Left: the silk mesh 1 day after being seeded with fibroblast cells. Right: 4 days after seeding.
What’s the News: People have long known that spider silk has many practical uses, even in the medical field; Ancient Greeks, for example, employed the strong, flexible fiber as bandages. But the clinical uses of spider silk may stretch beyond that: scientists may someday be able to use the silk to help create artificial skin, according to new research out of the Hannover Medical School in Germany. In the study, published recently in the journal PLoS One, researchers successfully grew tissue-like skin on a mesh frame of silk harvested from golden silk orb-weaver spiders.
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What’s the News: Whether genes can be property is an ongoing controversy in the world of biotechnology, and last week saw the latest court battle in that war: Upon appeal, a suit brought by the ACLU charging that genes aren’t products of human ingenuity and thus cannot be patented was settled largely in favor of Myriad Genetics, the biotech company that has patents on two BRCA genes. The genes are linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, and plaintiffs charged that Myriad’s exclusive test for the genes kept patients from getting second opinions.
A detailed description of the court’s reasoning can be found over at Ars Technica. But for those of you who are thinking, what? someone else can own my genes?, chew on this: About 20% of human genes are patented or have patents associated with them, according to a comprehensive analysis. Here’s why.
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What’s the News: Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute have now created a vaccine that prevents a heroin high in rats. The vaccine, detailed in a recent study in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, stimulates antibodies that can stop not only heroin but also its derivative psychoactive compounds from reaching the brain.
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What’s the News: When vampire bats bite their victims, their saliva releases an enzyme called desmoteplase, or DSPA, into the bloodstream, which causes blood to flow more readily. Several years ago, scientists realized that the same enzyme that gives bats more blood for their bite may also help stroke victims by breaking down blood clots. Dubbed Draculin, this blood-clot-bashing drug has now entered a phase 2 study: In hospitals across the country, scientists are currently comparing Draculin with traditional anticoagulants to see if it increases the three-hour window doctors have to treat post-stroke blood clots. “This is one of the studies that actually extends that window up to 9 hours,” says lead researcher Michel Torbey. “We’re hoping the bat saliva, in itself, dissolves the clot with lower risk of bleeding in the brain afterwards.” (more…)
Smooth-muscle cells show green in this comparison of blood vessels grown with (right)
and without (left) growth factor FGF9. Without muscle, vessels don’t pump.
What’s the News: Biologists may have been barking up the wrong tree when it comes to growing new blood vessels to provide blood to tissues damaged by heart disease. The vessels that form under the influence of a growth factor intended to kick-start the process are sickly and shrivel up within a year, but a new study in Nature Biotechnology ($) shows that focusing on making the surrounding cells provide support may solve the problem.
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The stem cells formed a sac that then folded in half
a couple days later (see image above, courtesy of Nature),
forming the optic cup.
What’s the News: Give a blob of cells the right environment—lots of nutrients, special chemical signals, and a comfy gel cushion—and they just might grow you a body part. In a feat of bioengineering, scientists at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan have grown a retina from mouse embryonic stem cells. Remarkably, much of the development happened spontaneously, indicating that even undifferentiated cells have a blueprint in mind. Researchers hope the work will someday yield transplantable retinas for people with diseases like retinitis pigmentosa.
“When I received the manuscript, I was stunned, I really was,” commented human molecular geneticist Robin Ali (via Nature News). “I never though I’d see the day where you have recapitulation of development in a dish.”
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What’s the News: DARPA wants to fund research into technologies that could be built into the genome of microorganisms and keep track of any changes made to the organism’s genes, according a call for proposals the agency made earlier this month. In other words, DARPA wants to “turn on Track Changes” in certain viruses and bacteria.
What’s the Context:
- This genetic surveillance technology would help safeguard intellectual property, DARPA says. (See this PDF for the full description of the request.) Patenting genes has proven controversial enough on its own, so high-tech policing of these patents is unlikely to go down easy.
- Second, this technology could be used for “providing secure access” to dangerous pathogens or “proprietary microorganisms.” In other words, they want it to password-protect bugs, for reasons of health and/or commerce.
- DARPA isn’t shy about asking for proposals that are more than a bit off the wall: how to make a cannon that can fire people onto a tall roof, for instance, or a Jestons-esque flying car.
How the Heck: No idea. And, judging by its description, DARPA isn’t too sure either. The agency is asking for “multidisciplinary research proposals” and gives a nod to “possibly utilizing a cryptographical or complex mathematical approach.”
Image: Wellcome Images / Peter Artymiuk
In a society where pill-popping is the answer to many a medical malady, severely dysfunctional or damaged organs are especially frustrating—they’re usually beyond the reach of any known drugs. Cell-based therapy, though, is no drug: Using patients’ own cells, medical experts have successfully grafted the first engineered-from-scratch urethras.
The story starts with five Mexican boys, aged 10 to 14, whose urethras were damaged beyond repair because of accidents.
“When they first came in, they had a leg bag that drains urine, and they have to carry this bag everywhere they go,” says Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University in North Carolina. “It’s uncomfortable and painful. So these children were mostly sitting or bed-bound.” [NPR]
Currently the usual treatment calls for an artificial graft, which has a failure chance as high as 50% (and failure here means a lifetime of infections and incontinence). “When an organ or tissue is irreparably damaged or traumatically destroyed, no amount of drugs or mechanical devices will restore the patient back to normal,” regenerative medicine expert Chris Mason, from University College London, told the BBC. (more…)
What would you do if calcium deposits were building up in your blood vessels and making it hard to walk, and your doctors said they couldn’t help because they had no idea what disease you had, or how to treat it? Before 2008 you wouldn’t have had many options, but thanks to the National Institute of Health (NIH) you now have at least one: visit the Undiagnosed Diseases Program–where medical researchers just cracked their very first case.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, this program takes on the medical cases that stump other hospitals. The program has received over 1700 referrals since it started, and has accepted only 330 of them. The results of their first case were published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine, but it all started with dumbfounded doctors and some confusing x-rays:
In 2009, the program received a referral from a Kentucky doctor for two sisters, Paula Allen and Louise Benge, who suffered from joint pain and showed calcium buildup in their arteries in x-rays…. The images “astounded us,” [program director William] Gahl said. The team obtained DNA samples from the sisters and other family members (three of Allen and Benge’s siblings had the same recessive disease) and scanned the DNA for markers called single nucleotide polymorphisms that the researchers used to narrow the location of the disease gene. By also examining this genetic region in two other families with similar disorders, the researchers were able to pinpoint a mutation in a specific gene, NT5E, which is involved in breaking down calcification in the arteries. [ScienceInsider]
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Swarms of genetically modified mosquitoes? This isn’t science fiction: The Malaysian government announced earlier this week that it unleashed 6,000 genetically modified (GM) skeeters into a forest as part of a plan to fight dengue fever, a potentially fatal affliction that can affect up to 100 million people each year.
The news appears to have caught the Malaysian media and public by surprise; many recent news stories reported that the study had been postponed after intense protests. As recently as 17 January, the Consumers’ Association of Penang and Sahabat Alam Malaysia, two groups opposing the use of GM insects, called on the National Biosafety Board to revoke its approval for the study. Scientists, too, were under the impression that the work had yet to begin, says medical entomologist Bart Knols of the University of Amsterdam. A 24 January blog post by Mark Benedict, a consultant at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who monitors the field closely, mentioned that the Malaysian study was “planned.” [ScienceNOW]
The study itself included the release of 12,000 male mosquitoes in total: 6,000 unaltered and 6,000 GM Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The goal was to track how well the two types survived and how far they spread. U.K. biotech firm Oxitec created the modified mosquitoes, which don’t produce viable offspring. Researchers hope that if these altered males mate with wild females, it will bring the overall mosquito population down. The strategy has been tried once before in the Grand Cayman Islands, and results from that experiment are due to be published soon.
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By combining a cocaine analog with part of a common cold virus, researchers have created a “cocaine vaccine” that tricks the body into attacking the drug, neutralizing its high-giving powers. It has only been tested in mice so far, but the results are good:
“Our very dramatic data shows that we can protect mice against the effects of cocaine, and we think this approach could be very promising in fighting addiction in humans,” study researcher Ronald Crystal, a professor of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said in a statement. [LiveScience]
The immune system doesn’t typically react to cocaine in the blood stream–it’s too small and doesn’t contain the “markers” of an invader. To get the white blood cells to notice it, the researchers strapped it to something the immune system can detect–the outside parts of the virus. The researchers took the outer shell from an adenovirus, which causes some types of the common cold, and removed the parts of the virus that cause illness. Then they linked that recognizable viral shell to a stable molecule similar to cocaine (they also tried it with cocaine itself, the researchers say, but the more-stable analog produced better results).
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Forensic scientists of the future may soon have a new tool at their disposal. Given a drop of blood, researchers in the Netherlands have roughly determined the age of the person it came from. But for now, it really is rough–the researchers found they could only estimate a person’s age to within 9 years.
Currently, a crime scene investigator who obtained a spot of blood can check its DNA to see if it matches a known suspect or someone in a law enforcement database, and can use the DNA to determine a few other characteristics like gender and eye color. But age is tougher to estimate. Lead researcher Manfred Kayser, who works on forensic molecular biology at Erasmus University Medical Centre, explains that the best methods of determining age rely on testing bones or teeth, but he wanted to find a method that didn’t require skeletal remains.
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It may not be as miraculous as turning water into wine, or as wealth-generating as turning dirt into gold, but we still think this is a very cool trick: Researchers have transformed mature skin cells directly into mature blood cells. Crucially, this was done without reverting the cells to a flexible, “pluripotent” stage in which the cells can grow into any form.
The technique, described in Nature, could lead to lab-grown blood cells for transfusions and transplants for people with bone marrow diseases. Researchers think this new process may be safer than previous methods.
By skipping the pluripotent step, the researchers believe they have skirted the risk that the replacement cells might form dangerous tumors. [Los Angeles Times]
The research team, lead by Mickie Bhatia, coaxed the skin cells into becoming blood cells via a harmless virus that carried a gene called OCT4 into the cells–this reprogrammed the cells, turning their developmental clock back part of the way. Then the cells were incubated in a mixture of cell-stimulating proteins, called cytokines, which directed them on their new paths as either red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets. The ability to grow a specific kind of blood cell has exciting clinical possibilities.
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Researchers have built miniature human livers in the lab, which could lead to better drug discovery and could even point the way toward implantable artificial organs. The mini-livers seem to act like human livers in the lab, but it remains to be seen how well they’ll survive and perform when transplanted into animals or, maybe one day, humans.
“We are excited about the possibilities this research represents, but must stress that we’re at an early stage and many technical hurdles must be overcome before it could benefit patients,” said Shay Soker, Ph.D., professor of regenerative medicine and project director. “Not only must we learn how to grow billions of liver cells at one time in order to engineer livers large enough for patients, but we must determine whether these organs are safe to use in patients.” [Press release].
The researchers at Wake Forest’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine created livers that weigh about 0.2 ounces each. That’s not nearly large enough to keep a human alive (it would need to be about 80 times larger for that), but getting the organ made was a feat in itself. The livers were made using the extracellular scaffolding from an animal liver, after all of the animal’s cells had been gently removed from it.
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