Slashdot Mirror
OHSU Turns Mouse into Factory for Human Liver Cells
Oregon Health & Science University researchers have figured out how to turn a mouse into a factory for human liver cells that can be used to test how pharmaceuticals are metabolized. The technique, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, could soon become the gold standard not only for examining drug metabolism in the liver, which helps scientists determine a drug's toxicity, but also can be used as a platform for testing new therapies against infectious diseases that attack the liver, such as hepatitis C and malaria.
Those of us with a touchpad or trackpoint seem to be out of luck.
Downside: after one of those treatments you'll have a craving for cheese and a fear of cats. Then again, for some people it might not be much of a difference ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Now, if they'd just turn a rat into a factory for fava beans.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Does it matter if they don't like it? Scientists are doing this kind of thing (research on mice/rats, not successfully creating a factory for liver cells) all the time. If those PETA people are going to let scientists do research on them, fine, but if not they should STFU and let these scientists help sick people get better - I think that's much more important than making sure that a mouse gets to run around in a sewer. It is a bit 'mean' to research on them like this, sure, but if you keep with that line of reasoning then you just shouldn't ever eat anything, because it's all alive at some point, and we have taken advantage of even the vegetables by planting and harvested their organs.
"Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?"
And the angel said unto me,
"These are the cries of the carrots,
the cries of the carrots.
You see, reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day
and to them it is the holocaust."
And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat
like the tears of one millions terrified brothers
and roared,
"Hear me now,
I have seen the light,
they have a consciousness,
they have a life,
they have a soul.
damn you!
let the rabbits wear glasses,
save our brothers...can I get an amen?"
which is totally what she said
So this means I can drink as much beer as I want without fearing liver damage, right?!!
As they say, "Liver let die". Sorry.
I'm sure PETA, RSPCA etc will all have something to say about this. But i see it less immoral that we're using mice (at their expense) to end human suffering rather than to test cosmetics or kill simply because they're in our home. At least this kind of animal cruelty (as it could be construed) has a negating good karma benefit.
The difference between your bad analogy & what tbe OHSU team are doing?
The OHSU team know wtf they're doing. Your team obviously didn't.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Agreed.
If PETA want to rally against Michael Vick, or against testing on animals for research into, say, cosmetics - I'll be the first to join them. But I hope they don't have a problem with research of this sort.
Moved from crappy PHP to JSP and only the manager and lead developer got canned, maybe a bad choice somewhere...
Interesting...
Some people wanted to do that at our place a few years back, we stuck with crappy PHP and nobody got canned, we still don't use JSP and the company has grown a lot bigger since then (close to 100x), we still use crappy PHP and it works great.
Won't say much more, but it's how you use the tools, I find PHP a lot easier to deal with on the backend, JSP is too closed, convoluted and it is slower. Mostly a pain in the ass for admins.
The problem remains however, that the human defense system is amazingly complicated and based on specific protein interactions, with an immense diversity of proteins available. As soon as a treatment as shown here comes out, there is a big chance that a batch of people will not do well under the treatment, due to protein-protein interactions only appearing in individual cases. Just look at the antibody treatment that went wrong in the phase trials recently. I think that these kind of "living material" treatments still need new rigorous standard tests developed to test dangerous side-effects in advance. This will be more complicated than the tests performed on pharmaceutical drugs, as we are dealing with much more complicated systems here. The potential is high, but what we don't need are another few cases of new treatments going wrong. Extreme carefulness and patience is needed.
The final problem which is also the most difficult one to foresee, is how the treatment will be prescribed. New treatments often go to the people for which other treatment didn't work well enough, 'hard cases', who are mostly also the people with a lot of additional health problems. The tests were done on people with isolated health problems, fitting to the treatment. No-one can predict what will happen during this real-life usage, research the Baycol incident if you want to see a recent case of a release gone wrong, bringing down the whole pharmaceutical company that developed it. The drug itself was probably not bad, just not fitted to the people who it ended up being subscribed to. There is no standardized test to prevent this (yet?).
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
...whose first thought was "Great, a spare liver on my desk."?
I think it's not healthy that your first association with "mouse" is an input device and not a furry rodent. Guess it's time to check whether that yellow ball is still on top of that blue room.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The giant mouse looked like this and it stole my cookie.
It's not even that the mouse would be running around in the sewer. These mice are RAISED to be test subjects. If the idiots at PITA didn't care more for a mouse than it did human life. They would realize that if we were not testing on these mice the mice would never even have been born. Besides the fact it's a FREAKING MOUSE!
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
If the idiots at PITA didn't care more for a mouse than it did human life. They would realize that if we were not testing on these mice the mice would never even have been born.
I'm not much of a PETA supporter. I think that avoiding cruelty to animals is important, but I strongly object to the idea that we have no right to make use of them for food or for research into medicines that save human lives. However, I would like to point out that this line of reasoning is nigh-irrelevant in the context of their beliefs about the inherent rights of animals. Let me ask a simple, devil's advocate question to illustrate why:
Wouldn't this same justification for mistreatment apply to people born into slavery thanks to forced breeding?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"But I hope they don't have a problem with research of this sort."
Indeed, so do the vast majority of their members. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, they still donate. Weird.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Confessor: (very slowly and painfully) Well it's not a question of wantiing to be a mouse... it just sort of happens to you. All of a sudden you realize... that's what you want to be.
... started handing ... cheese around ... and well just out of curiosity 1 tried a bit ... and well that was that.
... and then when they'd got the costumes on they started ... squeaking.
... with other mice.
Interviewer: And when did you first notice these... shall we say... tendencies?
Confessor: Well... I was about seventeen and some mates and me went to a party, and, er... we had quite a lot to drink... and then some of the fellows there
Interviewer: And what else did these fellows do?
Confessor: Well some of them started dressing up as mice a bit
Interviewer: Yes. And was that all?
Confessor: That was all.
Interviewer: And what was your reaction to this?
Confessor: Well I was shocked. But, er... gradually I came to feel that I was more at ease
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I'm sure the mouse feels terribly proud to be born with a fucked-up liver just so it can be repeatedly operated upon during its short but oh-so-meaningful life to provide alien cells to possibly save the lives of a few humans taking overpriced drugs from profit-obsessed corporations, to deal with conditions likely caused by their own overconsumption and excesses.
Yeah, if I were one of those crippled mice I'd be terribly proud. I know that as a member of the species responsible for engineering these Jem'Hadar-like mice dependent upon this ketracel-white-like NTBC, I'm also terribly proud.
If YOU had and inherited liver disease... wait, did you say Jem'Hadar? You mean... they are fearsome warriors armed with intergalactic travel and energy weapons?! Well, why didn't you say so -- that's completely different!
I, for one, would like to welcome our new mouse overlords!
Wasn't it liver cells that they injected into other mice to give regeneration? So... if they can make the mice make human liver cells...
isn't the Human Liver a factory for Human Liver cells ?
shouldn't they be doing research into organs that don't regenerate by themselves?
They're using their grammar skills there.
You need look no further than your own nose to see who's self-obsessed in this room, buddy... it's called homo-centrism. Or perhaps in your case, even xenophobia.
Isn't this from a song on track 99 of a tool CD? Can't remember what band it was.. just remember falling asleep listening to my new CD years ago, and waking up in a cold sweat and panic hearing this and the chorus:
This is necessary...
Life feeds on life
feeds on life..
Man, that was creepy!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Of course they will. Obviously, you've never tried human liver with fava beans and a nice chianti. It's delicious.
Yep, it's from the last track on Undertow (according to Wiki, Tool's first full length album), and is apparently track 69 (which I didn't know because I just ripped the CD).
which is totally what she said
I'm more worried by the newer diseases like hepatitis C++.
...the Internet is turning computer mice into bacteria factories.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)