Slashdot Mirror
Nanotech and the Blind
tomsastroblog writes "In a BBC report scientists injected blind hamsters with a solution containing nanoparticles. The result? Nerves re-grew and sight returned. The researchers injected the blind hamsters with a solution of synthetically made peptides; within 24 hours the brain started to heal itself. The peptides were later broken down by the body into a harmless substance and was excreted three to four weeks later. From the article: 'We are looking at this as a step process. If this can be used while operating on humans to mitigate damage during neurosurgery, that would be the first step,'"
After injecting the hamsters with a solution containing nanoparticles, the nerves re-grew and sight returned
This is pretty advanced. So why did Jordy have to wear that stupid visor?In order to try to restore quality of life to those individuals you can try to reconnect some disconnected parts to try to give some functionality
I guess John Bobbit could've used this as wellOn a serious note though, this seems really amazing. It's basically neuro-knitting a damaged brain back in place.
I wonder if this can somehow treat brain defects due to developmental problems. Disorders such as Schitzophrenia can be treated with a frontol lobotomy (although this is only done in extreme circumstances) where they disconnect nerves the front part of the brain. I wonder if they can use this technology to reconnect it in a way that will act as a treatment (sort of "rewiring").
They will no doubt look to see if it can heal the lesions from myelin deteriation caused by diseases like Multiple Sclerosis. I think the fact that brain tissue regenerated in adult hamsters that weren't supposed to grow new brain tissue gives some promise to that. I know that Parkinson's disease also affects the nervous system, but I believe its caused by some kind of cellular failure. Nevertheless, this looks like some very promising research!
--
"Man Bits Dog
Then Bites Self"
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
Glad to see the blind getting some vaperhope, but might this process have potential to repair spinal damage?
"The first thing we saw was that the brain had started to heal itself in the first 24 hours. We had never seen that before - so that was very surprising."
Hopefully this means this it could be used in the peripheral nervous system as well, to heal severed sensory neurons, or perhaps even spinal cord injuries. Too bad Christopher Reeve won't be around to see that.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Absolutely amazing story. On a related note I know a guy who has been stuck in a wheelchair for 10+ years. He was a helicoptor pilot for the national guard long ago and had an accident where he landed really hard. The skids of the helicoptor were damaged but he walked away with a really bruised backside. 10 years after the accident he woke up one morning unable to move his legs. Apparently the accident had caused some sort of damage to his lower spine that wasn't diagnosed until his legs stopped working. Well after 10+ years in the wheelchair he was picked for a double-blind medical study with some European medical firm. After doing nothing more than taking a pill for a few weeks he was able to walk again with the help of a walker. The fact that we can develop a pill that can target conditions like blindness or this spinal injury is truely amazing.
The next question: Why are we starting with mice if we can't always use promising developments on humans? Wouldn't that be a huge waste of initial effort and expectations?
That's a great question. In part, it's a matter of ethics: you can't try out new ideas on human beings. Also, mice breed and grow quickly, which makes them faster to try new ideas on. But as stated, they aren't a great predictor. Another interesting thought (and one I don't have much insight on) is that perhaps some ideas that don't work out for mice might actually work in humans but are prematurely rejected. (i.e., if false positives are possible, shouldn't false negatives also be possible?)
This touches on my work, in part; I'm a mathematician working on increasingly detailed computer models of cancer to see if we can eventually get a better and faster model than the mouse model. It's also a lot easier to control the experimental conditions on a computer. :)
If you're interested in these kinds of questions, I'd recommend also checking out some BusinessWeek articles from about a year ago, where they talked about the state of cancer research. Their conclusion was that the biggest roadblock today is the mouse model. I don't remember the exact citation, but I could dig for it if you are interested. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
That's a horrible definition. *All* chemical processes "exploit phenomena and structures that can only occur at the nanometer scale" because the processes happen at the molecular level! But I guess that's the point, isn't it? The broader the scope of "nanotechnology", the easier it is to get funded. The broader the definition of "terrorist", the easier it is to get support for your policies. The broader the definition of "technology", the easier it is to get people to buy the latest Microsoft bells and whistles.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
It certainly may be possible to do those sort of things. The tricky part is that a good number of the cells may simply die off if the injury isn't quickly repaired. Another effect of the gel is to provide a nutrient-rich solution to help growth, so time is of the essence.
The good news is that there's lots of research going into nerve regeneration and repair. Things like nerve growth factors, removing mylein-induced inhibition, and stem cells are all promising fields.
It'll be interesting when people's brains can be kept alive for long periods of time by replacing or modifying large chucks of it. When do I stop being really me?
when reading the title "Nanotech and the Blind" was that we'll just make everything excruciatingly small so no one can see it, thereby making everyone "blind" and balancing the scales.
Kind of like how "No Child Left Behind" can be true, so long as everyone is held back equally.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
You raise some good points, but then again, it wasn't too long ago that it was considered "impossible" to get mammalian nerve tissue to regenerate. Now it's being shown that it can be done, even if in a limited manner.
There's still a lot of ground that has to be covered, and there's going to be a lot of false leads as well. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to work with one of the pioneers of transplant surgery. The tales he told of the difficulties they faced back in the 1950's trying to figure out the immune system, how to get around tissue rejection, and the blind alleys, miserable failures and occasional successes. What they did show was that it was possible, and these days transplant surgery is something that is now a standard (although still risky) option.
It's still the early stages here, and just showing that it's possible is step one. No, I don't think that it'll be a standard treatment for humans anytime soon, and I fully expect that like transplants there'll be a lot of missteps, wrong leads, and failures, but down the line, there will be treatments.
I submitted this story with a better description and a better link from MIT.
Actually what happened is this: the tracks in the visual cortex were severed and then a biodegradable peptide solution was injected into the damaged area in the brain, which created a 3d matrix of that allowed new cells to the edges in the matrix thus reconstructing the actual cell connections rather than producing scarring tissue.
This process can be applied to damaged areas of the brain or nerves in the spinal cord.
I think this brings the humans one step closer to immortality - imagine using stem cellls and these peptides to reconstruct damage of the brain and the nerve system that is caused by aging and/or trauma.
You can't handle the truth.
You can get nerves to regrow in a living animal?
What?? You don't have to "get" them to regrow. They do so on their own!
Want proof? I have Bell's Palsy. The nerve in the left side of my face died and my face was half-paralyzed. But now the nerve is growing back. Every day, some part of my face starts twitching as the newly-grown never attaches to it.
The moral of the story is: some nerves do grow back on their own. Nerve regrowth is a common thing that happens in animals all the time without any medicine of any kind.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Them thinking it doesn't make it true. I'm certainly not bashing blind culture, deaf culture or any other culture here, but they are, in fact, "broken". They have organs that don't work as designed. Doesn't make them lesser people, doesn't mean they aren't as happy, fulfilled, mean, frustrated, joyful, etc., as anyone else. But a culture that insists that loss of sight or hearing is not a handicap (or worse, is something to be celebrated), is kidding itself.
I've seen the battles in deaf culture over the use of cochlear implants, and some of the arguments I find ridiculous. Insisting that a child remain deaf, when the option exists to allow them to hear at least somewhat, just so that they can remain part of "deaf culture", strikes me as being on the same level as those who insist that a black kid who strives to excel academically is betraying his heritage by "acting white".
Great. Now show me a condition of concentration such that only one molecule is being made, not at a time but being made period, and you are able to find it and do something with it, and I'll concede the point.
Again, this is easy to do. One can easily find a dilution such that there is no more than one molecule of substrate per tube, while immunological and fluorescence methods are capable of binding and tracking individual molecules, if for some reason it was necessary to do so. But you are begging the question: What is it that causes it to be nanotechnology to make a nanometer scale molecule one at a time, but not nanotechnology to make the exact same nano-scale molecule efficiently in quantity? Note that most proposed applications of nanotechnology do not involve the use of single molecules, but rather the use of a population of nanoscale molecules or molecular assemblies. So your argument is a bit like insisting that it is automotive mechanics to build one car by hand, but not if you build the same car in a factory on an assembly line.