The first stem cell related Nobel prize: Martin Evans, 2007

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute has today decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2007 jointly to Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans and Oliver Smithies for their discoveries of “principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells” Link

It’s rather a 2/3 gene technology, 1/3 stem cell methodology Prize, but shows how those technologies are interrelated.

Evans is still an active scientist but here are 2 famous papers he authored or coauthored:

1. First teratocarcinoma paper (always those cancer cells), how to isolate and maintain them, Evans is the single author: The isolation and properties of a clonal tissue culture strain of pluripotent mouse teratoma cells. J Embryol Exp Morphol. 1972 Aug;28(1):163-76.

2. And then the switch to embryonic stem cells a decade later, a protocol lead to the 1998 Science paper by Thomson et al. on human ES cells: Evans, M. J. & Kaufman, M. H. Establishment in culture of pluripotential cells from mouse embryos. Nature 292, 154-6. (1981).

Biopolis profile and cancer stem cells in current Cell Stem Cell

It is now the 3rd issue of Cell Stem Cell, which is the official journal of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). From the current issue:

In human pancreatic cancer a distinct subpopulation of migrating CD133⁺ CXCR4⁺ cancer stem cells turned out to be essential for tumor metastasis different from the ones responsible for tumor growth: Distinct Populations of Cancer Stem Cells Determine Tumor Growth and Metastatic Activity in Human Pancreatic Cancer

Ann Parson highlights Singapore’s Biopolis with a 3.5 billion budget for 10 years:

Biopolis, a broad and busy spectrum of largely government-funded stem cell research—everything from ES to adult cells, basic to clinical—is clear indication of a small nation eager to stay at the forefront. “One of the attractive aspects of Biopolis is that it’s the way a small island can artificially create critical mass,” Alan Colman noted. “It takes the view that there’s no way it can sustain the number and quality of scientists that you’ll find in a

Bone marrow stem cells, the great cancer pretenders?

In the lack of subscription to Stem Cells, I could not download the whole article or the subscription restricted supplemental data (at Stem Cells it seems people haven’t heard of free supplemental information) but this story is really interesting: Bone Marrow Contributes to Epithelial Cancers in Mice and Humans as Developmental Mimicry

In brief: in women underwent male (Y chromosome tracked) bone marrow transplantation, different types of cancer were developed and the malignant tissue often contained small areas of male marrow cells. The same happened with BM transplanted mice with the same cancers. “When they viewed the cancerous tissues under the microscope, they found marrow cells shared outward features of the cancer cells.

“Our results indicate these cells act as developmental mimics; they come in and look like the surrounding neoplastic tissue but they aren’t actually the seed of cancer,” explains Dr. Christopher Cogle, first author the Stem Cells article. “At the worst, these cells could help support cancerous tissue by providing it with growth factors or proteins that help the cancer grow and survive. At the very least, these marrow cells are just being tricked into coming into the cancerous environment and then made to walk and talk like they don’t usually do.”

These results highlight the role of the local destination niche to the phenotype of the migrant and highly mobile bone marrow cells.

Source: Bone Marrow Stem Cells Mimic Cancer but Do Not Initiate It

Illustration: lung cancer stem cells from Christopher Cogle’s homepage.

Content of Ending Aging, Aubrey de Grey’s coming life extension book

You can now pre-order Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Biotechnologies That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime at Amazon written by Aubrey de Grey and Michael Rae which is the most detailed, although popular exposition of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) plan to defeat aging.

Aubrey was kind enough to mail me the content of the book, so you can find out which SENS point is fitted with the chapters of Part II (little help: Edmonton Aging Symposium: full video, audio and presentation access)

Aubrey’s first big move in science was a monograph on mitochondria called The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging.

Edmonton Aging Symposium: full video, audio and presentation access

According to the organizers the Edmonton Aging Symposium “was a WORLD FIRST! in being streamed live onto the internet.” Now you can download where possible, the video, powerpoint and audio MP3 recordings of the streaming split up by speaker in alphabetical order. I think this is really webhistorical and good news for all open access friends of the life (extension) sciences. One critical point: Why Windows Media Video format? The following slide is from Judith Campisi’s presentation (excellent aging blogger Chris Patil of Ouroboros is working with Campisi as a postdoc) called The double-edged sword of cellular senescence: Link

Redifferentiating brain tumour stem cells: the concept of cancer regenerative medicine

The trendy cancer stem cell theory highlights that there is a functional hierarchy between different tumour cells and only a small portion, the so called cancer stem cells have crucial role in initiating tumour growth. This assumption was confirmed in the case of blood, breast and brain for example. Based on that a new therapeutic approach of cancer is delineated which can induce differentiation of tumour cells rather then killing them. Indeed a very natural and useful stem cell targeted therapy by concept: redifferentiate cancer stem cells into harmless and in some cases useful functional tissue cells. I call it the concept of cancer regenerative medicine: redifferentiate all the tumour initiating cancer stem cells in a patient into functional tissue and organ cells. In Nature, 7 December Issue Piccirillo et al. addressed the question whether the stem-like tumour initiating cell subpopulation of a glioblastoma, marked with a specific antigen, CD 133+ can be differentiated with Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) into a functional type of brain cells? Ok, vocabulary first: glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common adult malignant brain tumour, CD133+ is a neural precursor cell marker and the members of the BMP family make neural precursor cells differentiatie into mature astrocytes, glial cells. So the lab guys were dissociating solid tumour samples into single-cell suspensions and were testing their response to BMP. The large picture is that BMP treatment (specially BMP4) reduced cancer cell proliferation, induced astrocyte-like differentiation, effectively blocks the tumour growth and prolonges survival.