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Possible Cure For MS Turns Common Skin Cells Into Working Brain Cells
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have discovered a way to convert ordinary skin cells into myelinating cells, or brain cells that have been destroyed in patients with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and other myelin disorders. The research, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, may now enable 'on demand' production of myelinating cells, which insulate and protect neurons to facilitate the delivery of brain impulses to the rest of the body."
...is how the Observers are born. Where's Walter Bishop when we need him?!
Cue the jokes about a cure for Microsoft.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Now that you've made myelin, how do you get it to stick to actual damaged neurons and/or brian cells. If you inject it in there, is it naturally just going to bind to damaged cells?
i rather smoke pot and avoid further damage.
We don't want something that is good for humanity leaking out!
amirite?
Start 8 and ModernMix the cure for windows 8
"Skkiiiinnnnnnn...."
Cool, this will turn your skin into an exobrain.
The article wasn't clear on whether or not this could reverse the damage caused by MS or whether it would just prevent further damage. I know several people that suffer from this disease and it's utterly horrible. The worst case is my uncle who went from being in peak physical condition to requiring a cane or wheelchair to get around. He now stutters when he speaks, has trouble holding his head up, and can't keep his eyes still enough to even focus on words while trying to read. This disease slowly takes away all of your faculties and strips you of all autonomy and independence and a cure for it can't come fast enough.
And this is how the Observers are born. Where's Walter Bishop when we need him?!
Walter Bishop is nowhere nearly as capable of dealing with the observers as The Doctor is. Does Walter Bishop have access to a TARDIS or a sonic screwdriver? Nope, only The Doctor does and The Doctor can see time a whole lot better than the observers and Walter combined. :P
I wonder if anyone's told him? He said that he would be up for early experimentation...
My understanding of MS is that it is an autoimmune disorder where your body attacks the myelin sheath and causes all sorts of nervous system issues. Even if we were able to rapidly produce meylin cells, your body would still attack the cells/sheath would it not? So if that is true then this isn't a cure for MS, it's more of a treatment. My father passed away from complications of this disease when I was seven, and my aunt on the other side of my family also suffers from MS. I hope a cure could be found one day soon, but I would be happy with a successful treatment option for her and others who suffer from this disease.
Possible Cure For MS Turns Common Skin Cells Into Working Brain Cells
Apparently the researchers discovered that people who use MS products only have skin cells in their skulls.
Some people claim that "M$" is childish. But stories like this are why I still use the abbreviation to fit under the 50-character limit of comment subjects. M$ unambiguously means Microsoft, recalling its beginning as a publisher of line-numbered BASIC interpreters for 8- and 16-bit microcomputers where string variable names ended with $.
On the one hand, the similarity of the names is a joke. On the other hand, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society did call Microsoft corporation of the year in 1999.
More working brain cells can't hurt Microsoft, but cure it? I'm not sure about that.
Oh...wait. My bad.
Some how this link just showed up to the whole article I wonder how ...
How about replacing brain cells in people who lost them due to alcoholism?? PLEASE???
Until they take so much skin from me that I can no longer hold a beer, I'd like to convert them to brain cells!
Since ALS aka amaotrophic lateral sclerosis is caused by de-myelnizing of the nerve fibers - you could probably cure that too.
And since I have a slight risk this is good news.
I am wondering if the federal ban on funding for embryonic stem cells played a role in funding this particular research or even made the scientists redirect their efforts??? Sometimes a seemingly stupid policy has unexpected positive results. We in the US might actually dodge a research black hole by not getting to invested in embryonic stems cells which have many problems the persons on bodies don't.
The article presents a cell-based approach for creating myelinating oligodenrocytes. In practice, that's no good for a treatment for diseases where issues with myelin are a problem because it involves introducing cells into an area while they are being attacked, but before the damage is done. There's no practical way to pull that off. You can't identify where a lesion might appear before it does, and once a lesion exists scarring occurs and remyelination is useless. It's not a preventative since the immune system is attacking myelinating cells in general and would attack these cells as well. What this research is good for, however, would be to look for targets to stimulate the body to regenerate myelin sheaths for cells currently under attack.
The general idea here is to create a system for studying how cells are induced to myelination to look for compounds that might be able to promote that in situ, to better understand the process and the immunological importance of it (in things like MS, ALS, Lupus, etc.) and the more general role of nerve growth and regeneration (important for any sort of nerve damage; humans lose the ability to regenerate nervous tissue in the central nervous system during their late development).
Just a quick walk-through of the first section of the paper:
Cell-based therapies for myelin disorders, such as multiple sclerosis and leukodystrophies, require technologies to generate functional oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. Here we describe direct conversion of mouse embryonic and lung fibroblasts to induced oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (iOPCs) using sets of either eight or three defined transcription factors.
The Slashdot summary and 3rd party source says "skin cells", but the paper indicates the specific cell type used were "mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs)"; specifically, they were MEFs isolated from a transgenic mouse lineage where a specific transactivator had already been engineered into their genome. This transactivator was designed to work together with the introduced Lentivirus vector (a retrovirus, member of the genus to which HIV belongs), carrying the Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cell (OPC) transcription factors.
In a later section of the paper, they perform a similar process with "mouse lung fibroblasts" (MLFs), and also test several different combinations of transcription factors.
iOPCs exhibit a bipolar morphology and global gene expression profile consistent with bona fide OPCs. They can be expanded in vitro for at least five passages while retaining the ability to differentiate into multiprocessed oligodendrocytes.
Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Can be expanded into a flock while still retaining duck-ness.
When transplanted to hypomyelinated mice, iOPCs are capable of ensheathing host axons and generating compact myelin. Lineage conversion of somatic cells to expandable iOPCs provides a strategy to study the molecular control of oligodendrocyte lineage identity and may facilitate neurological disease modeling and autologous remyelinating therapies.
Induced OPC cells integrate into their normal niche, insulating neurons (at least at the cellular level). Didn't see much discussion of whether or not it altered the hypomyelinated ("shiver" mouse) phenotype.
Because It doesn't involve murdering the unborn.
Since I live the dream, I can only hope that there is some truth to this and that there may be hope for some. I have the rarest kind of MS and so there are NO treatments for it. Research, where you at? Where is my magic pill?
What happens if the body reacts and tries to compensate? By turning brain into skin, for example?
other articles from this web site:
Porn Addict Hospitalized After Trapped Giant Eel Gnaws Through His Digestive Tract
and
Russian Gymnast Has the World's Strongest Vagina
Now we have proof. A guys brain sits at the end of his cock.