, an investigator in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at BIDMC and Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). "Obesity is commonly associated with metabolic dysfunction that puts people at higher risk for diabetes, stroke and heart disease, but there is a large percentage of obese people who are metabolically healthy. We started with a mouse model that disassociates obesity from its adverse effects."

In the latest study, evidence suggests the newfound gene also may account for the protective effect of glucose uptake in human fat. German collaborators found more gene activity in people with greater insulin sensitivity, based on 123 adipose tissue samples from non-diabetic, glucose tolerant people. The fat gene activity also correlated highly with insulin sensitivity in obese, non-diabetic people, as measured in 38 fat samples by another pair of co-authors based in St. Louis.

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Mena Suvari, Chris Klein: 'American Reunion cast chemistry is natural'

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Mena Suvari and Chis Klein have talked about what makes the American Reunion cast so special.

The two actors, who have played the ex-couple Heather and Oz in the comedy franchise, shared that American Reunion still has the same chemistry among the cast as seen in the 1999 film American Pie.

PA Images / Matt Sayles/AP

"At the end of American Reunion, there's a lot of photos from the first and second American Pie films in there," Suvari explained to Collider. "When you do look at those, it becomes a reality that it has been that long, but there's so much of this essence that it hasn't been.

"It feels like no time has passed at all. We have so much chemistry with one another that it's so natural. It's the same vibe."

American Reunion, the fourth instalment of the original series, brings back the cast - Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Klein, Suvari, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Thomas Ian Nicholas and Eddie Kaye Thomas - for their high school reunion at East Great Falls.

"We have such a beautiful time, making these movies," Klein said. "The chemistry that you see, as audience members, in these movies is palpable and you can't create that. That is something that either exists in films or doesn't.

"You've watched enough movies where the chemistry isn't there, but in these, it is. We believe in these characters and we can follow these characters. To be a part of something like that, for 13 years now, and to revisit that, it's a really, really cool thing. We're having a lot of fun."

American Reunion opens on April 6 in the US and May 2 in the UK.

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Mena Suvari, Chris Klein: 'American Reunion cast chemistry is natural'

L.A. County Science Fair names top student scientists

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Judges at the Los Angeles County Science Fair named the top two winners of the competition on Saturday out of the more than a thousand students who had their experiments on display.

Kenneth Lee, a senior from Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, received the top sweepstakes prize for the senior-level division made up of high school students. He won for his project in the biochemistry and molecular biology category: "The Role of Testosterone in Hepatocyte Apoptosis in High Fat Diet-Induced Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease." His teacher on the project was Peter Starodub.

At the junior level for middle-schoolers, Raymond Gilmartin, an eight-grader at South Pasadena Middle School, took the sweepstakes prize. He had a project in the physics-aerodynamics and hydrodynamics category: "Spare the Environment, Spoiler the Car." His teacher on the project was Emily Hoffman.

Judges also awarded first-, second- and third-place medals, as well as honorable mention prizes, in a number of other categories, with animal physiology and biology, behavioral science, biochemistry and molecular biology, chemistry, engineering and mathematics and computer science, among them.

An exhibit hall at the Pasadena Convention Center was lined with rows of tri-fold poster boards featuring the projects, some of which will proceed to a statewide science fair and then on to the international level.

The science fair, in its 62nd year, had more students involved than in recent years, with 1,063 students taking part. The students came from public and private schools, as well as from those of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The number of girls participating has eclipsed the number of boys in recent years a trend that continued this year with 564 girls and 499 boys.

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L.A. County Science Fair names top student scientists

Who/What's new

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WHO'S NEW/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Daytona Beach

Dr. Carol Gaines has joined the medical staff of Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center. She previously worked with the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Athens, Ohio, and more recently, with Winn Army Community Hospital, Ft. Stewart.

Ormond Beach

Jim Theriault has joined the sales staff of The Door Store a company that specializes in doors, screens, windows and hurricane panels. He worked in the window and door business for 40 years and formerly worked at Dunns Lumber in Daytona Beach.

Palm Coast

Dr. Ryan Smith has joined Flagler Dental Associates. He earned a master's degree in biomedical science at Nova Southeastern University and graduated from the university's College of Dental Medicine. He is a member of the American and Florida Dental Associations, the Academy of General Dentistry and American Society of Forensic Odontology.

Ana DeAlmeida, a Realtor with Exit Realty First Choice, has been recognized by Exit Realty Florida as a top producing associate for the state of Florida for the month of February. She ranked fifth statewide for the company in representing the buyer's side in real estate transactions.

Sheila K. Benn is the new executive director of the Windsor of Palm Coast, an assisted living community. She is a licensed practical nurse and has 11 years of geriatric experience.

Port Orange

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Fox turned to alcohol to cope with Parkinson’s disease

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A devastated Michael J. Fox initially turned to alcohol to cope with his Parkinson's disease diagnosis.

The Family Ties star discovered he had the degenerative disorder back in 1991 and confesses he took to the bottle to drown his sorrows.

He tells Parade magazine, "For a time I dealt with it with alcohol, which turned out to be a disaster. I'd always been kind of a partier, but this was the first time I was drinking in order not to feel something. It had a dark purpose."

The actor eventually quit drinking for good and now Fox credits his wife of 23-years, Tracy Pollan, with helping him get sober.

He continues, "About a year after my diagnosis, I woke up one morning and saw (wife) Tracy's face...She said, 'Is this what you want?' Instantly I knew - no, this isn't what I want or who I am. So I quit drinking in '92.

"I recognised I had choices about drinking, and that made me realise I had choices about Parkinson's as well... Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it."

Fox has been a longtime Parkinson's disease advocate and in 2000 he founded The Michael J. Fox Foundation, which funds research programmes in the hopes of finding a cure.

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Fox turned to alcohol to cope with Parkinson's disease

Fox turned to alcohol to cope with Parkinson's disease

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A devastated Michael J. Fox initially turned to alcohol to cope with his Parkinson's disease diagnosis.

The Family Ties star discovered he had the degenerative disorder back in 1991 and confesses he took to the bottle to drown his sorrows.

He tells Parade magazine, "For a time I dealt with it with alcohol, which turned out to be a disaster. I'd always been kind of a partier, but this was the first time I was drinking in order not to feel something. It had a dark purpose."

The actor eventually quit drinking for good and now Fox credits his wife of 23-years, Tracy Pollan, with helping him get sober.

He continues, "About a year after my diagnosis, I woke up one morning and saw (wife) Tracy's face...She said, 'Is this what you want?' Instantly I knew - no, this isn't what I want or who I am. So I quit drinking in '92.

"I recognised I had choices about drinking, and that made me realise I had choices about Parkinson's as well... Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it."

Fox has been a longtime Parkinson's disease advocate and in 2000 he founded The Michael J. Fox Foundation, which funds research programmes in the hopes of finding a cure.

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Fox turned to alcohol to cope with Parkinson's disease

East Texas Optimism Walk for Parkinson’s disease set for April 28

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Posted: Sunday, April 1, 2012 4:00 am | Updated: 4:55 pm, Wed Mar 28, 2012.

OPTIMISM is the focus of this years annual American Parkinson Disease Association East Texas OPTIMISM Walk 2012, scheduled April 28 at the Rose Rudman Recreational Trail in Tyler.

The East Texas Parkinsons walk is an annual effort to raise money for education, research and support services for those affected by Parkinsons disease. The event is sponsored by the APDA East Texas Chapter and the ETMC Movement Disorder Center.

Individuals living with Parkinsons or those whose friends or loved ones have been diagnosed and all individuals who want to support a good cause are invited to join in by registering for or donating to our event today, said Kelly Boutin, walk chairperson and Tyler-area APDA Information and Referral Center coordinator. When everyone works together, great things can be accomplished to ease the burden and find the cure for Parkinsons disease.

The Tyler walk is open to all East Texas residents, and it starts at 11:30 a.m. on April 28 in the Robert E. Lee parking lot near the REL track. Check-in starts at 10 a.m. All activities will conclude at 2 p.m.

Approximately 3.6 million Americans have been diagnosed with Parkinsons disease. Approximately 50,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, and many more may have Parkinsons without realizing it yet.

It predominantly affects older adults, but healthcare providers also see early onset cases, which are estimated at between five and 10 percent of the total Parkinsons population.

For more information, or to support or participate in the Optimism Walk for Parkinsons, visit our chapter website at http://www.etapda.org or contact: Kelly Boutin at 903-596-3618 or kmboutin@etmc.org.

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Recruits for Research

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Despite researchers' best efforts, Parkinson's disease remains incurable. While there are treatment options that mitigate some symptoms, assigning the right treatment approach can be hit or miss. To better predict the response of Parkinson's patients to therapy, the Cleveland Clinic has joined consumer genomics company 23andMe in its Parkinson's Community Research Project. Enrollment in the program will also allow the clinic's patients to take advantage of 23andMe's Personal Genome Service.

23andMe began its Parkinson's disease collaboration in 2009 when it teamed up with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center. After roughly 18 months, the collaboration had assembled and analyzed genetic data from more than 3,400 Parkinson's patients, found 20 previously known genetic associations, and identified two novel loci rs6812193 near SCARB2 and rs11868035 near SREBF1/RA11. Ultimately, the collaboration aims to enroll 10,000 people. To date, 23andMe has enrolled roughly 6,500 patients, and the Cleveland Clinic is planning to add another 1,000 patients.

For clinicians like Andre Machado, director of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Neurological Restoration, the ideal scenario is that this large-scale collaboration can produce a roadmap to advance treatments for Parkinson's patients. "We're hoping to get data on the progression or responsiveness to a given type of treatment, things that can help us understand maybe in the future how to select treatments that are more likely to work for some patients versus others," Machado says.

The process starts by reaching out to patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease by their neurologists and inviting them to participate. "Because this study aims to find novel genetic variants associated with Parkinson's disease by way of genome-wide association studies, it is crucial that the group of whose genes are being analyzed have a pure diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, as opposed to parkinsonism," says Kathryn Teng, director of the Center for Personalized Healthcare at the Cleveland Clinic. "As with all genome-wide association studies, in order to get pure results, you need to have pure data going into the study."

One enrollment challenge, Teng says, is that participants might be older, and therefore less comfortable with computers. "The 23andMe model requires electronic enrollment and participation in surveys, so family members may need to assist with the enrollment and data collection if the patient requires assistance," she adds.

Reaching the desired sample size is also made difficult by a lack of -familiarity with genetic research in some pockets of the target population. "Many may not be aware of the protections offered by the GINA law which protects against discrimination based on genetic information for health insurance and employment," Teng says. To assuage any anxieties, potential recruits are told that they and their DNA samples will only be identified by a unique code. They are also told that the reports that they receive through 23andMe's website summarizing the genes identified in their DNA will not be part of their medical record.

To make participation as easy as possible, the Cleveland Clinic has dedicated computer portals set up at locations where Parkinson's patients are likely to visit, including its various campuses.

Ultimately, Machado says he does not know if 10,000 patients will be a large enough sample size to effectively interrogate the data to make a difference on treatment. However, he adds, the collaboration with 23andMe provides "an opportunity for doing exploration and there is a chance that it will benefit patients down the line."

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Recruits for Research

Opinion: Answers to autism elusive

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By Catherine Lord, Special to CNN

updated 5:08 PM EDT, Sun April 1, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Catherine Lord is the director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain, a subsidiary of Weill Cornell Medical College and New York Presbyterian Hospital.

(CNN) -- This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its newest study on the rate of autism among 8-year-olds, showing that 1 in 88 has some form of the disorder. Previously, it was 1 in 110. Does the new figure indicate that we are seeing an epidemic of autism, as some have speculated?

At this point, it's not clear.

One possibility is that we are seeing the result of better detection rather than a real surge in autism.

Catherine Lord

However, there are some striking parts about the study, which used data from 2008 collected in 14 sites across the United States. The rate of autism increased by more than 45% from 2002 to 2008 in numerous sites. It was a larger and more consistent increase than from 2002 to 2006. Also intriguing is that the increase was very uneven in terms of geography, gender, race and ethnicity.

Some sites had nearly five times as many children with autism as others. In several sites, almost 1 in 33 8-year-old boys were diagnosed with autism. This seems difficult to believe, particularly when these sites had smaller samples and children with less severe intellectual disabilities.

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Opinion: Answers to autism elusive

With autism, no longer invisible

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Jesse Wilson, 8, plays a game called FaceMaze at the autism center Joseph Sheppard co-directs at the University of Victoria.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Victoria, British Columbia (CNN) -- Joseph Sheppard has an IQ above 130. Ask him about his life or worldview and he'll start drawing connections to cosmology and quantum mechanics. He'll toss around names of great intellectuals -- Nietzsche, Spinoza -- as if they're as culturally relevant as Justin Bieber.

It might not be obvious that Sheppard has a hard time with small tasks that most of us take for granted -- washing dishes, sending packages, filling out online forms. Or that he finds it challenging to break out of routines, or to say something appropriate at meaningful moments.

Sheppard, 42, has high-functioning autism. He found out only about six years ago, but the diagnosis explained the odd patterns of behavior and speech that he'd struggled with throughout his life. And it gave him the impetus to reinvent himself as an autism advocate.

"I was invisible until I found my inner splendor," he told me in one of many long, philosophical, reflective e-mails last week. "My ability to interpret and alter my throughput of judgments, feelings, memories, plans, facts, perceptions, etc., and imprint them all with what I chose to be and chose to do.

"What I choose to do is change the course of the future for persons with autism, because I believe in them and I believe, given the right support and environment, they will be a strong force in repairing the world."

Just last week, U.S. health authorities announced that autism is more common than previously thought. About 1 in 88 children in the United States have an autism spectrum disorder, according to the report. Autism spectrum disorders are developmental conditions associated with impaired social communication and repetitive behaviors or fixated interests.

iReport: What should the world know about autism?

Diagnoses have risen 78% since 2000, partly because of greater awareness, and partly for reasons entirely unknown. Most medications don't help, and while some find improvements with intense (and expensive) behavioral therapy, there is no cure .

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With autism, no longer invisible

Searching for the why behind rising autism rate

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By Catherine Lord, Special to CNN

updated 5:08 PM EDT, Sun April 1, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Catherine Lord is the director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain, a subsidiary of Weill Cornell Medical College and New York Presbyterian Hospital.

(CNN) -- This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its newest study on the rate of autism among 8-year-olds, showing that 1 in 88 has some form of the disorder. Previously, it was 1 in 110. Does the new figure indicate that we are seeing an epidemic of autism, as some have speculated?

At this point, it's not clear.

One possibility is that we are seeing the result of better detection rather than a real surge in autism.

Catherine Lord

However, there are some striking parts about the study, which used data from 2008 collected in 14 sites across the United States. The rate of autism increased by more than 45% from 2002 to 2008 in numerous sites. It was a larger and more consistent increase than from 2002 to 2006. Also intriguing is that the increase was very uneven in terms of geography, gender, race and ethnicity.

Some sites had nearly five times as many children with autism as others. In several sites, almost 1 in 33 8-year-old boys were diagnosed with autism. This seems difficult to believe, particularly when these sites had smaller samples and children with less severe intellectual disabilities.

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Searching for the why behind rising autism rate

Your child’s milk tooth can save her life

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Is your child about to lose her milk tooth? Instead of throwing it away, you can now opt to use it to harvest stem cells in a dental stem cell bank for future use in the face of serious ailments. Now thats a tooth fairy story coming to life.

Still relatively new in India, dental stem cell banking is fast gaining popularity as a more viable option over umbilical cord blood banking.

Stem cell therapy involves a kind of intervention strategy in which healthy, new cells are introduced into a damaged tissue to treat a disease or an injury.

The umbilical cord is a good source for blood-related cells, or hemaotopoietic cells, which can be used for blood-related diseases, like leukaemia (blood cancer). Having said that, blood-related disorders constitute only four percent of all diseases, Shailesh Gadre, founder and managing director of the company Stemade Biotech, said.

For the rest of the 96 percent tissue-related diseases, the tooth is a good source of mesenchymal (tissue-related) stem cells. These cells have potential application in all other tissues of the body, for instance, the brain, in case of diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons; the eye (corneal reconstruction), liver (cirrhosis), pancreas (diabetes), bone (fractures, reconstruction), skin and the like, he said.

Mesenchymal cells can also be used to regenerate cardiac cells.

Dental stem cell banking also has an advantage when it comes to the process of obtaining stem cells.

Obtaining stem cells from the tooth is a non-invasive procedure that requires no surgery, with little or no pain. A child, in the age group of 5-12, is any way going to lose his milk tooth. So when its a little shaky, it can be collected with hardly any discomfort, Savita Menon, a pedodontist, said.

Moreover, in a number of cases, when an adolescent needs braces, the doctor recommends that his pre-molars be removed. These can also be used as a source for stem cells. And over and above that, an adults wisdom tooth can also be used for the same purpose, Gadre added.

Therefore, unlike umbilical cord blood banking which gives one just one chance - during birth - the window of opportunity in dental stem cell banking is much bigger.

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Your child’s milk tooth can save her life

Stem cell institute to work with foreign agencies

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California's $3 billion stem cell agency, now more than 7 years old, has joined research partnerships with science and health agencies in eight foreign countries, the San Francisco institute announced.

The agreements call for collaboration in efforts aimed at speeding stem cell research from the laboratory to the hospital, where researchers hope that basic human cells will be programmed to treat scores of human degenerative diseases.

Research partnerships between American and foreign stem cell scientists are encouraged, but the California institute's funds would only be spent within the state, institute officials said.

Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, signed agreements with stem cell funding agencies in Brazil and Argentina last week, he said Thursday.

"Both Brazil and Argentina have strong and robust stem cell research communities in basic science and transitional clinical science, which should create exciting synergies with many scientists in California," Trounson said in a statement.

He has signed similar pacts with stem cell agencies in Canada, Britain, France, Spain, Australia, Japan, China and Indiana.

The California institute was created in 2004 after Proposition 71, a $3 billion bond issue, was approved by California voters at a time when use of federal funds was barred for research into the promising field of embryonic stem cells.

So far the state agency has committed $1.2 billion to scientists and training centers at 56 California institutions, and the rest of the bond money should last until 2020, a spokesman said.

This article appeared on page C - 9 of the SanFranciscoChronicle

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Stem cell institute to work with foreign agencies

More Commentary on Russia 2045

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An article by Ben Goertzel over at h+ Magazine discusses the Russia 2045 initiative, a program I've noted on a couple of occasions. A few highlights:

For 3 days in late February, Russian businessman Dmitry Itskov gathered 500+ futurists in Moscow for a "Global Future 2045 Congress" - the latest manifestation of his "Russia 2045" movement. ... The occurrence of a conference like this in Russia is no big shock, of course. Russia has a huge contingent of great scientists in multiple directly Singularity-relevant areas; and it also has an impressively long history of advanced technological thinking . My dear departed friend Valentin Turchin wrote a book with Singularitarian themes in the late 1960s, and the Russian Cosmists of the early 1900s discussed technological immortality, space colonization and other futurist themes long before they became popular in the West.

...

It's unclear from the online conference abstracts and other Russia 2045 materials just how much actual work is going in Russia on right now, explicitly oriented toward realizing the exciting visions Itskov describes; and it's also unclear to what extent Itskov's "Russia 2045" movement serves an active R&D role, versus a visionary and publicity role. It appears that most of the concrete science and engineering work at the conference was presented by scientists who had made their breakthroughs outside the context of the "Russia 2045" project; whereas Itskov and the other Russia 2045 staff were largely oriented toward high-level visioning. But of course, Russia 2045 is a new initiative, and may potentially draw more researchers into its fold as time progresses.

...

Ray Kurzweil gave a fairly glowing report, noting "It was a well funded conference, funded by a number of major corporations in Russia..... There was significant representation from the mainstream press. The ideas were taken seriously. There were people from companies, from academe, from government.... The comparison to Humanity+ or the Singularity Summit is reasonable.... The people at the conference (about 500-600) were pretty sophisticated about all the issues you and I talk and write about."

...

Clearly there are many smart scientists and engineers in Russia doing directly Singularity-relevant things; and Itskov's Russia 2045 organization seems to be doing a good job of attracting public and political attention to this work. What amount of concrete work is actually going on toward Itskov's list of grand goals is unclear to me at present, but certainly seems something to keep an eye on.

As Goertzel notes, there are the standard reasons for caution before becoming too taken by this project - but unlike the usual situation for an emerging initiative there is already a fair amount of money involved. So if we outsiders adopt a wait and see approach, matters will undoubtedly become more clear in time. Either there will be tangible progress, leading to more outreach and collaboration with the scientific community, or there will not. Either way it can be taken as a confirmation that the time is becoming right for far greater public support of longevity engineering: building longer healthy lives and attempting to reverse or effectively work around the consequences of aging.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

A Transcript of "Elixir of Life"

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An Australian program featuring researchers Aubrey de Grey and David Sinclair: "It feels like science fiction, but it's actually true. And we're really at the cutting edge, it's a really exciting time in the field right now. ... There's no such thing as ageing gracefully. I don't meet people who want to get Alzheimer's disease, or who want to get cancer or arthritis or any of the other things that afflict the elderly. Ageing is bad for you, and we better just actually accept that. As far as I'm concerned, ageing is humanity's worst problem, by some serious distance. ... Now if you think that's an overstatement, consider this: world-wide, a hundred and fifty thousand people die each day, two-thirds of them from ageing. That means potentially one hundred thousand people could be saved every day with therapies that combat ageing. ... Ageing is simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That's all that ageing is. What it's going to take is development of thoroughly comprehensive regenerative medicine for ageing. That means medicine which can repair the molecular and cellular damage that accumulates in our bodies throughout life, as side effects of our normal metabolic processes. ... We do not know what humanity of the future is going to want to do. If thirty or fifty years from now people don't have the problems that we thought they might have, but we didn't develop those therapies, so those people have to die anyway, after a long period of decrepitude and disease, then they're not going to be terribly happy are they? That's why we have a moral obligation to develop these technologies as soon as possible."

Link: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3465499.htm

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

A Transcript of “Elixir of Life”

Posted on by

An Australian program featuring researchers Aubrey de Grey and David Sinclair: "It feels like science fiction, but it's actually true. And we're really at the cutting edge, it's a really exciting time in the field right now. ... There's no such thing as ageing gracefully. I don't meet people who want to get Alzheimer's disease, or who want to get cancer or arthritis or any of the other things that afflict the elderly. Ageing is bad for you, and we better just actually accept that. As far as I'm concerned, ageing is humanity's worst problem, by some serious distance. ... Now if you think that's an overstatement, consider this: world-wide, a hundred and fifty thousand people die each day, two-thirds of them from ageing. That means potentially one hundred thousand people could be saved every day with therapies that combat ageing. ... Ageing is simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That's all that ageing is. What it's going to take is development of thoroughly comprehensive regenerative medicine for ageing. That means medicine which can repair the molecular and cellular damage that accumulates in our bodies throughout life, as side effects of our normal metabolic processes. ... We do not know what humanity of the future is going to want to do. If thirty or fifty years from now people don't have the problems that we thought they might have, but we didn't develop those therapies, so those people have to die anyway, after a long period of decrepitude and disease, then they're not going to be terribly happy are they? That's why we have a moral obligation to develop these technologies as soon as possible."

Link: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3465499.htm

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm