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Scientists Turn Skin Cells Into Beating Heart Muscle
An anonymous reader writes "By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells, a technique that is already well known, researchers at Technion Israel Institute of Technology were able to generate beating heart cells — a medical first. 'We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born,' Lior Gepstein, study author and professor of medicine said."
Hurry up already. I want to see easily replaceable hearts in MY life time...also ever other organ.
IN fact, just full body clone replacements and transplant my head.
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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That next week they'll announce the ability to regenerate an entire body from skin cells in 10 to 20 years, depending on funding of course.
Lots and lots of funding -- preferably in the form of grants and endowments.
Can we bring back the my clean pc guy? At least his spam posts are shorter and more entertaining to read.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells as the precursor to other cell lines that match the patients genetic makeup. are you increasing the chances of cancer?
In my certainly uninformed view, skin cells are exposed to more radiation, thus more likely to have replication errors in their DNA, then adding the stress of modifying the cell to another form, I wonder what that does to it from a replication standpoint. It is nice to have fresh heat muscle I am sure, but to suddenly find yourself with melanoma in the heart would be a bummer.
Silence is a state of mime.
every advancement in medicine, and health is another step towards immortality.
Only problem is, you can replace everything in the body except the brain.
generations from now people will be living over 200 years of age, I can see new problems arising.
Over population is a problem and the average lifespan is under 70.
I see a future of hybrid human technology species
We need a republican hero to block this effort!
Damn it, he found us out. ok White ISP guy, give use his address so he can have a heart attack tonight.
" white people cannot reproduce themselves efficiently like normal black people"
there is no subspecies of human being.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All the joy of riding a public bus with a crazy on board, right here in a post on slashdot...
... also known as "the love muscle."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I weep at the thought of how much server disk space goes into storing these half-hearted spam messages. Slashdot clearly needs some sort of r9k solution.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Slashdot should reduce the font size of the Troll/Flamebait postings. It will cut down on the disk space used.
$sig not found
The Tin Woodman rejoices
That's really impressive, but is it medically useful in the instance they mention in the summary? If you have advanced heart failure, aren't you in danger of your heart just topping REAL SOON NOW? Can they use the stem cells to repair your heart before you die? It would be more credible to treat people who have had a heart attack and some damage but aren't yet in advanced heart failure.
I'd like not to have to wear a hat to keep my scalp from being sunburned.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Do they make a 0.0001 point font? Screw the disk space, He's wasting my life space... I want that post covered by a single period.
Now it's all over my hands. Dang.
thump thump
Yea, we allready know this! London rules the world, all the royals control the major corporations, royals killed Kennedy, white are killing all the africans in africa, the royals plan on inslaving every one, yet its to late too do any thing about it know, so just eat the poison and enjoy.
Pics or it didn't happen
Now image, a mad scientist with a skin cells changing blaster hiding in the dark corner, waiting to change all your skin into little beating hearts. Aaaaarrrgh!!!
With abbreviation like that, i bet i know which tissue they will be working on next...
Actually, this is in part a question. Although I could probably read TFA to find out (maybe it answers this) but one issue with rejuvenation is rewinding the telomeres (so to speak) so they aren't too long (cancer) and aren't too short (premature cell death). There are a lot of clocks in cells and tissue, and my general question is: Does skin -> stem -> tissue cell reset them all so that the new tissue really is "like that of a newborn" or whatever with the original DNA complement?
Not good to be able to build the heart of a Chicken Little (props for ref:-) that simply up and dies on you, or gets cancer, for other reasons.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
tl;dr.
If being enslaved by the Royals means I get to bang Pippa, then I for one welcome our Royal overlords. I wonder if she likes hot grits?
Someone seriously found this funny? /dismayed
I just want the left side of my body replaced with technology. Then I would finally be "All Right".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Would they still need big trucks then? You know, to compensate.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Cancer is actually a concern with any stem-like cells, because they all have telomerase activity, and frequently have active myc or other proto-oncogenes that allow cells to divide indefinitely. (these authors only used Oct, Sox and Klf - most groups also use the oncogene myc to reprogram cells for that exact reason)
However, its actually really hard to get cancer: if you inject one cancer cell into the body (or even up to a few million) you will probably still not get a tumor. Likewise, when you go from stem back to heart cell, the cells slow down their division rate and generally stop acting cancer-like.
Your concern that skin cells from aged patients may be abnormal genetically to start is a minor concern, and can be checked
Could the same method be applied to the Pancreas?
...your parents basement.
-- Terry
So there's still hope for Dick Cheney?