The Institute for the Future‘s X2 project is all about tracing future trends in science and technology As the steward of the Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology Group I collect signals in these fields on which some forecasts can be based later on. Here are some issues I found future sensitive enough recently:
Last year I was probably the only SciFoo Camper with an explicit life extension commitment. I suggested & held a session which was related a bit to partial immortalization but was rather about the systems biology perspective in general, illustrated with some examples. So throughout the terrific SciFoo Camp 2007 life extension as a conversation topic remained rather implicit (ok, close to zero) and there was not much room to discuss it in the lack of other fellow life extensionists.
In my opinion the whole point of unconferences is to form the good aggregate of people with a common interest & similar/complementer message to join forces in order to draw enough (intellectual) attention for their topic. In this context, an unconference is about topics at the first place, not just about people. Idea networking is as important as social networking.
And if something fits 100% with the idea of SciFoo it is life extension/aging just as handling terrantic scientific datasets, open science or climate change as all these topics are utterly complicated and quite urgent screaming for the attention of the smartest people.
So I emailed Timo Hannay, SciFoo organizer:
“One thing I’ve noticed is that it would be very good to organize a session on scientific life extension technologies and consequences, because the SciFoo people are ideal to see and discuss all angles of this really important topic.”
Finally Chris over at Ouroboros came up with the idea and the quick implementation of Hourglass, a blog carnival devoted to the biology of aging/biogerontology. For some reason I am not an explicit supporter of blog carnivals – many of my posts were chosen by carnival editors but I never hosted one -, but Hourglass will be the big exception in which I participate, submit posts and host it later. The reason: first it presents aging/biogerontology related posts, which fits my profile and second it was instigated by Chris Patil, whose work is a guarantee for keeping all this in the good direction. So if you want to read on the evolution of longevity and aging, calorie restricition, stem cells/tissue engineering/regenerative medicine, or on the association of long life and intelligence at once, Hourglass is for you.
The concept of decellularizing complex organs in cadavers and reseeding the remaining matrix structure with differentiated, stem or progenitor cells, growing in a bioreactor and transplanting back to the organism could turn out to be a real technological shortcut in the field of tissue engineering. It is not a brand new story on the web, but it is quite new in science and when I heard Doris Taylor at the Understanding Aging Conference talking on that….well I was really amazed.
Dr. Taylor not only showed the pictures of a complete decellularized rat heart matrix, but in fact they did it on a whole rat framework. So the obvious question is whether the technique could be extended to complete human cadavers (imagine the bone and the bone marrow situation) and if yes, when and how? I am sure if there were a useful clinical near term application of this type of tissue engineering, people would include that option too into their testaments.
And now a pop video on the topic and the abstract:
The “Understanding Aging: Biomedical and Bioengineering Approaches”conference will be held from June 27-29, 2008 at UCLA organized by Aubrey de Grey, Irina Conboy and Amy Wagers. I like to call it UndertsEnding Aging in myself and I am excited to go to LA and meet new people also people from SENS3.
Yesterday I created a FriendFeed room for the conference as it seems to be a perfect place of live microblogging the conference, sharing any kind of links, videos, comments, feeds and feedbacks. Working on aging and the postponement of it (you can bravely say life extension) is always a pioneering work so it’s time to use pioneering web apps for that purpose, just like FriendFeed.
Aubrey de Grey, Kevin Perrott and Kevin Dewalt have already joined the room. What about you? See you on FriendFeed, see you on LA!
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.
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.Read the rest of this entry »
In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential.
1.2. Tissues, organs with different turnover and regenerative potential
/bioenergetics data missing/
Liver
During organogenesis the hepatic endoderm epithelium invades the surrounding mesenchyme to form the liver bud and continued epithelial/mesenchymal interactions stimulate cell proliferation and morphogenesis. Consequently, the liver is largely of endodermal origin – including cells with a mesodermal origin and – and contains many different cell types: two epithelial liver cell types, the hepatocytes and bile duct cells, stellate cells (formerly called Ito cells), Kupffer cells, vascular endothelium, fibroblasts, and leukocytes (Desmet 1994). Hepatocytes are the main funtional liver cells accounting for ~70% of the cells in the liver and form the bulk of the liver weight (90%), yet only ~60% of total liver DNA is hepatocyte-derived (many of them with 2n, 4n, 8n DNA content). An adult human liver contains about 80 x10(9), hepatocytes. Hepatocytes are in a quiescent state and the turnover rate is low, 1-2 times/year[]. The remarkable regenerative potential of liver is well-known, in humans the liver almost completely regenerates in about 1 month after two-thirds (up to 75%) partial hepatectomy and this process can occur repeatedly in contrast to most other parenchymal organs, such as kidney or pancreas. In the literature the term liver or hepatic stem cells is used for precursors of the hepatocytes and the bile duct epithelial cells. On the other hand liver stem/progenitor cells can be define in different ways.Read the rest of this entry »
In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential.
1.1 Stem cells and regenerative medicine
The concept of the stem cell niche was first proposed theoretically by Schofield exactly 30 years ago in the context of hematopoietic stem cells: “a hypothesis is proposed in which the stem cell is seen in association with other cells which determine its behaviour. It becomes essentially a fixed tissue cell. Its maturation is prevented and, as a result, its continued proliferation as a stem cell is assured. Its progeny, unless they can occupy a similar stem cell ‘niche’, are first generation colony-forming cells, which proliferate and mature to acquire a high probability of differentiation, i.e., they have an age-structure.”
Niches are restricted and specialized tissue microenvironments that integrate local and systemic signals for the regulation and maintenance for resident stem cells. The elements of the stem cell niche include the constraints of the architectural space, cellular components like stromal supporting and descendent/progenitor cells and acellular elements, like soluble and membrane bound molecules, paracrine and endocrine signals from local or distant sources and neural input [Figure by Jonas].
In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential.
When producing a text, a post my building strategy is not linear, but heavily non-linear (I wouldn’t say it’s circular): I’d like to jump to the part of the story where there is something instantly to write/edit; be it the beginning, middle or end. In case of scientific articles frequently the first part to be build are figures/methods, which forms the bulk, the middle of the story after introduction, before discussion.
1.2. Tissues, organs with different turnover and regenerative potential
In order to discuss the different adult tissues in a unified manner, from a systemic point of view, I use the following tissue/stem cell introduction scheme where data are available: development of particular tissue, number of cell types, bioenergetics (high/intermediate/low energy demand), turnover (high/intermediate/low), regenerative potential (high/intermediate/low), resident stem cells, niche, markers, cell sources from other tissues that can contribute to the particular tissue during normal turnover or chronic/acute injury.
In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential.
After the Introduction draft it’s time to actually start to fill in the text and that’s really the hard part. In the text I mix complete sentences, paragraphs (source code, object language) with fragmented metacomments (labeled as /draft, comments are here/) as a GTD technique. Used literature, links come after the text in a reference form like: Rando TA. Stem cells, ageing and the quest for immortality. Nature 2006;441:1080-1086. or Rando TA. (2006) Stem cells, ageing and the quest for immortality. Nature 441:1080-1086. (maybe I should check the official rules here)
Figures, diagrams will be included and I don’t promise to figure out brand new ones (but promise to find good ones), but that’s not a necessary job for thesis writers.
Expect me to start with a low quality (including older texts of mine) material and progress toward something more valuable.That is a trend people usually would like to follow throughout their professional careers.
1.1 Stem cells and regenerative medicine: basic concepts
Looking for the exact definition of stem cell is sometimes the source of endless semantical debates, but at least we do know two generally accepted criteria: stem cells are able to renew themselves and could differentiate into other type of cells. First, they are unspecialized, mitotic cells that renew themselves for any (i.e. long) periods through series of cell divisions, which result in similar unspecialized stem cells. This is the so called and overstated “immortality” characteristics. Read the rest of this entry »
From now on I start every “thesis live” post with the standard introduction: In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential
I am not aiming any perfection, my focus is clearly on getting things (the PhD) done here. Anyway, I found the idea of “writing” a complete, lengthy and formal thesis outdated and inefficient (after all, scientists should conduct nice experiments and publish their results in short, inforich and accessible research papers in order to share it ASAP with the research community, not in book-length, otherwise unaccessible PDFs) and so I try to keep myself motivated by
- doing this “thesis live” series as an open science experiment and getting useful feedback from my fellow scientists and readers
- trying to include as many systemic, whole body level material into it that could be relevant for systemic regmed approaches
- reminding myself every day that without a PhD it is hard to move further in science officially (that’s the least motivating factor though as it is official)
After the blah-blah let’s start with the planned introduction points:
1. Introduction:
1.1 Stem cells and regenerative medicine
1.2. Tissues, organs with different turnover and regenerative potential
Gut epithelium,
Blood – hematopoietic system
Epidermis,
Mammary epithelium,
Vascular endothelium, Read the rest of this entry »
“We at Life Extension Foundation are pleased to help finance BioTime‘s entry into the field of regenerative medicine. We believe that one of the most important applications of embryonic stem cell technology is the slowing and reversing of aging and age-related disease. Read the rest of this entry »
The preliminary program already has over two dozen confirmed
speakers, all of them world leaders in their field. As for previous
conferences I have [co-]organised, the emphasis of this meeting is on
“applied biogerontology” — the design and implementation of
biomedical interventions that may, jointly, constitute a
comprehensive panel of rejuvenation therapies, sufficient to restore
middle-aged or older laboratory animals (and, in due course, humans)
to a youthful degree of physiological robustness. The list of
scientific sessions and confirmed speakers is as follows:
DNA damage, telomeres, cancer
Adam Arkin, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Jan Vijg, Buck
Institute for Age Research; Jerry Shay, U. Texas Southwestern;
Claudia Gravekamp, Pacific Medical Center Research Institute; Zheng
Cui, Wake Forest University School of Medicine; Rita Effros, UCLA
The cell niche
Irina Conboy, U. California Berkeley; Judith Campisi, Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory and Buck Institute; Leanne Jones, Salk
Institute; Ken Muneoka, Tulane University; Kevin Healy, Stanford
University Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve just noticed a New York Times paid “stem cell research” Google Adwords ad in my gmail inbox besides the automated “Rejuvenation Research Vol. 11, No. 1, Feb 2008 is now available online” mail. That said, The New York Times is ranking the “stem cell” buzzword high and fishes for layman readers interested in the whole regmed topic for its own stem cell site both in the search results and next to articles (in the content network – explains Anna, my online marketer wife, next to me). I wonder for how long they have been paying for these ads? Other mainstream journals have similar ads, like The Washington Post. C’mon folks, let’s spend a part of those ad dollars to real stem cell research too!!!
…that can be realistically met, most of them early in this century according to the Committee on Grand Challenges for Engineering with members such as Larry Page, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Robert Langer and …lifestyle life extensionist, nanovisionary Ray Kurzweil. There is a challenge though called Engineer better medicines and the essay behind looks as if it had been hacked together by Kurzweil and Venter themselves during a sunny Californian Soy Beer Baby Boomer Beach Party. It is about personalized medicine in large and the only hint – I was able to find – to a recent discipline named regenerative medicine is: Read the rest of this entry »
This is exactly the type of clinical trial news that should be taken extremely carefully with all due respect and grief.
A girl enrolled in a stem-cell trial for a fatal disease has died. In January, the nine-year-old received a brain transplant of neural stem cells derived from fetal tissue. She was one of six children in the trial for Batten disease, in which children rarely live into their teens. An independent group monitoring the trial decided that the death was due to the disease not the experimental treatment and said the trial could continue.
From the press release on StemCells Incorporation’s Phase I clinical trial of its proprietary HuCNS-SC®product candidate (purified human neural stem cells):
The trial is designed to evaluate the safety and preliminary efficacy of HuCNS-SC cells as a potential treatment for infantile and late infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL). NCL, which is often referred to as Batten disease, is a rare and fatal neurodegenerative condition afflicting infants and children.
The patient, a nine-year-old girl, was transplanted with HuCNS-SC cells in January 2007 and was due to return this month to the trial site, Oregon Health & Science University’s (OHSU) Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, for her 12 month follow-up. She was hospitalized nearly two weeks ago, suffering from an apparent viral infection, seizures and respiratory distress before succumbing earlier this week. Read the rest of this entry »
The successful reprogramming (dedifferentiation) of differentiated human somatic cells into a pluripotent, embryonic stem cell-like state called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) using just 4 (and recently 3) introduced transcription factors is the biggest news of current stem cell biology. In the paper published in Cell by the Yamanaka group (Takahashi et al.) the iPS clones derived from the facial dermis of a 36-year-old Caucasian female were highlighted. Out of 50 000 retrovirally transduced fibroblasts 10 hES cell-like colonies were observed. But what I found really thought provoking (and poorly discussed in the blogosphere) is that with the same approach iPS cells were generated from the synovial tissue of a 69-year-old Caucasian male. Interestingly out of 50 000 modified cells 17 hES cell-like colonies were found. This finding could easily be relevant from a stem cell aging point of view.
During ageing there is an overall decline in tissue regenerative potential, but it is not clear whether it is due to the intrinsic exhaustion of the adult tissue stem cells or the diminished functionality of the stem cell niche or a change in the systemic milieu. Answers could be different – tissue by tissue.
But if a terminally differentiated connective tissue cell, like the synoviocyte above could be completely reprogrammed from a 69 year old, otherwise health individual into a pluripotent state….well it could it be interpreted as an argument against the cell-intrinsic genetic aging program in adult and aged connective tissues with some cautions.
Caution 1: What if the source of the iPS cells were not really terminally differentiated, but undifferentiated stem or progenitor cells coexisting in fibroblast culture. This problem has been discussed in the paper and forms the Achilles’ heel of it.
Caution 2: The reprogrammed iPS cells from an aged person are behaving the same way as the iPS cells from a younger person with no additional cellular aging characteristics.
As the critical tail of almost every peer-reviewed paper used to say: Further study is needed.
One strategy (call it Life Extension Gets Personal) to raise awareness for the idea and technology of healthy life extension is to publicly encourage life extension “coming outs” on behalf of mainstream celebrities. In order to get an academic legitimacy for LE (which is one of the most important aim of Pimm) I am interested specially mainstream or at least well established scientific celebrities. To accomplish this project a man needs to identify target persons to interview (finding hints that the person is positive about LE), contacting these persons and publish the final piece somewhere.
As a first target Craig Venter, the genomics pioneer seemed unconventional and free minded enough to approach with the idea of a LE blogterview. On the other hand I found definite signs of his interest in longevity and life extension suggesting that if Craig Venter had been given a technological-medical chance to extend his healthy lifespan significantly he would definitely not like to die due to accumulating functional declines associated with aging within the next, say hundred years. Maybe I am wrong here, maybe I am not but to figure this situation out I translated these signs into the following blogterview questions and tried to contact him in early December, 2007. So far I reached only his nice and diplomatic PR agent, who said that maybe we have a chance to get the blogterview done in the near future. Till we get there below please find my targeted questions to Craig Venter:
1. Once I’ve read somewhere but was unable to recall later that one particular motivation behind the sequencing of your own genome was your serious life extension commitment and the belief that genomics has something to say about life expectancy. Is it true? If yes, what is the story of your life extension commitment? Is it a commitment for moderate or maximum life extension? In A Life Decoded I’ve found only one paragraph in your molecular biography explicitly on Long Life about the I405V of the CETP gene but no more hint to this important topic.
2. What do you think about Aubrey de Grey’s SENS approach? You’ve been one of the judges on the The SENS Challenge Prize organized by the Technology Review in 2005 for those “who could prove that SENS was “so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate.” ? Who got the point there?
3. What do you think about the mitochondrial theory of aging? I was a little surprised when I’ve found that your circa 16.5kb mitochondrial DNA sequence was not published in the PLOS Biology paper: The Diploid Genome Sequence of an Individual Human Obviously it is not part of the diploid genome but I expected it at least as an appendix as those 37 genes and D-loop region can give important genetic information. Have your mitochondrial genome been sequenced already?
4. In a recent Rolling Stone interview you are saying that “There is probably nothing more important to study about human biology than stem cells.” What do you think about regenerative medicine’s role in a robust and healthy life extension technology? Read the rest of this entry »
Biotech entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, here is a tip for Ya to launch a regmed business (and don’t forget to market the product as recycled and green) :
Winston-Salem Journal: Human hair could hold key to regeneration of nerve tissue, Wake Forest research shows
The study, published in the current issue of Biomaterials, found that the protein keratin found in human hair enhances nerve regeneration and improves nerve function – compared with current treatment options – in animal research.
As part of the study, the scientists used hair cut at a local barber shop and chemically processed it to remove the keratin. The keratin protein was purified and used to form gels that filled the nerve guidance conduits.Read the rest of this entry »
1. The folks at the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) started to offer grants for biotech companies up to $55,000 out of the 3 billion ‘hope’ dollars.
For the first time in its three-year existence, the state taxpayer-funded stem cell institute is offering grant money to biotechnology companies….The stem cell institute wants to issue up to 20 planning grants to allow prospective disease-team members to hold teleconferences and travel to meetings around the state with potential collaborators to work out the details of how their group would function.
The idea is to form a team whose members have expertise in all areas of developing a drug or diagnostic – from the initial idea to testing it on animal models, producing enough of it for experiments and figuring out how it meets the needs of patients.
The Economist print edition (Jan 3rd) has a summary article on the current healthy and scientific life extension scene starting with Aubrey De Grey’s engineering, umbrellaSENS approach and talking about anti-oxidants, mitochondria, sirtuin activators and stem cell based regenerative medicine amongst others.
To my positive surprise the unknown writer of the article (do you know who wrote it?) is using the term partial immortalisation when talking about regmed’s chance to extend healthy lifespan with a link to Pimm saying “Pimm is a blog focussing partial immortalistaion” in the web version:
Stemming time’s tide
One way that might let people outlive the limit imposed by disposable somas is to accept the machine analogy literally. When you take your car to be serviced or repaired, you expect the mechanic to replace any worn or damaged parts with new ones. That, roughly, is what those proposing an idea called partial immortalisation are suggesting. And they will make the new parts with stem cells….
Some partial immortalisers seek to abolish the Hayflick limit altogether in the hope that tissue that has become senescent will start to renew itself once more. (The clock that controls it is understood, so this is possible in principle.) Most, though, fear that this would simply open the door to cancer. Instead, they propose what is known as regenerative medicine—using stem cells to grow replacements for tissues and organs that have worn out. The most visionary of them contemplate the routine renewal of the body’s organs in a Lincoln’s axish sort of way.
The term Pimm – Partial immortalization was introduced by me in this blog referring the idea, gradual and continuous replacement process and future technology of systemic regenerative medicine aiming indefinite life extension. There is a compelling logic behind I explained it many times here. The difference is in the letters, the sense is the same: ‘immortalisation’ is a British English ‘s’ version while ‘immortalization’ with a ‘z’ is rather American English (see the Google Fight graph on the right). Enough said, it is an ad hoc translation from the Hungarian “részleges immortalizáció” by me.
The source and short history of the term: For my MA thesis in philosophy (in Hungarian) I chose the term “weak immortalization” to address the philosophical problems of a though experiment of an unlimited healthy life extension technology through regenerative medicine which would eliminate problems concerning ageing (ageing related physiological problems), while strong and (technologically impossible) immortalization would eliminate death related problems. Later I replaced the weak – strong opposition to the more proper partial – whole opposition and the credit here goes to János Kis philosopher who suggested the term “partial immortalization” for me instead of the more metaphorical ‘weak’ and the modified version of my thesis was published in a book using ‘partial’. You can download the pdf here.
Since then I totally switched back to science and today I am more inclined to use the term systemic regenerative medicine (I adopted this ‘term’ used first by Maximum Life CEO David Kekich in a life extension blogterview for Pimm) which denotes the future branch of regenerative medicine focusing on otherwise ‘healthy’, aged, ‘normal’, ‘physiologic’ people instead of the characteristically and FDA approved diesased and catches the technology that is needed to reach reversible unlimited healthy lifespan, that is partial immortalization. Systemic regmed is a rather immature from a scientific point of view without an established experimental basis, I admit and more of a theoretical frame of my thoughts on the science I am practicing right now. Nevertheless it gives a fruitful, heuristic and holistic angle on regmed.
According to the newest Request For Applications (RFA) of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the New Cell Line Awards will support two categories of research:
Category 1: Derivation of new hESC lines using excess or rejected early stage human
embryos generated by in vitro fertilization.
Category 2: Derivation of pluripotent human stem cell lines from other sources using
alternative methods such as (but not limited to) SCNT or reprogramming of neonatal or
adult cells (iPS cells).
The real news is encoded in category 2: from now on even adult stem cell research can be backed by California Embryonic Stem Cell Dollars. The same idea in another form in the text:
• disease-specific or otherwise genetically diverse, pluripotent stem cell lines to support
studying the effects of genetic variation on disease mechanism and response to
treatment, and the discovery and evaluation of new drug candidates
• the discovery and implementation of alternative methods for generating pluripotent
human stem cells, including technology leading to the generation of patient-matched or
disease-specific cell lines
What research trend is behind? The generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The successful reprogramming of differentiated human somatic cells into a pluripotent, embryonic stem (ES) cell-like state that would allow creation of patient- and disease-specific stem cells instead of using controversial embryonic stem cells was recently reported by 2 groups of researchers: the Yamanaka and the Thomson lab.
Under this RFA, CIRM intends to commit up to $25 million to support up to 16 awards,
eight (8) in each of the two categories of research. CIRM proposes to fund each award
for up to three (3) years for direct project costs of up to $300,000 per year.
Jon Rowley is a senior manager at Aastrom Biosciences with a long experience in the not too old Regenerative Medicine field. I am pleased to introduce here his new blog The Regeneration Station as one of the first biotech – regmed blog written by an industrial expert who will share with us his insights on stem cells therapies, biomaterial-based devices, tissue engineered products and … biotech stock options i.e. all the things that are shaping the face of a young industry. According to Jon: Early adopter companies form and often fail, but they do succeed in removing some risk from the technology. As risk decreases, large companies try to figure out how to play in the new technology sandbox that is littered with small companies. Today, even Baxter is running a cell therapy clinical trial for cardiac regeneration, PerkinElmer is buying up cord blood banks, Celgene is dabbling in placenta-derived cells, and Teva Pharmaceuticals has an autologous MSC long bone trail underway.
There is another thing why more academic science bloggers should read Regeneration Station. Jon will definitely show us the “time and money” gap between science and the translation of it: “I do not want to undermine the importance of the great work that was done in generating pluripotent stem cells from adult skin cells, but the only thing I think about when hearing this news is TIME and MONEY. I know I will be fielding questions from my friends and relatives over Thanksgiving weekend on whether or not Aastrom (my employer) is doing this type of work or if we have to change our business model. I will have to explain that this type of research is at such an early stage, that it will not be impacting what is going on in Biotech for 20 years, if not more. It is challenging enough to manufacture and distribute an autologous cell product Read the rest of this entry »
It is a somewhat very positive idea that human tissues previously considered as waste products (after filling their essential role in the human body) like the placenta and the umbilical cord are radically reinterpreted as valuable sources of prospective therapies due to the current results of stem cell research and regenerative medicine. Exactly this reinterpretation is taking place now with the cells of the regularly produced menstrual blood flow as the first commercially available menstrual stem cell service, C’elle was launched by cord blood banker Cryo-Cell.
The user friendly process in a nutshell: Upon ordering, you’ll receive an attractive, discreet C’elle collection kit by FedEx delivery. Inside, you’ll find everything needed for you to collect and send your C’elle menstrual stem cells for processing and preservation, including a menstrual cup, collection tubes, prepaid FedEx airbill for return shipment to Cryo-Cell, and comprehensive instructions for use.
There are 3 plans and pricings available: annual plan for $499 includes processing & first year’s storage, semi-annual plan for collecting two specimens instead one, and quarterly plan for four specimens, and you have to pay for the annual storage thereafter in the range of hundreds of dollars/year.
Unfortunately we’re short of strict scientific details (summary here) as of this moment, but a peer review article will be published this winter. Scientists involved: Amit Patel, Gerald Elfenbein, Stephen J. Noga, Paul R. Sanberg. What we could know: The characteristics of these menstrual stromal cells are similar of the human endometrial stem cells derived from the endometrial lining of the uterus, but their collection is non-invasive and pain free. Let’s take a look on the table left in which menstrual stromal cells are compared to the more established mesenchymal stromal cells from the bone marrow. I’d like to highlight 2 differences: Read the rest of this entry »
If you ever thought of launching a biotech startup… the following blogterview is for you. Jim Hardy is a long time insighful commenter of Pimm and he shared with me his brand new experience as the founder of a biotech startup in the much hyped field of regenerative medicine. The transparency of the interview makes it really valuable besides its information richness thanks to Jim. I found especially useful the used equipment network by necessity, which could be the base of a worldwide biotech startup network and could serve a biodiy movement. Make no mistake: biotech is the next IT.
ACs: Would you be kind enough to introduce your background?
JH: My name is Jim Hardy and I have a BA in Biology and Chemistry from Wittenberg University, a small Liberal Arts school in Ohio. I sold Xerox office equipment for a couple years after school before getting back into science. I was large-scale chemical mixer making laundry detergents, a lab tech at the University of Rochester for 3 years and dabbled in graduate classes before moving to Maryland in 1988 to work in R&D at Life Technologies, which is now Invitrogen (a subject for a separate post). I have always found R&D rather boring and would rather finish one project and move on to the next, so the rest of my career has been in Manufacturing.
ACs: What is the story of Gahaga BioSciences?
JH: Gahaga is an acronym for the three founders: Garner-Hardy-Gage. That’s always the first question. We started the company to commercialize a proprietary method for extracting 3-5 times the number of implantable HSC from afterbirth than is achievable from traditional Cord Blood recovery procedures. Our current business has drifted away from the initial goal. I found your blog, because I was googling amniotic stem cells, or something of that nature. The initial process I am using for producing MSC’s is almost precisely as you describe in the “Make Stem Cells at Home” post and in your poster. Dissect amnion, digest, plate or freeze. So, by classification, my cells would be Amniotic Membrane-human Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (AM-hMSCs).
I just learned our cells stain intensely positive for Nestin (a neural stem cell marker), by Cellomics Array scan and CD 44+ (hematopoietic stem cell marker) by FACS. Right now I am just looking to get these cells into as many places as possible to learn what exactly they are. Read the rest of this entry »
Honestly, there are not too many good, stem cell related blogs out there. By “good stem cell blogs” I mean blogs that are regularly updated in a niche stem cell related field full with quality science information followed by original opinions and ideas and not just human or algorithmic link blogs.
Here are 3 solid and trustworthy stem cell related blogs I regularly (but not every day) follow:
Robert Lanza is now the Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology, while Michael West is voluntarily stepping down as the company’s President and Chief Scientific Officer and jumps into the CEO seat of BioTime Inc..
Lanza and West are 2 legendary figures in the biotech industry, and here are 2 interesting things concerning them:
West is in the science, telomerase, stem cell, regmed, biotech business because of his strong life extension commitment and had a big effect on Aubrey de Grey (see How to Live Forever or Die Trying: On the New Immortality byBryan Appleyard or the highly entertaining Rapture by Brian Alexander).
Lanza was the disciple of the founder of behaviorism, psychologist B.F. Skinner and they had some articles together, say this Science article on the “Self-Awareness” in the Pigeon.
Bill Dye has a serious muscle-tendon damage and is looking for an experimental regenerative medicine therapy (stem cells or tissue engineering or both) after 2 years and many surgical interventions. If any out of the expert readers of this blog can help or knows someone, who can help, please do comment or email Mr. Bill Dye. For details, please read the emails below:
Subject: Tore my right pec major sternal head off of my humerus
Hi, my name is Bill Dye. I live in Louisville Ky. I had a very bad injury on 3/17/2005, while doing the decline bench press, and completely tore my right pec major sternal head from my humerus. It was initially misdiagnosed as a partial tear. I had my 1st failed surgery on 7/26/2205 in Birmingham Alabama. The doctor did not even reattach my tendon, which I did not realize till a few months after the surgery.
I did some more research online, and came across Dr C. B., who was then at Duke University Med Center. On 9/6/2006, Dr B. did successfully reattach my tendon to my humerus, but there is so much scar damage from the original injury, that my muscle is still extremely disfigured.
I came across an article on Acell Inc, and got to researching more online about Regenerative Medicine. I was wondering if you knew of any new technology in Regenerative Medicine, that could regenerate my muscle and tendon, to pre injury, such as the “concept” behind the Urinary Bladder Matrix that Acell has, and is attempting to market in the near future. Thanks. Read the rest of this entry »
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:
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 Read the rest of this entry »
In the unique state of California there is now an offer for individuals to place orders from October 3 during a $250 million sale of state debt to fund embryonic stem-cell research. The minimum bet is $5,000 and over 1 million you need special permission (just like buying more than 2 iPhones in the early days). That is unique. But wait…
“Of the $250 million issuance, $200 million will fund stem cell research and roughly $45 million will cover the cost of issuing the debt and retiring bond anticipation notes sold while the stem-cell measure was being contested in court.”
It’s Friday so the web is going to sleep for the weekend, but here is one more opinion on life extension, in this case the opinion of Arthur Caplan chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and columnist on bioethics for MSNBC:
Source: TechJournal South (I’ve never heard of it before and not sure about its bias, if there’s any)
Caplan says the question of whether or not modern science and medicine should extend our lives and enhance our capabilities is going to be “the battleground of the next ten years and even of the 21st century.” He noted that while some may ask, what’s wrong with living forever, repairing damaged organs, or fixing genes, a lot of people and organizations from the left and right of the political spectrum oppose these advances.
My question: Exactly who are these guys from the left and from the right and what are their aims?
“Is it really unnatural to seek a longer better life, as critics argue?” Caplan asked. He pointed out that there is really nothing natural about a 70 or 75-year average lifespan. Read the rest of this entry »
Linda Powers is the managing director and co-founder of Toucan Capital Corp, a $120 million venture capital fund (SBIC) focused on seed and early-stage life science and advanced technology investments (the fund markets itself as the The Leading US Investor in Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine). Out of here insights and facts presented on the SENS3 conference (I caught some of her slides with my iPhone, see below) I’d like to highlight the following ones:
- the anti-aging market today is approx. 42 billion dollars,
- the number of issued and published U.S. stem cell patents has been decreased for the first time since 2000 compared to the earlier year,
- viable business models in regenerative medicine are still missing,
- first-to-trial and -market is not always advantageous in regmed.
The immortal strand hypothesis captures stem cell scientists’ imagination these days. According to Thomas Rando The immortal strand hypothesis posits that the propensity of stem cell compartments to give rise to cancer in later life can be minimized if stem cells, during the process of self-renewal, retain those DNA strands with the fewest mutations acquired during DNA replication. Key concepts of biology are connected by the hypothesis: stem cells, cancer, aging, symmetric and asymetric cell division, DNA replication and replication-induced mutations.
At the SENS3 conference Mike Conboy from Berkeley, who is a former postdoc of Thomas Rando at Stanford gives us some muscle regeneration related data concerning the hypothesis:
Department of Bioengineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
Before cells divide, they duplicate macromolecules and organelles. When they divide, sometimes they sort the older versus newer “parts” to the daughter cells. Over 35 years ago Cairns proposed the “Immortal DNA Strand hypothesis”, where the stem daughter cell might retain the older or more “original” strands of DNA and thus limit accumulating errors of replication, while continuing to proliferate for the life of an organism. Originally based on observations in animal and plant cells, this hypothesis has remained largely unknown or unaccepted because of few additional reports, relatively few cells displaying template strand segregation and alternate interpretations of the data. We used sequential pulses of different thymidine analogs to label DNA strands of different ages in the cells in regenerating muscle, in vivo. We observed extraordinarily high frequencies of cells segregating older versus younger DNA to the daughter cells. Furthermore, this DNA inheritance asymmetry correlated with asymmetric cell divisions yielding daughters with divergent fates. Daughter cells inheriting the older templates exhibited a stem-like immature phenotype, whereas daughters inheriting the newer templates showed a more differentiated phenotype. These data provide compelling evidence of the Immortal DNA phenomenon in muscle regeneration and suggest that it may be more common in stem cell self-renewal than previously assumed. We propose that the Immortal DNA hypothesis be revisited as pertains to aging, cancer and development, and suggest implications for the SENS.
Help me to collect the list of art illustrations that are frequently used and overused by scientists on their slides either as background or as an analogy for some biological or other scientific phenomenon! The first one is the “Fons Juventutis” (“Fountain of Youth“) and now quickly switch to wikipedian composed by Cranach, executed by his son, a picture in which hags are seen entering a Renaissance fountain, and are received as they issue from it with all the charms of youth by knights and pages. Scientists are used to illustrate their stem cell and regmed related presentation with the Fountain of Youth and I guess the concept they have in mind in doing so is rejuvenation, or on the cellular level, dedifferentiation.
Embedded is my classical style (no design, based on the figure section, Powerpoint instead of Keynote) Journal Club presentation on the following paper with the help of SlideShare: Alteration of Marrow Cell Gene Expression, Protein Production and Engraftment into Lung by Lung-derived Microvesicles: A Novel Mechanism for Phenotype Modulation by Aliotta JM, Sanchez-Guijo FM, Dooner GJ, Johnson KW, Dooner MS, Greer KA, Greer D, Pimentel J, Kolankiewicz LM, Puente N, Faradyan S, Ferland P, Bearer EL, Passero MA, Adedi M, Colvin GA, Quesenberry PJ. Stem Cells. 2007 Jul 2 Thanks for the permission, Jason Aliotta. After the abstract you can find some critical points we digged out during our journal club answered by the first author, Jason Aliotta himself.
Abstract: Numerous animal studies have demonstrated that adult marrow-derived cells can contribute to the cellular component of the lung. Lung injury is a major variable in this process; however, the mechanism remains unknown. We hypothesize that injured lung is capable of inducing epigenetic modifications of marrow cells, influencing them to assume phenotypic characteristics of lung cells. We report that, under certain conditions, radiation injured lung induced expression of pulmonary epithelial cell-specific genes and prosurfactant B protein in cocultured whole bone marrow cells separated by a cell-impermeable membrane. Read the rest of this entry »
Maxine Clarke over at Nature’s Nautilus blog published Nature’s July top ten PDF downloads.
July was a particularly strong month for Nature concerning pluripotency and embryonic stem cells as 5 out of the 10 top ten downloads, that is 50% of the most popular articles are tinkering with stem cell biology. The other trend: microRNAs, 2 papers. I wonder which could be the last research trend that reached that maturity and which will be the next.
There are way too much papers and data published in the field of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine to follow and filter with traditional offline, spread of mouth tools. At the Journal Club section of Nature Reports Stem Cells, researchers have the opportunity to highlight and discuss the papers they found of utmost importance in their discipline with a user recommendation and voting system.
The successful reprogramming (dedifferentiation) of differentiated human somatic cells into a pluripotent, embryonic stem cell-like state called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) using just 4 (and recently 3) introduced transcription factors is the biggest news of current stem cell biology. In the paper 
It is now the 3rd issue of 
The immortal strand hypothesis captures stem cell scientists’ imagination these days. 
