European Project Aims To Create 1,500 New Stem Cell Lines

A joint public-private collaboration between the European Union and Europe’s pharmaceutical industry, called the StemBANCC project, will spend nearly 50 million euros to create 1,500 pluripotent stem cell lines. But the initiative’s goal isn’t to find a stem cell-based cure for diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease. They hope instead that their stem cell lines will prove to be faster and more effective drug screens in the search for drugs to fight these and other conditions.

A frustrating problem in medical research is the inadequacy of animal models. All too often a treatment works great in laboratory rats or mice but then its efficacy fails to repeat in human trials. But researchers are beginning to capitalize on the potential of stem cells – not as cures, but as means to finding cures.

Scientists are becoming more adept at turning skin cells into pluripotent stem cells, which can then be converted to other cell types such as neurons or heart cells. And because these are human cells they are superior to animal models for drug screening or toxicity testing. Human cell lines have been used for many years, but before pluripotent stem cells creating cell lines involved immortalizing the cells and thus drastically changing their physiology.

The goal of StemBANCC is to use these human-induced pluripotent stem cells as a drug discovery platform to treat the following 8 common diseases: Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, migraine, pain and diabetes. Studying these conditions typically involves creating an animal model, such as a rat that exhibits some behavioral hallmarks of autism after being given valproic acid. The cells from StemBANCC would improve upon animal models by providing, not only cells from humans but cells from patients with the actual disorders being studied. Skin cells gotten from a schizophrenia patient and converted (via pluripotency) to neurons, for instance, would give scientists a powerful tool with which to screen drugs.

Led by Oxford University, StemBANCC will involve 10 pharmaceutical companies and 23 academic institutions across 11 different countries. Part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative that pairs the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry. The EU is contributing 26 million euros ($33.5 million). Another 21 million euros ($27 million) are coming from the pharmaceutical industry. StemBANCC’s “kick-off” meeting took place in 2012 in Basel, Switzerland.

Zameel Cader, neurologist at the University of Oxford and a leader on the project, told Nature, “We’re specifically trying to develop a panel of lines across a range of diseases that are important to address. There isn’t another institution that’s doing this at the same scale across the same range of diseases.”

The hype surrounding stem cells typically extolls their virtues as a miraculous ‘cure all’ replacing damaged or diseased cells with new, healthy ones. And while stem cells have given blind people back part of their sight and have shown to restore some hearing in animals or even help paralyzed ones walk again in the lab, mainstream cures derived from stem cells are still rare. In the meantime, places like StemBANCC can pursue the less sexy, perhaps, but more reachable near term benefits of stem cells.

A More Human Artificial Brain

Staying on task

Its full name is the Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, but Spaun sounds way more epic. It’s the latest version of a techno brain, the creation of a Canadian research team at the University of Waterloo.

So what makes Spaun different from a mindboggingly smart artificial brain like IBM’s Watson? Put simply, Watson is designed to work like a supremely powerful search engine, digging through an enormous amount of data at breakneck speed and using complex algorithms to derive an answer. It doesn’t really care about how the process works; it’s mainly about mastering information retrieval.

But Spaun tries to actually mimic the human brain’s behavior and does so by performing a series of tasks, all different from each other. It’s a computer model that can not only recognize numbers with its virtual eye and remember them, but also can manipulate a robotic arm to write them down.

Spaun’s “brain” is divided into two parts, loosely based on our cerebral cortex and basil ganglia and its simulated 2.5 million neurons–our brains have 100 billion–are designed to mimic how researchers think those two parts of the brain interact.

Say, for instance, that its “eye” sees a series of numbers. The artificial neurons take that visual data and route it into the cortex where Spaun uses it to perform a number of different tasks, such as counting, copying the figures, or solving number puzzles.

Soon it will be forgetting birthdays

But there’s been an interesting twist to Spaun’s behavior. As Francie Diep wrote in Tech News Daily, it became more human than its creators expected.

Ask it a question and it doesn’t answer immediately. No, it pauses slightly, about as long as a human might. And if you give Spaun a long list of numbers to remember, it has an easier time recalling the ones it received first and last, but struggles a bit to remember the ones in the middle.

“There are some fairly subtle details of human behavior that the model does capture,” says Chris Eliasmith, Spaun’s chief inventor. “It’s definitely not on the same scale. But it gives a flavor of a lot of different things brains can do.”

Brain drains

The fact that Spaun can move from one task to another brings us one step closer to being able to understand how our brains are able to shift so effortlessly from reading a note to memorizing a phone number to telling our hand to open a door.

And that could help scientists equip robots with the ability to be more flexible thinkers, to adjust on the fly. Also, because Spaun operates more like a human brain, researchers could use it to run health experiments that they couldn’t do on humans.

Recently, for instance, Eliasmith ran a test in which he killed off the neurons in a brain model at the same rate that neurons die in people as they age. He wanted to see how the loss of neurons affected the model’s performance on an intelligence test.

One thing Eliasmith hasn’t been able to do is to get Spaun to recognize if it’s doing a good or a bad job. He’s working on it.

IBM: Computers Will See, Hear, Taste, Smell and Touch in 5 Years

Today’s PCs and smartphones can do a lot — from telling you the weather in Zimbabwe in milliseconds, to buying your morning coffee. But ask them to show you what a piece of fabric feels like, or to detect the odor of a great-smelling soup, and they’re lost.

That will change in the next five years, says IBM. Computers at that time will be much more aware of the world around them, and be able to understand it. The company’s annual “5 in 5” list, in which IBM predicts the five trends in computing that will arrive in five years’ time, reads exactly like a list of the five human senses — predicting computers with sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

The five senses are really all part of one grand concept: cognitive computing, which involves machines experiencing the world more like a human would. For example, a cognizant computer wouldn’t see a painting as merely a set of data points describing color, pigment and brush stroke; rather, it would truly see the object holistically as a painting, and be able to know what that means.

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Aerobic exercise boosts brain power in elderly

Evidence for the importance of physical activity in keeping and potentially improving cognitive function throughout life was found in a literature review in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review by Hayley Guiney and Liana Machado from the University of Otago, New Zealand.

• Cognitive functions such as task switching, selective attention, and working memory appear to benefit from aerobic exercise. Studies in older adults reviewed by the authors consistently found that fitter individuals scored better in mental tests than their unfit peers.
  
  
• Scores in mental tests improved in participants who were assigned to an aerobic exercise regimen compared to those assigned to stretch and tone classes.
  
  
• Exercise has been found to positively affect mental tasks relating to activities such as driving, an activity where age is often seen as a limiting factor.
  
  
• MRI studies of aging have shown that, as compared with unfit, highly fit older adults exhibit less age-related atrophy in the prefrontal and temporal cortices; preserved neural tracts connecting the prefrontal cortex to other regions of the brain; superior white matter integrity in the corpus callosum; greater gray matter density in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices; and greater hippocampal volumes.
  
  
• Physically active older adults have both higher circulating neurotrophin levels and gray matter volumes in the prefrontal and cingulate cortex.
  
  
• These results were not replicated in children or young adults, except for memory tasks. Both the updating of working memory and the volume of information which could be held was also better in young fitter individuals or those put on an aerobic exercise regime. “Although the evidence to date supports a wider range of executive functions benefiting from regular exercise in older adults, the relative lack of supportive evidence in young adults and children may, in part, reflect a poverty of studies, especially controlled trials, in these age groups,” the authors suggest.

Woman With Quadriplegia Feeds Herself Chocolate Using Mind-Controlled Robot Arm

In a study published in the online version of The Lancet, the researchers described the brain-computer interface (BCI) technology and training programs that allowed Ms. Scheuermann, 53, of Whitehall Borough in Pittsburgh, Pa. to intentionally move an arm, turn and bend a wrist, and close a hand for the first time in nine years.

Less than a year after she told the research team, “I’m going to feed myself chocolate before this is over,” Ms. Scheuermann savored its taste and announced as they applauded her feat, “One small nibble for a woman, one giant bite for BCI.”

“This is a spectacular leap toward greater function and independence for people who are unable to move their own arms,” agreed senior investigator Andrew B. Schwartz, Ph.D., professor, Department of Neurobiology, Pitt School of Medicine. “This technology, which interprets brain signals to guide a robot arm, has enormous potential that we are continuing to explore. Our study has shown us that it is technically feasible to restore ability; the participants have told us that BCI gives them hope for the future.”

In 1996, Ms. Scheuermann was a 36-year-old mother of two young children, running a successful business planning parties with murder-mystery themes and living in California when one day she noticed her legs seemed to drag behind her. Within two years, her legs and arms progressively weakened to the point that she required a wheelchair, as well as an attendant to assist her with dressing, eating, bathing and other day-to-day activities. After returning home to Pittsburgh in 1998 for support from her extended family, she was diagnosed with spinocerebellar degeneration, in which the connections between the brain and muscles slowly, and inexplicably, deteriorate.

Sheep Help Scientists Fight Huntington’s Disease

When University of Cambridge neurobiologist Jenny Morton began working with sheep five years ago, she anticipated docile, dull creatures. Instead she discovered that sheep are complex and curious. Morton, who studies neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s, is helping evaluate sheep as new large animal models for human brain diseases.

Huntington’s is a fatal, hereditary illness that causes a cascade of cell death in the brain’s basal ganglia region. The idea to use sheep to study this disease arose in 1993 in New Zealand, a country where sheep outnumber humans seven to one. Researchers had already identified disorders shared by humans and sheep, but University of Auckland neuroscientist Richard Faull and geneticist Russell Snell had a more ambitious notion. They decided to develop a line of sheep carrying Huntington’s, which is brought on by repeats within the gene IT15, in the hopes of studying the condition’s progression and developing a treatment. They accomplished their goal in 2006 after extensive efforts.

Why sheep? For one, they have big brains—comparable to macaques, which are the only other large animals currently used to study this disease—with developed, cortical folding like our own. Also, sheep can be kept in large paddocks with their fellows and monitored remotely via data-logger backpacks, allowing scientists to study these creatures in a natural setting with fewer ethical concerns than studying caged primates. What is more, these long-lived, social animals are active and expressive, recognize faces, and have long memories. They also learn quickly and engage in experiments readily. This has allowed Morton to develop cognitive tests similar to those given to humans. The researchers can study the full progression of Huntington’s—which in humans is associated with gradual mental and motor decline—and compare the changes with the normal functioning of healthy individuals.

This spring Faull, Snell, Morton and their colleagues will begin monitoring two flocks of Huntington’s sheep in Australia. One flock will be inoculated with one of the most promising therapies yet devised—a virus that silences IT15’s mutations—and the other will serve as the control. Currently no cure exists for any human brain disease. The researchers believe these studies could be a milestone. “The tragedy of this disease is enormous. It’s a curse on the family,” Faull says. “Maybe we can lift that curse.”

Rice opens new window on Parkinson’s disease

Rice University scientists have discovered a new way to look inside living cells and see the insoluble fibrillar deposits associated with Parkinson’s disease.

The combined talents of two Rice laboratories – one that studies the misfolded proteins that cause neurodegenerative diseases and another that specializes in photoluminescent probes – led to the spectroscopic technique that could become a valuable tool for scientists and pharmaceutical companies.

The research by the Rice labs of Angel Martí and Laura Segatori appeared online today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The researchers designed a molecular probe based on the metallic element ruthenium. Testing inside live neuroglioma cells, they found the probe binds with the misfolded alpha-synuclein proteins that clump together and form fibrils and disrupt the cell’s functions. The ruthenium complex lit up when triggered by a laser – but only when attached to the fibril, which allowed aggregation to be tracked using photoluminescence spectroscopy.

Video-based Test to Study Language Development in Toddlers and Children with Autism

Parents often wonder how much of the world their young children really understand. Though typically developing children are not able to speak or point to objects on command until they are between eighteen months and two years old, they do provide clues that they understand language as early as the age of one. These clues provide a point of measurement for psychologists interested in language comprehension of toddlers and young children with autism, as demonstrated in a new video-article published in JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments).

In the assessment, psychologists track a child’s eye movements while they are watching two side by side videos. Children who understand language are more likely to look at the video that the audio corresponds to. This way, language comprehension is tested by attention, not by asking the child to respond or point something out.  Furthermore, all assessments can be conducted in the child’s home, using mobile, commercially available equipment. The technique was developed in the laboratory of Dr. Letitia Naigles, and is known as a portable intermodal preferential looking assessment (IPL).

"When I started working with children with autism, I realized that they have similar issues with strangers that very young typical children do," Dr. Naigles tells us. "Children with autism may understand more than they can show because they are not socially inclined and find social interaction aversive and challenging." Dr. Naigles’ approach helps make this assessment more valuable. By testing the child in the home, where they are comfortable, Dr. Naigles removes much of the anxiety associated with a new environment that may skew results.

While this technique identifies some similarities between typically developing toddlers and children with autism spectrum disorder, such as understanding some types of sentences before they produce them, this does not mean that these children are the same. “Some strategies of word learning that typical children have acquired are not demonstrated in children with autism.” Dr. Naigles says. By illuminating both strengths and weaknesses, the test is valuable for assessing language development. “JoVE is useful because in the past, I have gone to visit various labs to coach them in putting together an IPL. JoVE will enable other labs to set up the procedure more efficiently.” JoVE associate editor Allison Diamond stated, “Showing this work in a video format will allow other scientists in the field to quickly adapt Dr. Naigles’ technique, and use it to address the question of language development in autism, an extremely important field of research.”