Biological Discoveries
Stem Cell Research
Adult stem cell research is providing opportunities to treat people with a various diseases and conditions. In 2010, a man’s ankle refused to heal so the doctor took bone marrow from the man’s pelvic bone with a needle, condensed it to about four teaspoons of rich red liquid, and injected that into his ankle. Four months later, the ankle was healed!
Adult stem cells are found in all tissues of the growing human being and, according to latest reports, also have the potential to transform themselves into practically all other cell types, or revert to being stem cells with greater reproductive capacity.
“Upon transplantation into mice suffering from muscular dystrophy, human skeletal myogenic progenitor cells provided both extensive and long-term muscle regeneration which resulted in improved muscle function,” the article said.
UGA Reports Cancer Breakthrough
From a University of Georgia news release:
Researchers from UGA and the Mayo Clinic in Arizona have developed a vaccine that dramatically reduces tumors in a mouse model. The model mimics 90 percent of human breast and pancreatic cancer cases—including those resistant to common treatments. The vaccine reveals a promising new strategy for treating cancers with the same distinct carbohydrate signature, including ovarian and colorectal cancers.
When cells become cancerous, sugars on their surface proteins undergo changes that distinguish them from healthy cells. Scientists have tried for decades to enable the immune system to recognize those differences, in order to destroy cancer cells and not normal cells. Because cancer cells originate within the body, the immune system usually doesn’t recognize them as it would foreign cells.
Just as humans do, the mice develop tumors that over express a protein known as MUC1 on the surface of their cells. The tumor-associated MUC1 protein comes with a distinctive, shorter set of carbohydrates that distinguish it from healthy cells.
“This is
Adult stem cell research is providing opportunities to treat people with a various diseases and conditions. In 2010, a man’s ankle refused to heal so the doctor took bone marrow from the man’s pelvic bone with a needle, condensed it to about four teaspoons of rich red liquid, and injected that into his ankle. Four months later, the ankle was healed!
Adult stem cells are found in all tissues of the growing human being and, according to latest reports, also have the potential to transform themselves into practically all other cell types, or revert to being stem cells with greater reproductive capacity.
“Upon transplantation into mice suffering from muscular dystrophy, human skeletal myogenic progenitor cells provided both extensive and long-term muscle regeneration which resulted in improved muscle function,” the article said.
UGA Reports Cancer Breakthrough
From a University of Georgia news release:
Researchers from UGA and the Mayo Clinic in Arizona have developed a vaccine that dramatically reduces tumors in a mouse model. The model mimics 90 percent of human breast and pancreatic cancer cases—including those resistant to common treatments. The vaccine reveals a promising new strategy for treating cancers with the same distinct carbohydrate signature, including ovarian and colorectal cancers.
When cells become cancerous, sugars on their surface proteins undergo changes that distinguish them from healthy cells. Scientists have tried for decades to enable the immune system to recognize those differences, in order to destroy cancer cells and not normal cells. Because cancer cells originate within the body, the immune system usually doesn’t recognize them as it would foreign cells.
Just as humans do, the mice develop tumors that over express a protein known as MUC1 on the surface of their cells. The tumor-associated MUC1 protein comes with a distinctive, shorter set of carbohydrates that distinguish it from healthy cells.
“This is