Problem: embryonic stem cell lines vary & iPS lines too

Finally I started to digest all the articles (usually on the streetcar on my way to work and home) from the recent Nature Insight: Regenerative Medicine and I try to pick up some stories for you (& interesting enough for me) from that, in case you are not lucky enough to have an available copy.

For clinicians, the lack of gold standard embryonic stem cell lines with the measurably same regeneration potential will be a huge technological problem later while this variability is an interesting basic science problem today.

Kenneth R. Chien: Regenerative medicine and human models of human disease

A central challenge to the development of human stem-cell-based models of disease lies in the need to isolate and expand rare cell populations reproducibly and then to fully differentiate enough of the cells of interest. In this regard, one of the main obstacles to establishing human ES-cell-based models is that ES cell lines vary. All lines do not have the same potential to differentiate into cells of a particular lineage, most probably as a result of inherent epigenetic, genetic and developmental differences at the time of their isolation. For example, a study of 17 independent human ES cell lines showed that 7 of these lines had little or no capacity to enter the cardiovascular lineage, and the level of cardiovascular markers expressed by 2 of the 17 cell lines was an order of magnitude or more higher than that of these 7 lines. Similar variability between human ES cell lines was observed for entry to the pancreatic lineage, and cell lines that were optimal for generating cells of endodermal lineages were extremely poor for generating mesodermal lineage cells in many cases. Thus, new human ES cell lines that are optimal for generating specific lineages of interest need to be produced. In addition, iPS cell lines might be similarly variable.

Sergey Brin goes mobile in 2000 & a Russian lesson

Sergey Brin, Google co-founder is a very interesting man. His story is the number one immigrant success story in the USA today, I dare say. I have 2 Brin videos to show you today:

In the first one, Sergey demonstrates mobility in 2000 in 3 ways with his ‘faint accent that is no longer identifiably Russian’ (I really like this presentation as you can learn many things on how to give and not to give a talk):

In the second video Sergey speaks in his native language, Russian but with a “huuuge american accent” as a Russian colleague of mine wrote to me in an email.

Biomedical informatics and the NIH, in the Googleplex

“I feel like I am talking to an empty room. Why do I feel like I am talking to an empty room?” starts Michael Marron his Google Tech Talk on NIH and the computational infrastructure for biomedical research rather unfortunately. (I remember that room.)