Stem Cell Transplant Cures HIV In 'Berlin Patient'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/14/hiv-cure-berlin-patient_n_796521.html

Rebecca Skloot on The Colbert Report

I thought I posted this a while ago but it looks like I didn't, oops! Here is Skloot talking about the book on Colbert's show. Good example of how to explain scientific subjects to a laymen public.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267542/march-16-2010/rebecca-skloot

Take your garbage home

On pg. 205 of the Lacks book it explained the court's stance on the ownership of one's body tissues from a case in 1988. The Supreme Court of California issued a definitive statement on the matter:

"When tissues are removed from your body, with or without your consent, any claim you might have had to owning them vanishes. When you leave tissues in your doctor's office or a lab, you abandon them as waste, and anyone can take your garbage and sell it."

So, anyone who doesn't want their tissues to be used for something would have to take it with them, so as not to abandon it as waste. This of course is not a realistic option, since it presents a biohazard and it must be disposed of properly. The average Joe is not going to have the means or authorization to properly dispose of biohazardous waste, and I highly doubt any hospital would give a patient their biopsy back should they request it, so this pretty much leaves one with no choice but to leave it in the hands of the hospital or lab. You don't really forfeit your rights of ownership so much as forcibly lose them...

Scientist take advantage of the public

This whole story should come as no surprise to us, in our science and history classes we have learned about past wrong doings of scientists involved in human medical experimentation. Experiments have been done to our own people without them knowing the consequences because some scientists and other people in charge saw them as less than themselves, they have experimented on African-Americans, Filipinos, children, the mentally ill, and the military, just to name a few. This story however is rather unique because the experimentation was not done directly on Henrietta, but instead on her cells. These experiments should have never been aloud to take place without the patients consent. I think that the patient, or the patients family, should be informed of what the experiments entail and what insights can be obtained by performing the experiments and allow them to decide if they want to be involved in any way, even just their cells. I would be willing to allow my cells to be experimented on without a second thought, but not everyone would some people feel that there cells are still part of them even if they are not attached to them any longer. If my cells were experimented on I would really like to be kept up to date with what they would be used for and what has been accomplished with the use of them, I think it would be a really unique learning experience. I think that the science world needs to be more open about experiments with the outside world, they need to be upfront and tell everyone what the outcome of experiments could show us and I think some experiments would be more readily accepted, I think this would possibly stop some of the backlash from the general population, but not everyone really wants to listen to us no matter what can be accomplished.

Rene Mares and Laughing Bear Torrez O Oil Stain Video Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIE1cfjcWqM

Check it out. Hope you like the music :)

For only the second time, the U.S. government has approved a test in people of a treatment using embryonic stem cells

Coverage Summary: Advanced Cell Technology Receives FDA Clearance For Rare Disease

Ten Years Later: Jesse Gelsinger’s Death and Human Subjects Protection

http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=4955

Another Korean Scandal

RNL Bio - the Korean biotech company known to Biopolitical Times readers for its dog cloningand stem cell cosmetics - is now facing allegations of other seriously dubious efforts.

The Korea Times reports that the company is suspected of arranging for thousands of patients to get stem cell treatments that are illegal in Korea in affiliated clinics in China and Japan. In effect, RNL Bio is promoting "stem cell tourism" as an end run around the fact that its product has not been approved by regulators in its home country.

Crossing the Line

In ch. 18, Skloot describes the process of somatic cell fusion and the first human-animal(mouse) hybrid. She goes on to describe the backlash from the public and media, using words like horrendous and monsters. Forgetting about the insight this experiment offered (genome mapping & organ transplant rejection), should the researchers step back and acknowledge they crossed the line by fusing a human cell to mouse cell, even if it was just a couple of cells.

Cool Video On HeLa Cells and Cell Line Contamination

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/06/the_undead_henrietta_lacks_and.html

Podcasts On Henrietta Lacks

http://setiradio.blogspot.com/2010/05/are-we-alone-cell-cell-hela-cells.html

Pass the Stem Cell Law

Scientists urging congress to pass the law. Pass the Stem Cell Law

The Stem Cell Research Advancement Act

African-Americans and Science 2

Not only did African-American men undergo unethical medical studies in the Tuskegee syphilis study, but also African-American women were victims of unethical medical practices. What was called the Mississippi Appendectomies in which unnecessary hysterectomies were performed on poor black women to stop them from reproducing and to give doctors a chance to practice the procedure. What they did was wrong on so many levels. They pretty much considered African-Americans as pests and wanted to keep their numbers down. Again, how could people...DOCTORS do this to their patients? The doctors who allowed and performed these unnecessary hysterectomies on African-American women are pure evil in my eyes.

African-Americans and Science

I was at a loss of words when Roland asked Rebecca "What do you know about African-Americans and science?" and she gave a laundry list of horrible experiments done on poor African-American communities. One of them being the Tuskegee syphilis study performed at the Tuskegee institute during the 1930's. They wanted to study how syphilis killed from the start of infection all the way up to the death of the individual. So to study this they recruited 100's of African-American men with syphilis and just watched them die slow, painful deaths and held out on giving them the right medical treatment to prevent their deaths. Around this time it had been known that penicillin could cure syphilis, but they still just watched them die like they weren't even human. This practice was extremely unethical. I thought doctors had to take a vow to do everything in their power to serve and save patience no matter what their ethnicity or social standard. The Tuskegee institute should compensate those families which they destroyed in this study and give out a public apology if they haven't already.

No more kids...

Henrietta was very brave and tough throughout her radiation treatments. She kept the reason for her visits to John Hopkins to her self and didn't tell her family/cousins for a long time. I admire her strength and persistence. What really hit me was that after she has been undergoing her radiation treatments she asked her doctor one of her visits when she would be better to have another child. The only thing Henrietta had to look forward to was having a bigger family, and for her to find out that she was now infertile due to all the radiation treatment she had been undergoing must have been devastating. At this point I was furious with with her doctor for not making it clear to Henrietta that undergoing all of this treatment she was then not going to be able to have anymore children. How could you forget to tell that to your patient? Being able to give the gift of life is the most amazing thing anyone on this earth can do and they just took that from Henrietta like it was nothing.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328497/Professor-Richard-Quinn-disgusted-cheating-students-orders-resit-exam.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

What happens when cheating goes rampant

The book

just got picked as the top book for 2010 for Amazon... how about that?
has anyone read any of the top 10?
I hope that you agree that I can pick the best.

http://henriettalacks.blogspot.com/

Data obtained from unethical experiments.

In the book they give examples of some very unethical research methods utilized by some researchers e.g. Tuskegee syphilis studies and the dissection of alive people to study organ function performed by Nazi doctors. Reading these extreme experiments lead me to wonder what happened to the data obtained. Would it be acceptable to utilize the results they have retieved for further (ethical) studies ? What if the data was invaluable?

Pretty Exploitation

I stumbled upon the winners of the 2010 Nikon International Small World Photomicrography Competition and saw that the 11th place winner's entry used Hela cells for their photo. I don't know if there is any cash prize associated with winning, but I do know that the Lacks family didn't get a share in it if there was. It's enough to not receive any compensation where the cells have been used altruistically to cure ailments and help humanity, but it adds insult to injury when people can also pocket cash or praise (or both) from relatively frivolous use of the cells.

Sure is pretty, though:

The photo is of two human cancer cells seen just before they divide into four cells, viewed at 100x magnification. This image of Telophase HeLa cells expressing Aurora B-EGFP was made by Dr. Paul D. Andrews of the University of Dundee in Dundee, Scotland.

National Medal of Science goes to protein-folding researcher

Next month, President Barack Obama will present researcher Susan Lindquist with a 2010 National Medal of Science, the highest honor given by the US government to members of the scientific community. Lindquist, who is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Whitehead Institute member, is being honored for her protein-folding work, which could lead to treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

“The extraordinary accomplishments of these scientists, engineers, and inventors are a testament to American industry and ingenuity,” President Obama said in his announcement of the recipients on 15 Oct. “Their achievements have redrawn the frontiers of human knowledge while enhancing American prosperity.”

Susan Lindquist, MIT professor and Whitehead member, will receive the National Medal of Science for her work on protein folding from President Barack Obama on 17 Nov. She told BioTechniques, “I just can’t wait to meet the president.”

“It just made me ebullient. It just felt so good,” said Lindquist of receiving one of the 10 awards this year. One of her major accomplishments is the discovery that some regulatory proteins are reactive to stimuli in the cell’s environment, and respond to external environmental stressors by regulating different traits. In other words, these regulatory proteins help speed up evolution. “[Regulatory proteins are] a phenomenal induction system, just the most amazing gene regulatory system you could imagine,” Lindquist told BioTechniques.

A major target of her work has been heat-shock protein 90 (hp90), a regulatory protein that chaperones other proteins through the folding process. “The way [protein folding] shapes the process of evolution is potentially most exciting to me. The way that cancers evolve is fundamentally connected to hp90 and so is the evolution of drug resistance in fungi,” said Lindquist.

Currently, Lindquist is recreating the misfolded proteins in yeast cells, to understand the relationship between these misfolded proteins and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. These yeast-cell recreations will provide pharmaceutical companies with a method to screen possible drugs.

A longtime advocate for women in science, Lindquist believes that it’s possible to strike a balance between being an scientist and being a wife and mother. “I’ve had a wonderful marriage and two wonderful kids,” said Lindquist. “It’s not easy, but if you have a love and passion for both, you can do it.”

President Obama will present Lindquist and the nine other 2010 National Medal of Science recipients during a White House ceremony on 17 Nov. “I think he’s absolutely wonderful, so I just can’t wait,” said Lindquist about meeting the preside

Harvard stem cell researcher retracts two papers

Stem cell researcher Amy Wagers from the Joslin Diabetes Center (JDC) at Harvard Medical School (HMS) has issued a retraction notice for a 2010 paper, as well as a statement of concern with the intent to review a second paper from 2008. Shane Mayack, a former postdoc in Wagers’ lab, was the first author on both papers and maintains the validity of the results.

In a notice published online 13 Oct. 2010 in Nature, Wagers and two other authors retracted their January 2010 paper “Systemic signals regulate ageing and rejuvenation of blood stem cell niches.” The paper claimed that the stem cell aging process may be reversible but the notice references “serious concerns” with the data that led to that hypothesis, prompting a retraction. In a statement, Wagers said that she immediately notifiedNature, JDC, and HMS upon reviewing the data and has begun working to repeat the experiments.

A point of concern for Wager is the appearance of very similar figures in both papers; Figure S3b (top) from the Nature paper and Figure 6c (bottom) from the Blood paper chart the frequency of blood stem cells but result from very different protocols. Source: Nature News.

A day later, Wagers published a notice of concern in Blood, stating that a 2008 paper that she coauthored with Mayack is also under review for possible misreported data. No further information has yet been published concerning the study, “Osteolineage niche cells initiate hematopoietic stem cell mobilization,” which features a figure that is similar to one published in the retracted Nature paper.

Although Mayack has not personally commented on the retractions, her lawyer issued a statement saying that although Mayack realizes the data presentation was improperly handled, she believes the underlying research remains conclusive. Accordingly, Mayack did not sign the retraction notice. Further examination is ongoing to determine if the conclusions presented in either paper are still viable

New theater production about the life of Rosalind Franklin.

http://www.biotechniques.com/news/Rosalind-Franklin-finally-gets-the-spotlight/biotechniques-305570.html?utm_source=BioTechniques+Newsletters+%26+e-Alerts&utm_campaign=ff65dd2c05-Daily_11032010&utm_medium=email

Just out of curiosity

Is there another cell line from someone else that is used so frequently as the HeLa cells? Cancer is such a big issue in medicine now so I was wondering if they have grew some cancerous tissue (maybe from other tissue types besides cervical tissue) with as much success as the HeLa cells or are these cells still truly one of a kind.

Left Out

Scientists forget that the samples they are working with come from a human being. Someone like them and not lab rats or fruit flies. The use of HeLa cells has aided in many discoveries. Its upsetting to see a family without health care and other survival needs we view as standard. The only reason the Lacks family found out about Henrietta's cells was do to the post-doc calling and wanting to take more samples from the family to aid in their research. The applications with HeLa cells was done with good intentions but the way it was done was unethical.

The U.S apologizes

No sense of moral obligation for Doctors/Researchers back then

The book is getting pretty good. I thought it was pretty bad when Jones and Gey took Henrietta's cells w/o her consent but after hearing about how doctors and researchers treated African-American patients during the time is just sickening. I can understand why people didn't trust or wanted to see the doctors unless they absolutely had to. Researchers studying syphilis let their subjects die when it could have been treated, infecting healthy patients w/syphilis, and unnecessary hysterectomies in order to control the African-American population...I just think that it is amazing that all of this stuff was happening not too long ago. Although we might not see or hear of such things as often now, there is still a sense of bigotry and fear among many people in the U.S. especially towards people of a particular faith or sexual orientation...I feel that it is just sad especially in this day and age.

Samples and Tissues From Patients

Earlier Dr. Bournias asked: What happens to the blood you leave at the doctor's office? The little plastic cups full of urine? That mole you had removed that one time? and it made me think about the time I had a partial lumpectomy to remove a benign growth of cells. I do not really know what the doctors did with the mass of cells, they could have disposed of them or they could have kept them for scientific study. If the doctors did keep them I would not have minded although if they were generating some kind of money out of them I would want a part of that. I think patients should know what happens to their samples or any removed tissue. Patients should be given a choice about the possibilities that could happen to something that was a part of them.

Sterile Techniques in the Gey Lab

Starts on page 37. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been creating a aseptic lab room. I really enjoyed the description of Mary's routine just to attempt to pass cells that she didn't even think would survive. Later in the chapter the author also describes how Gey designed suspension rollers. I thought that was really cool especially since we just grew suspension cells... but our line doesn't require rollers.

When I hear the words John Hopkins Hospital, I think of medical advancement, many medical specialties and quality treatment. Its amazing that a top hospital was built for the sick and poor.
In 1951, people like Henrietta Lacks feared medical institutions like John Hopkins (which she had a right to). These days people run to the doctor's office for the slightest cough. I've ran my own dog to the pet emergency hospital over whimpering.

About The Four Founding Physicians at John Hopkins

Shock and Age

The accumulation of misfolded protein marks the accrual of years as the body ages. Could heat shock proteins be used to reduce the effects of aging and diminish the risk of disease by untangling improperly folded proteins?

Read more:Shock and Age - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Scienceshttp://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57461/#ixzz12CCEufTD

The gates of immortality

http://www.the-scientist.com/2010/10/1/38/1/

The beginning