There's a company I've never heard of! From what I can get out of their site, it seems like the main application right now is for treating leukemias that could possibly occur in the future of the baby, and (more unlikely than people realize) their first degree relatives. They do also mention being able to use the circulating blood stem cells to treat a variety of neural illnesses, but it seems they are up against the same wall as Cedars-Sinai right now: Can we get a neural cell from a blood stem cell?
You are correct, and this is currently being used to treat a variety of patients with "bone marrow failure" from illnesses not necessarily limited to leukemias. The big jump here is that they're hoping they can trick the bone marrow stem cells into thinking they can become neural cells, something not in the original game plan. Of course even if that is possible, whether or not we can actually harness this power to treat disease is left to be discovered. Given the possibilities, however, it's something I'd keep my fingers crossed on.
Well, this is a tricky question. Although the article doesn't mention this directly, I'm sure that it's one of the problems they're going to encounter. Fetal stem cells are what they call totipotential, in that they have the ability to become any type of specialized cell in the body given the appropriate "signals." Stem cells in the adult bone marrow are slightly less capable of this, usually being called pluripotential. While they can differentiate into a wide number of cells, they are relatively committed to becoming some type of formed element in the blood or bone marrow. The challenge at this point will be attempting to coax the marrow stem cells into taking a neural development route, something they hadn't originally planned on doing.
Very good point though. On somewhat of a tangent, I wonder if the people with artificial parts (hips, pacemakers, etc...) are having a harder time these days than in the past. Maybe we could spend a few billion dollars to create a giant registry of the medically altered for the TSA to check you against.
This patient was also described in a recent issue of the Journal of the AMA. A very good suggestion by a physician there was to give the patient a note to carry with him that has a 24 hour contact number so his physician can verify the radiation treatment. I think as this issue becomes more public, the hastle will decline.
Also, just a point of terminology, this is radioisotope therapy, not chemotherapy.
While DNA does translate in sets of three, 'D' isn't one of the letters. And moreover, it's not the DNA that's important, but the mRNA thus transcribed. In fact, a large portion of DNA isn't really important at all and is basically discarded. T doesn't exist in the mRNA transcripts either, and is replaced with U.
The entire issue here seems to boil down to quality vs. quantity. The open-source way of publishing is definitely aimed at opening up the publishing field to more people, hence increasing quantity. However, the current peer-review board system enforces a quality that is hard to come by. The idea of having a review-board is, in my opinion, the only way to combat a barrage of unqualified papers. However, if the entire reason for creating the paper database was to steer away from biased review-boards, the mission really hasn't been accomplished. Like it or not, a peer review is the best way to go for a decent, well-justified paper.
If you think about it, game programming really does tie in almost every area of computer science, and in fact, other extra-CS major areas as well. A good game programmer would need to know about plot, gfx, sound, algorithms, machine learning AI... the list goes on.
IMHO I feel this major will show us some better game programmers in the future. Of course, as this major is so integrally tied-in with one, specific industry, any lull will be destroying a bachelor's degree for those people. Luctrative, yet risky.
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There's a company I've never heard of! From what I can get out of their site, it seems like the main application right now is for treating leukemias that could possibly occur in the future of the baby, and (more unlikely than people realize) their first degree relatives. They do also mention being able to use the circulating blood stem cells to treat a variety of neural illnesses, but it seems they are up against the same wall as Cedars-Sinai right now: Can we get a neural cell from a blood stem cell?
You are correct, and this is currently being used to treat a variety of patients with "bone marrow failure" from illnesses not necessarily limited to leukemias. The big jump here is that they're hoping they can trick the bone marrow stem cells into thinking they can become neural cells, something not in the original game plan. Of course even if that is possible, whether or not we can actually harness this power to treat disease is left to be discovered. Given the possibilities, however, it's something I'd keep my fingers crossed on.
Well, this is a tricky question. Although the article doesn't mention this directly, I'm sure that it's one of the problems they're going to encounter. Fetal stem cells are what they call totipotential, in that they have the ability to become any type of specialized cell in the body given the appropriate "signals." Stem cells in the adult bone marrow are slightly less capable of this, usually being called pluripotential. While they can differentiate into a wide number of cells, they are relatively committed to becoming some type of formed element in the blood or bone marrow. The challenge at this point will be attempting to coax the marrow stem cells into taking a neural development route, something they hadn't originally planned on doing.
Hey, I'm just saying what the article says :)
Very good point though. On somewhat of a tangent, I wonder if the people with artificial parts (hips, pacemakers, etc...) are having a harder time these days than in the past. Maybe we could spend a few billion dollars to create a giant registry of the medically altered for the TSA to check you against.
This patient was also described in a recent issue of the Journal of the AMA. A very good suggestion by a physician there was to give the patient a note to carry with him that has a 24 hour contact number so his physician can verify the radiation treatment. I think as this issue becomes more public, the hastle will decline.
Also, just a point of terminology, this is radioisotope therapy, not chemotherapy.
While DNA does translate in sets of three, 'D' isn't one of the letters. And moreover, it's not the DNA that's important, but the mRNA thus transcribed. In fact, a large portion of DNA isn't really important at all and is basically discarded. T doesn't exist in the mRNA transcripts either, and is replaced with U.
The entire issue here seems to boil down to quality vs. quantity. The open-source way of publishing is definitely aimed at opening up the publishing field to more people, hence increasing quantity. However, the current peer-review board system enforces a quality that is hard to come by. The idea of having a review-board is, in my opinion, the only way to combat a barrage of unqualified papers. However, if the entire reason for creating the paper database was to steer away from biased review-boards, the mission really hasn't been accomplished. Like it or not, a peer review is the best way to go for a decent, well-justified paper.
If you think about it, game programming really does tie in almost every area of computer science, and in fact, other extra-CS major areas as well. A good game programmer would need to know about plot, gfx, sound, algorithms, machine learning AI... the list goes on.
IMHO I feel this major will show us some better game programmers in the future. Of course, as this major is so integrally tied-in with one, specific industry, any lull will be destroying a bachelor's degree for those people. Luctrative, yet risky.