Cloning
Artificial insemination, DNA, genetically engineered animals, anti-aging drugs, Genome project (human gene sequence), stem cell research.
The year 2011 through 2022

The year 2011.


• 3/7/2011 Preserved stem cells might have uses in future by Fred Tasker, McClatchy Newspapers.
      A mother took her son to an oral surgeon to have two of the loose ones extracted.    The dentist shipped the teeth in a temperature-controlled steel container to a lab in Massachusetts, where their stem cells will be spun out, frozen to more than 100 degrees below zero and stored - in case her son might need them for a future illness joining a major new medical movement.
      They believe that spinning out stem cells can be used to regrow lost teeth, repair damaged bones, hearts, pancreases, muscles and brains.    It could put the Tooth Fairy out of business from teeth we have been discarding as dental waste.
      The Regenerative Medicine Laboratory at Columbia University and StemSave, a New York City company that freezes the stem cells and stores them for later use.    It is expensive, costing $590 upfront plus $100 a year to store the stem cells from up to four teeth for up to 20 years and is FDA-approved.
  
• 4/30/2011 Stem-cell funding restored - U.S. appeals court overturns block by David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau.
      Washington - A U.S. appeals court cleared the way for continued federal funding of research using human embryonic stem cells, a victory for medical progress, the NIH said.
  
  

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      As of May 6, 2011, I have stopped typing from news articles and began using the Electronic Edition of the Courier-Journal newspaper so from this point on the articles are from those pages and may be shortened in some cases for highlights and space considerations.
  

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• 5/12/2011
  
  Scientists may have ID’d lung stem cells by Associated Press
      NEW YORK — Scientists think they’ve discovered stem cells in the lung that can make a wide variety of the organ’s tissues, a finding that might open new doors for treating emphysema and other diseases.
      When these human cells were injected into mice, they showed their versatility by rebuilding airways, air sacs and blood vessels within two weeks.     One expert called that “amazing.”
      Although stem cells have been found in bone marrow and other parts of the body, it hasn’t been clear whether such a versatile cell existed in the lungs.
      Experts not involved in the study stressed that the work must be confirmed by further research and that it’s too soon to make any promises about therapies.     But they said it could be a significant advance in a difficult field of research.
      “These are remarkable findings, and they have extraordinary implications,” said Dr. Alan Fine of Boston University, who called the mouse results amazing.     “But it has to be replicated.”
      Stem cells can produce a wide variety of specialized kinds of cells.    Scientists are working to harness them as repair kits for fixing damage from diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes.
      Many people have heard about embryonic stem cells, which have caused controversy because embryos must be destroyed to recover them.
      In contrast, the new lung cell would be an “adult” stem cell, like others found in the body.    Adult stem cells maintain and repair the tissues where they’re found.    Bone marrow cells, for example, give rise to various kinds of blood cells and have been used for years in transplants to treat leukemia and other blood diseases.
      The lung work is reported in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
  
  
• 7/28/2011
  
  Judge tosses suit to block stem cell research funding
      WASHINGTON - A federal judge tossed a lawsuit that sought to block funding of human embryonic stem cell research.    Wednesday’s ruling follows an April appeals court decision that lifted an injunction on such funding, imposed in the same suit.
      In a 38-page opinion, Chief U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth sided with the U.S. government in seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed.
  
  
• 9/10/2011
  
  NIH renews U of L grant for stem cell work by Joseph Lord, The Courier-Journal.
      A University of Louisville researcher has been awarded a grant renewal to allow him to continue work to develop a gene therapy to minimize muscle damage from a heart attack.    The $12.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will allow Dr. Roberto Bolli and his team over five years to advance work begun under an $11.7 million grant received in 2006.    Bolli said his team’s research could lead to better treatments for patients suffering heart failure.
      “Right now, all we are doing is the palliative,” Bolli said.    “It prolongs life, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying problem, which is the deterioration of heart muscle.”
      According to a news release from U of L, the project involves research with adult stem cells in four areas:
  
  • Investigating how introducing genes into stem cells might improve stem cell therapies.
  • Looking at how diabetes affects stem cells.
  • Looking at how a class of proteins — cytokines — affect stem cells during heart failure.
  • Investigating the signaling pathways of stem cells in the body.    The research areas of the renewed grant were informed by the 2006 grant, said Jill Scoggins, a spokeswoman for the University of Louisville.    The grant renewal will run through 2016.
      Bolli said the renewed grant was awarded through a highly competitive process.
      Bolli and his team have brought to U of L more than $100 million in NIH grants since his arrival in Louisville in 1994, the university said.
  
  
• 9/25/2011
  
  Interested in living to be 1,000? - IdeaFestival speaker says it could happen by Joseph Lord, The Courier-Journal
      Someone you know could live to be 1,000 years old, according to Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge educated biomedical gerontologist who spoke Saturday at the IdeaFestival.
      “It’s just a numbers game,” de Grey told the audience in the Kentucky Center’s Bomhard Theater.
      The co-author of the 2007 book “Ending Aging,” de Grey said aging is an ailment that someday could be treated through various therapies.
      Even for people in good health, cells become damaged through the course of a human life, de Grey said.    It’s a solvable problem, he said, by providing maintenance to damaged cells.
      He cited stem cell research and using bacteria as possible means of restoring cells to their youthful state, which would lengthen life — perhaps infinitely.
      “It’s all about restoring organs and tissue to the way it was before it suffered some sort of damage,” he said, comparing the process to the maintenance that can keep cars running for decades.
      But it’s not as simple as keeping a healthful diet — that might only buy a few years, he said.
      De Grey said the breakthrough will be finding ways to treat damaged cells, which would head off the conditions that lead to old-age deaths: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease.
      The research that could lead to these techniques is further along than most people realize, de Grey said, and could begin providing therapies within the next 25 years.    Or not, he added, but the possibility exists that today’s 20somethings could be alive in 3011.    Not only would they be alive, but they’d be able to live well, he said.
      The progress toward treatments that can provide such longevity will be incremental, though.    The therapies that might exist in 25 years may restore a 90-year-old’s body to a 60-year¬old’s health but would not extend life indefinitely, he said.
      The key is reaching what de Grey called “longevity escape velocity” — the rate of aging combined with the rate of the medical advancements that will prolong life to before-unthinkable lengths.
      An 80-year-old in 2011 hasn’t much hope of living forever, he said, but the younger a person is, the better the chances of living in an age when drastically age-prolonging therapies exist.
      The therapies will advance swiftly once they exist, he said, comparing them to the technological advances in airplane flight in the past century.
      De Grey said he became interested in longevity after becoming “horrified” that other people considered old-age deaths a preference.     It’s a rational thought, he said, because people generally think of death as inevitable.
      He is the chief science officer and co-founder of the SENS Foundation — which stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, which works to develop, promote and ensure widespread access to “rejuvenation biotechnologies.”
      “Until recently, it was genuinely not serious to claim that we could do anything about aging,” he said.
      Audience member Christina Shadle said she thinks de Grey’s concepts could someday be realized.
      “So many other things have progressed, I don’t see why we couldn’t progress this, too,” said Shadle, of Louisville.    “ There are obviously a lot of social, economic and political implications."    “I don’t know that I have an opinion of whether it’s good or bad.”
  
  
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This file created on October 8, 2011, and updated on December 24, 2011.