Posts tagged transplants
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Ontario man’s sight restored with help of stem cells
When Taylor Binns slowly began going blind because of complications with his contact lenses, he started to prepare for living the rest of his life without vision. But an innovative treatment using stem cells has changed all that, and returned to him the gift of sight.
Four years ago, while on a humanitarian work mission to Haiti, Binns developed intense eye pain and increasingly blurry vision. Doctors at home couldn’t figure out what was wrong and, over the next two years, Binns slowly went legally blind, no longer able to drive or read from his textbooks at Queens University, where he was studying commerce.
“Everything you could do before was being taken away, day by day, and it got worse and worse,” he recalls.
Doctors finally diagnosed him with a rare eye disease called corneal limbal stem cell deficiency, which was causing the normal cells on Binns’ corneas to be replaced with scar tissue, leading to painful eye ulcers that clouded over his corneas.
A variety of things can cause the condition, including chemical and thermal burns to the corneas, which are the glass “domes” over the coloured part of our eyes. But it’s also thought that microbial infections and wearing daily wear contact lenses for too long without properly disinfecting them can lead to the disease, too.
Since a corneal transplant was not an option for Binns, his doctors at Toronto Western Hospital proposed something new: a limbal stem cell transplant.
The limbus is the border area between the cornea and the whites of the eye where the eye normally creates new epithelial cells. Since Binns’ limbus was damaged, doctors hoped that giving him healthy limbal cells from a donor would cause healthy new cells to grow over the surface.
While the treatment is available in certain centres around the U.S., Binns became the first patient to try the treatment at a new program at Toronto Western Hospital.
“Within a month he could see 20/40,” says ophthalmologist Dr. Allan Slomovic. “His last visit he was 20/20 and 20/40.” Slomovic says “it’s extremely exciting” that the procedure was a success, “especially when you realize there is really nothing else that would have worked for him.”
Binns is now living pain-free, returning to doing everything he used to before his three-year sight loss. “Being able to see my computer, being able to go for a walk or a drive — I am so happy for that,” he says.
The Toronto team hopes to do many more of these procedures in the future, says Dr. Sherif El Defrawy from the Canadian Ophthalmological Society and University of Toronto’s ophthalmology department.
“We are already seeing this in a number of centres across the country and you will see it more and more as we understand how to improve the success rate,” he says.
For Binns, the experience has been life-changing in one more important way: He has now decided to switch his studies from commerce to medicine, and hopes to go to school to become an ophthalmologist.
An immunosuppressive drug could delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases
Rapamycin, a drug used to prevent rejection in transplants, could delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. This is the main conclusion of a study published in the Nature in which has collaborated the researcher Isidro Ferrer, head of the group of Neuropathology at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the Bellvitge University Hospital and Full Professor of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Barcelona. The research was led by researchers from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste (Italy).
The collaboration of the research group led by Dr. Ferrer with SISSA researchers began five years ago when they observed that Parkinson’s patients showed a deficit in UCHL1 protein. At that time, researchers didn’t know what mechanism produced this deficit. To discover it a European project was launched. It was coordinated by the Italian researchers and participated by other European research groups, including the group led by Dr. Ferrer. The project, called Dopaminet, focused on how dopaminergic neurons (brain cells whose neurotransmitter is dopamine) are involved in Parkinson’s disease.
Contrary to most common hypothesis that a DNA fragment encodes a protein through a messenger RNA molecule, the researchers found that it also works in reverse. They found a balance between the protein and its mirror protein, which is configured in reverse, and they are mutually controlled. If the protein mirror is located in the nucleus of the cell, it does not interact with the protein, while if it is in the cytoplasm, then both of them interact.
In the case of Parkinson’s disease the protein UCHL1 appears reduced and also its mirror protein is localized in the nucleus, and in the cytoplasm. Thus, the researchers sought a method to extract the mirror protein from the nucleus and made it interact with the original UCHL1 protein. The authors found that rapamycin was able to extract them from the nucleus. The drug allows the two proteins, the UCHL1 and its mirror, hold together in the cytoplasm, which would correct the mistakes that occur in Parkinson’s disease.
This in vitro research has allowed describing a new unknown mechanism. It is necessary that the UCHL1 mirror protein should accumulate in the nucleus and escape from the cytoplasm and join the UCLH1 protein. The combination of both makes the system work.
"The rapamycin can not cure Parkinson’s disease, but it may delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s itself. Rapamycin can protect and delay the beginning of these diseases. It can complete the treatment, but it should be combined with other existing treatments", explains Isidro Ferrer.
Anyway, it is still far its application in patients. The next step is to validate these results in animal models and study the effects of rapamycin in combination with other drugs.
(Source: idibell.cat)
Cell reprogramming: much promise, many hurdles
Research in reprogrammed cells, which on Monday earned the 2012 Nobel Prize, has been hailed as a new dawn for regenerative medicine but remains troubled by several clouds.
Britain’s John Gurdon and Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka were honoured with the world’s paramount award in medicine for induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
They discovered that a mature, adult cell can be turned back to an infant, versatile state called a stem cell.
First theorised in the late 19th century, stem cells are touted as a source of replacement tissue, fixing almost anything from malfunctioning hearts and lungs, damaged spines, Parkinson’s disease or even baldness.
The first human trials were launched only in 2010, and progress has been dogged by the contested use of stem cells taken from early-stage embryos, where the most adaptable, or pluripotent, cells are found.
Created by Yamanaka in 2006, iPSCs ease the moral row as they derive from adult cells and not embryos, said University of Oxford ethics professor Julian Savulescu. Ordinary skin cells can be used as the starting material.
"Many people objected to the creation of embryos for research, describing it as cannabalizing human beings," he said.
Artificial cornea gives the gift of vision
Blindness is often caused by corneal diseases. The established treatment is a corneal transplant, but in many cases this is not possible and donor corneas are often hard to come by. In the future, an artificial cornea could make up for this deficiency and save the vision of those affected.
“We are in the process of developing two different types of artificial corneas. One of them can be used as an alternative to a donor cornea in cases where the patient would not tolerate a donor cornea, let alone the issue of donor material shortage,” says IAP project manager Dr. Joachim Storsberg.
The scientist has considerable expertise in developing and testing of next-generation biomaterials. Between 2005 and 2009 he collaborated with interdisciplinary teams and private companies to successfully develop an artificial cornea specifically for patients whose cornea had become clouded – a condition that is extremely difficult to treat. Such patients are unable to accept a donor cornea either due to their illness or because they have already been through several unsuccessful transplantation attempts. Dr. Storsberg was awarded the Josef-von-Fraunhofer Prize 2010 for this achievement. “A great many patients suffering from a range of conditions will be able to benefit from our new implant, which we’ve named ArtCornea®. We have already registered ArtCornea® as a trademark,” reports Storsberg.
Scientists are growing ears, bone and skin in the lab, and doctors are planning more face transplants and other extreme plastic surgeries. Around the country, the most advanced medical tools that exist are now being deployed to help America’s newest veterans and wounded troops.
Top Image: A research engineer at the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication at Massachusetts General Hospital, displays a titanium frame designed for the reconstruction of a human ear, left, and a three dimensional plastic ear model, right, at the lab, in Boston.
Bottom Image: A chart provided by the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication at Massachusetts General Hospital, depicts the progression, from left to right, of implanted tissue engineered for ear development and construction, at the lab in Boston.
(Source: spokesman.com)