RE: Stem Cell 'Master Gene' Found

From: matus@matus1976.com
Date: Fri May 30 2003 - 16:44:58 MDT

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    >
    > On Fri, 30 May 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote:
    >
    > > Extropes, meet the Nanog gene (and protein) named after the
    > > mythic Celtic land of the ever-young, Tir nan Og.
    >
    > You got to post this before I found a good ref... Dang it all.
    >
    > > PS: This *is* good news but, unfortunately, it doesn't mean we'll be
    > > buying organs off the shelf as commodities in the next couple of years.
    >
    > Its going to take a bit longer than that. I'd say 10 years optimistic,
    > perhaps 20 years pessimistic.
    >
    > The problem is that it takes a decade or more to grow an adult sized
    > organ. Now it isn't clear precisely what all the limits are here.
    > Some of them may be nutrient and coolant related so we may be able
    > to advance these for organs grown in "organ factories".
    >
    >

    Why grow whole organs? Injecting a few stem cells into the offending organ
    will start replacing non-functional organ cells with correctly functioning
    ones. Systems fail when too many of the cells in that system function
    improperly due to entropy or genetic disorders. Damage due to entropy could
    be combatted by pure strands of a stem cell and localized injecitons.
    Damage from genetic disorders could be reversed with geneticially modified
    stem cells from the patients own genome. Organs are collections of cells,
    and organs function improperly when too many of the cells in that system
    function improperly. We can combat the tendance for cellular functions to
    alter with stem cells.

    Cloned Stem Cells cure Parkinsons in rat model -
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020510074808.htm

    "Paul Carvey, PhD, chairman of pharmacology at Rush, used his team's
    discovery to clone several generations of stem cells that, when grafted into
    the brains of rats with a Parkinson's like disease, developed into healthy
    dopamine neurons. This effectively cured the animals' severe Parkinsonian
    symptoms"

    Stem Cells reduce brain damage -
    http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/11.21/01-stem.html
    "Snyder was surprised to see that stem cells not only replaced missing brain
    tissue, but provided protection for cells disabled by age and diseases like
    Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. "It's not unreasonable to think that in humans
    the early implantation of stem cells - because of partnerships they form
    with host cells - might forestall or even pre-empt degenerative diseases
    such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's," Snyder says."

    "These demonstrations of neural stem cells' capacity to repair and protect a
    brain leads Snyder to speculate that other types of stem cells could perform
    the same functions in other organs, such as the heart, muscles, lungs, and
    liver. "Stem cells, in the broadest sense, are responsible for putting
    organs together in the womb," he notes. "They are a normal part of
    development, so maybe we can find ways of fooling the injured or
    dysfunctional body into believing that development is still going on.""

    Transplant can cure diabetes -
    http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/columnists/karen_garloch/46462
    06.htm"

    Jody DeMarco came to Charlotte recently to give hope to those with juvenile
    diabetes.
    The 46-year-old Philadelphian is one of 140 people in the world whose
    diabetes has been cured by a transplant of islet cells.Islet cells -- short
    for islets of Langerhans -- are clusters of cells in the pancreas. They
    contain beta cells, which secrete insulin needed to regulate the metabolism
    of sugar. A malfunction of that process causes diabetes. Two years ago,
    Canadian researchers reported the first successful human transplants of
    islet cells from donor cadavers. Today, eight centers in the United States,
    Canada and Europe perform such transplants with funding from the JDRF"

    [Here we see properly functioning cells, this time from a donor, injected
    into a organ with cells that do not function properly, and the system they
    support, in this case the generation of insulin, remains functional. These
    donor cells were taken from cadavers. A better scenerio would be to use the
    patients own stem cells. Indeed the article later notes..]

    "Therapeutic cloning of a person's own stem cells could produce sufficient
    islet cells in the future, Gores said. By then, researchers may have figured
    out how to stop the autoimmune problem that destroyed the person's islet
    cells in the first place"

    The Harvard Biotech Club, Emerging Technologies - Stem Cells injection
    repairs heart damage -
    http://www.thebiotechclub.org/industry/emerging/stem_cells.php
    "Heart. Several groups have been working on animal models in which
    pluripotent stem cells are grafted into damaged hearts. The stem cells were
    shown to incorporate into the heart and form gap junctions and beat with the
    surrounding cells"

    Turning Stem cells into Liver cells -
    http://www.healthandage.org/Home/gm=20!gid1=3658
    "The animals were injected with adult stem cells and the researchers found
    that these could, indeed, become liver cells. But what was occurring was
    cell fusion rather than cell transformation. A stem cell fused with a liver
    cell, to make a new liver cell with extra numbers of chromosomes."

    etc. etc. etc....

    Michael Dickey



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