Ep 4- Taster: stem cells

As a taster of what will be on in tomorrow nights episode of the Petridish at 10pm on Joy 94.9FM here is the annotation of one of the segments, Science News. Also if you are a twitter user, insert #pdish into your message and we can track it, and follow through summize

Reversing Birth Defects

During neural development, when there are prenatal teratogon (substances which cause neural damage) act diffusely through the brain. The University of Jerusalem [30.12.08] in mice, by inserting stem cells into the brain, were able to overcome damage as the stem cells migrated to the site of the damage tissue and differentiated to repair the region.

The mice who were exposed to pesticides and heroin while pregnant offspring are generally heavily retarded, but once treated with direct neural stem cell transplantation into the neural stem behavioural tests showed normality as well the brain chemistry recovering to normal.

This brings us closer to overcoming brain damage done during maturation can be reversed, giving hope to parents who may have been exposed to teragons during pregnancy.

Not Just a Product

Research at the University of California [28.1.09] has found that they could program pluripotent stem cells into precursors of the germ-line cells that produce sperms and eggs. This could answer issues of infertility caused by injury or disease.

Reprogrammed Skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) now give a method for the production of germ-line cells, but there are major differences between those of iPS and Human embryonic Stem cells (HES), which means that further investigation is needed to determine what the differences mean in the way of fertility, and functionality of the resultant gametes. Because of this further research is necessary before the new found results are to be implemented.

Not All a Good Thing

According to Wiley-Blackwell [5.11.08] published in Clinical and Transitional Science:

“Breast and other cancers are maintained through a population of cancerous stem cells.”

This statement came out in relation to the over expression of cyclin d1 being an over expressed protein in stem cell based cancers such as nodule breast cancer. The role that has been found for this is now giving way to better treatment and understanding “By specifically targeting…[them] we hope to reduce the reoccurrence and improve therapy” says Pestell.

Lindsay et al ErbB2 Induces Notch 1 Activity and Function in Breast Cancer. Clinical and Translational Science, 2008;1 (2):107D01: 10.1111/j.1752-8062.2008.00041.x

Stem Cells Used in Cure for Type 1 Diabetes

Published in Developmental Cell, Baylor College of Medicine [17.3.2009] have found a gene which can induce insulin production.

Neurogenin3 is delivered by a disarmed virus (which attacks the liver) causes blood sugar to plummet to their correct level, but this doesn’t work with mature liver cells, but with the stem cells around the portal vein (called islet cells) and trigger them to start producing insulin.

The virus used in the study on mice may however be harmful to people, and so more refinement is needed before human testing.