'Bionic' Nerve To Repair Damaged Limbs and Organs

University of Manchester researchers have transformed fat tissue stem cells into nerve cells -- and now plan to develop an artificial nerve that will bring damaged limbs and organs back to life. In a study published in October's Experimental Neurology, Dr Paul Kingham and his team at the UK Centre for Tissue Regeneration (UKCTR) isolated the stem cells from the fat tissue of adult animals and differentiated them into nerve cells to be used for repair and regeneration of injured nerves. They are now about to start a trial extracting stem cells from fat tissue of volunteer adult patients, in order to compare in the laboratory human and animal stem cells.

Comments

steve austin approves

[User 956]

'Bionic' Nerve To Repair Damaged Limbs and Organs

Unfortunately, it costs 6 million dollars, and makes a very distinctive sound when in use.

Re:Possible Hope For My Favorite Hobby

[speaker of the truth]

If you can afford whatever this will cost once its patented you can afford a hooker to simply jack you off once an hour, every hour for the rest of your life.

You would have to do more to lift 100's of pound

[aepervius]

Your spine would long give in if it is not muscled/solid enough to lift those hundreds of pound. Sure some people do lift as much , but they are trained for it, and as far as I know are not adverse to accident. Then also there is the center of gravity, unless you lift your 100's of pound like an those alter-lifting pros do, you could have serious problem when your gravity center is suddenly out of the body. Which naturally limit what you can take on, although the second one is probably a detail in comparison to the first one.

ALS/MND

[emjoi_gently]

I'd be interested to know if this would be helpful for people with ALS, where nerves slowly degenerate.
It might not be a cure to the fundamental problem, but might extend a life.

Re:ALS/MND

[yog]

Nerves are complicated. To splice a regrown nerve into a particular spot will require some mighty fine tools, and it's got to be the right type of neuron. Also, if an axon has been cut, the body will have reabsorbed it and there's nothing to splice. You'd have to thread your replacement axon from a ganglion next to the spine all the way out to the muscle or organ that is to be innervated.

Unfortunately this is probably beyond the abilities of current medical science. The problem is that the nervous system grows with the limbs and organs starting from early embryonic stage; it's not something that you can entice to regrow from scratch. Probably the long term solution will be nanomachines that are injected into the body and rebuild nerves along preplanned routes, molecule by molecule. This is very appealing and also probably about 50 years away from reality.

Also, axons (the long part of the nerve cell) usually require a myelin cell wrapping along its length to boost its ability to depolarize quickly. It's not clear that these folks in Manchester were able to grow a nerve cell along with its myelin. If we knew how to do that, we could also help people with multiple sclerosis, a disease that attacks myelin specifically.

As for ALS, it's an agent or group of agents that attacks motor neurons; these agents are not fully understood. It might be possible to splice in healthy neurons here and there but you still have the myelin problem.

This kind of research announcement should not be taken as a big step forward in fixing nerve damage until they can demonstrate it in vivo. Until then, it's just another cold fusion type story.

genetic memory

[n3tcat]

Something that's always intrigued me about stem cell research is the concept of genetic memory. Considering the implications that this theory has on the theory of evolution, I wonder if mixing and matching stem cells, and thereby mixing genetic memories, would fuck the evolutionary process. It's the type of result that we probably wouldn't see for thousands (or tens of thousands) of years.

Eventually though, I would imagine that it would be like the episode of Star Trek Enterprise when they find the race of people who are basically falling apart genetically and they have no idea why.

And then of course the old addage "Overspecialize and you breed in weakness" has many powerful implications in this as well.

Maybe I wouldn't be so scared if we weren't still completely reversing our dietary ideals every 3 years. If we can't even nail down a healthy diet (pyramid points up or down now?!), how the hell can we figure out what the ramifications of stem cell research would be on our evolutionary process?

Re:genetic memory

[riffzifnab]

Wait, what? We are talking about taking stem cells from fat and turning them into nerve cells. Where does tinkering with the DNA we are passing on to our offspring come into the picture? If it doesn't affect that, its not doing anything to our future generations.

On the lighter side, at least the US has plenty of these stem cells. McDonald's is the savior of the world! [gag]

Re:You would have to do more to lift 100's of poun

[pipatron]

Sensors embedded in your fingers to detect certain things.

Would be awesome to have some heat/cold sensors to be able to somehow "detect" if something is too hot or cold!

Maybe some sort of "tactile feedback" mechanism as well so you could feel some kind of "force" if you for example come into contact with a physical object.

Re:You would have to do more to lift 100's of poun

[jamesh]

It would also be awesome to have a device for people to detect if someone is trying to make a joke on slashdot.

Maybe you could browse in 'humour impaired' mode (or just 'really really tired' mode), where jokes could by highlighted for users benefit...

Embryonic vs. adult stem cells

[dcobra]

It seems all the successful new treatments with stem cells that we keep hearing about use the adult type, which also have the great advantage of not causing rejection. It makes me wonder why there is so much pressure to use embryonic stem cells, when the research with the adult type is so promising and is far from being exhausted. Perhaps it is because the adult cells, being collected from the patient him/herself, don't need to be bought, so there is no profit incentive, while embryonic stem cells hold the promise of a very lucrative new pharmaceutical/medical market?

Bionic?

[Aladrin]

There's nothing bionic about it. They are using a man-made tube to help a real nerve grow from stem cells. There's no electronics, not even any moving parts. It doesn't augment or affect the nerve in any artificial way. The end result is... A normal nerve.