Friday, December 23, 2011

Monday, December 12, 2011

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I cant begin to rant on how much I enjoyed this book. Before reading this book I had never heard the name HeLa and I’m astounded because of how much of a contribution to science these cells were. They are fundamental to many of the vaccines produced, ethics legislation and science in general. HIV,HPV,Polio are just few of many examples of diseases that were studied using HeLa cells, for all of these diseases there has been tremendous advancements that I don’t believe could have been possible without HeLa cells. However, I wonder where would science be if they did have federal laws like HIPAA. It doesn’t seem like the cells would have been patented like they were and distributed on a world wide scale like they were. I do believe that a large part of their success was due to their availability and the fact that they were from such a unique tumor that it could be exposed to so many different studies. It is horrible what did happen to the Lacks family and how they lived in poverty so long while these major companies made millions from their discoveries that perhaps were not possible without HeLa cells. What is even more saddening about this book is how for so long Henrietta Lacks was unknown and didn’t receive the credit she deserved for her amazing contributions to science. Where would science be without HeLa cells? Therefore, where would science be without Henrietta Lacks?

HeLa's contributions to the Nobel Prize

Zur Hausen won a Nobel Prize using HeLa cells to create a HPV vaccine. Richard Axel went on to win the Nobel Prize by infecting HeLa cells with HIV. Of these discoveries using HeLa cells the most significant, in my opinion, is that of the enzyme telomerase. This explained the mechanics of HeLa’s immortality because telomerase renews the end of Hela’s chromosomes so they never grew old and never died.

Today: Nobel Prize Awarded for Telomerase Discovery, and the 58th Anniversary of Henrietta Lacks's Death Category: HeLa History of Science and Medicine News The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Women and Science Posted on: October 5, 2009 11:58 AM, by Rebecca Skloot

It's fitting that today -- the day after the 58th anniversary ofHenrietta Lacks's death -- the Nobel Prize in medicine has been awarded toElizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak for the discovery of how telomeres and the enzyme telomeraseprotect chromosomes from degrading over time. In the late eighties, a scientist at Yale used Henrietta's cells (aka HeLa, pictured left) to discover that human cancer cells contain telomerase, which regenerates their chromosomes and prevents them from aging and dying like normal cells. This is one of the reasons why Henrietta's cells are still alive and growing today, fifty-eight years after her death.



3 Americans Share Nobel for Medicine

Associated Press, European Pressphoto Agency, Associated Press

From left, Jack Szostak, Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn.

Published: October 5, 2009

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded Monday to three American scientists who solved a problem of cell biology with deep relevance to cancer and aging. The three will receive equal shares of a prize worth around $1.4 million.

Related

Psychiatrist Is Among Five Chosen for Medical Award(September 17, 2006)

A Conversation With Elizabeth H. Blackburn: Finding Clues to Aging in the Fraying Tips of Chromosomes (July 3, 2007)

New Glimpses of Life’s Puzzling Origins (June 16, 2009)

Times Topics: Nobel Prizes

Nobel Prize Announcements

More on the Medicine Laureates(nobelprize.org)

Schedule for Nobel Prizes Announcements

Physics: Tuesday, October 6, 5:45 AM ET

Chemistry: Wednesday, October 7, 5:45 AM ET

Literature: Thursday, October 8, 7:00 AM ET

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The recipients solved a longstanding puzzle involving the ends of chromosomes, the giant molecules of DNA that embody the genetic information. These ends, calledtelomeres, get shorter each time a cell divides and so serve as a kind of clock that counts off the cell’s allotted span of life.

The three winners are Elizabeth H. Blackburn of theUniversity of California, San Francisco; Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Jack W. Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital.

The discoveries were made some 20 years ago in pursuit of a purely scientific problem that seemingly had no practical relevance. But telomeres have turned out to play a role in two medical areas of vast importance, those of aging and cancer, because of their role in limiting the number of times a cell can divide.

“I am thrilled that the basic science can be celebrated,” Dr. Greider said in an interview Monday.

Only eight women had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Asked how she felt about becoming No. 9, Dr. Blackburn replied, “Very excited, and hoping that nine will quickly become a larger number.”

Thomas Cech, a Nobel Prize winner at the University of Colorado, said the discovery had had a broad impact on several fields of biology and medicine and had also provided a “fascinating insight” into the transition between the DNA world and the RNA world that preceded it in the origin of life. RNA is a close chemical cousin of DNA.

Though Americans have again made a clean sweep of the Nobel medicine prize, two of the three winners are immigrants. Dr. Blackburn was born in Tasmania, Australia, and has dual citizenship; Dr. Szostak was born in London. Dr. Blackburn came to the United States in the 1970s because it was “notably attractive” as a place to do science. While America is still a magnet for foreign scientists, she said, “one shouldn’t take that for granted.”

Dr. Szostak also said the world was now more competitive in science. “So maybe we have to work a little harder to attract people from around the world and make sure they stay here,” he said.

Dr. Cech, former president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said the more onerous visa requirements imposed on foreign scientists in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks were benefiting European countries especially. “Even now, there is an implication when foreign scientists apply for visas that they should be distrusted, denied several times, and should have to hire lawyers and jump through a lot of hoops,” he said.

All three of the prize winners seem to have had science in their genes, and certainly in their home environment. Dr. Greider is the daughter of two scientists with doctorates from the University of California, Berkeley, and she, too, has a Ph.D. from there. Dr. Szostak’s father was an engineer. Both of Dr. Blackburn’s parents were physicians.

The study of telomeres is notable as a field of research in which female scientists are particularly prominent. Dr. Greider said she ascribed this to a “founder effect,” the founder being Joseph Gall of Yale University. Dr. Gall trained Dr. Blackburn and other women, and they recruited others to the field “because there is a slight tendency for women to work with other women,” Dr. Greider said. She herself trained with Dr. Blackburn.

The field of telomere research grew out of a puzzle in the mechanics of copying DNA. The copying enzyme works in such a way that one of the two strands of the double helix is left a little shorter after each division. Work by the three winners and others led to the discovery of telomerase, a special enzyme that can prevent the shortening by adding extra pieces of DNA.

Dr. Blackburn addressed this problem by working with a single-cell organism found in pond water known as Tetrahymena. She found in 1978 that the telomeres had a very unusual structure, in which the same sequence of six DNA units was repeated some 50 times.

She and Dr. Szostak, who with her help had detected telomeres in yeast, then proposed that cells must possess a special enzyme that added these repeat units to the end of chromosomes so as to compensate for the incomplete job done by the copying enzyme.

Working in Dr. Blackburn’s lab as a graduate student, Dr. Greider tracked down this enzyme, now known as telomerase, in a central experiment that finished on Christmas Day, 1984. Going into the lab that morning, Dr. Greider saw from the telltale signature of the six-unit repeat that she had captured telomerase. “That was a really exciting day,” she said.

Later she found that telomerase contains a special piece of RNA that it uses as a template to elongate the chromosome with the six-unit repeats. The unexpected involvement of RNA reflects a time early in the origin of life when all the important chores in the cell were performed by RNA, not DNA.

This piece of basic biology soon turned out to have important implications for aging and cancer. Telomerase is usually active only at the beginning of life; thereafter the telomeres get shorter each time a cell divides. If they get too short, a cell is thrown into senescence, meaning that it cannot divide again.

Short telomeres are known to have a role in certain diseases of aging, like aplastic anemia. Telomeres are also important in cancer, a disease in which control of cell proliferation is lost. Cancer cells need to reactivate the telomerase gene, or their telomeres will get steadily shorter, forcing them into senescence. In some 80 to 90 percent of human cancer cells, the telomerase gene has been switched back on, Dr. Blackburn said. The Geron Corporation has two clinical trials under way, one of a drug and one of a vaccine, to see whether cancers can be treated by inhibiting telomerase.

Both Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Greider still work on telomerase, but Dr. Szostak left the field 20 years ago to explore a much broader question: how life could have originated from the simple chemicals present on the early earth. He has already made advances in this long intractable field, notably by showing how a proto-cell could have formed and then imported the RNA building blocks. Dr. Szostak hopes next to show how the proto-cell and its RNA could divide naturally into two daughter cells, a feat that, if achieved, could well be a candidate for a second Nobel Prize.

Right to Privacy

One very interesting point I found in the book was that deceased have no right to privacy even if a part of them is still alive, this was the justification for every doctor that dealt with Henreitta‘s medial records, pictures or her cells. Under the 1996 HIPAA act a patient's privacy rights survive death and last forever. However, this is still violated even to this day. The fallowing link is about a young girl who crashed her car and pictures of her mangled body were spread all over the internet. Even though this was in clear violation of HIPAA California courts ruled in favor of the internet sites saying that the deceased did not have any privacy rights because they do not continue after death. Because HIPAA is a federal law how were the courts able to rule in favor of the internet sites? How was this justified? Its astonishing that the same issues/violations in the book are still present today. It seems like there will always be violations of patients rights even with federal laws in effect.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5018327n

HIPPA and HeLa

HIPPA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, it is meant to protect patient information and is the first nationally recognizable regulation for the use and disclosure of an individual's health information. This is very important in the medical field today due to the fact that simply sharing the information of whether a patient is present in the hospital can lead to criminal charges under the basis of HIPAA violation. It is amazing how HeLa cells were the basis for this document. In the book the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare started investigations into human subject research and eventually would approve a federal law requiring approval by Institutional Review Board (IRB) and informed consent. It also found that McKusick’s research on the Lack’s family blood samples was inadequate because it simply wasn’t just drawing blood to identify blood but they were uncovering their genetic information and was this is a violation of privacy. This is exactly what HIPAA stands for, to protect patient information.

Friday, December 9, 2011

The BEST part of the book

My favorite part of the book was when the family, Henrietta’s family, went and visited her in the lab (technically they visited her cells, HeLa cells). When the family was in the lab and Deborah spoke to a vial of cell and said “You’re famous, just nobody knows it.” This brought up so much emotion when I read this and I felt almost as if I was in her situation. LOVE this part, this was my favorite part

Lacks Family

I was Curious and went to the authors website, and it seems to me that she is too proud of the book and does not focus too much on the family. However, I did find that the lacks family has set up a foundation that will help them. But the author, as an advocate for the family, I assume, does not have anything in her homepage that will attract the readers attention and say "here is how you could help". Its just a thought, it could just be that the homepage changes every so often.

see for yourself
http://rebeccaskloot.com/

I dont know, but it could be because I am getting close to the end of the book and I am not getting any closure. I hope there is a second book that will follow up on the family.

A Must For Scientist

I am glad to say that I am only a few pages away from finishing the book. But I just wanted to note before I forget. I truly believe that this book should be required in any science class. It will definitely make them aware on how these cells came to be cultured and the woman they were acquired from. It made me appreciate how lucky scientist were these cells came to their hands. If not, who knows if they would have found a cure for polio and other diseases. This is a great book.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks -- a noteworthy subject.

So another noteworthy matter I stumbled upon as I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was that African American people were referred to as the “syphilis soaked race”. I don’t think people of any race or color should be referred to as a “syphilis soaked race”. I would not like to be referred to as this and I know nobody else would like to either. Again this is just another thing I found significant enough to make a note of.

The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks

The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks

So as I read the book I jotted little notes to myself. These little notes were mostly about things I found attention grabbing and noteworthy. One of the first things I took note of was the fact that the doctors at Johns Hopkins thought it was ok to take samples of patients and/or experiment on patients without their knowledge. I believe their reasoning was that they had a right to do so because they were not indebted to the hospital. This was a form of payment to the doctors I believe. The doctors benefitted from the patients just as the patients benefitted from the doctors. This kind of reasoning is erroneous in my mind. Now I do not want to get political or anything but I think this kind of stuff (medical treatment) should be free and if any doctor is going to experiment of me or take samples of me, I would definitely like to know. I know this kind of thinking doesn’t exist anymore (or at least I think it doesn’t anymore) but this just shows how much things have changed, at least in this perspective.

Elsie Lacks

Just beginning the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, you knew you were getting into a sad story and although I found the whole book interesting in that it was told from several different perspecitives, I couldn't help but to become even more interested in finding out about Elsie Lacks. While looking into what little information there was available on Henrietta's eldest daughter, I can only imagine what sort of tragic story it coould become on paper, seeing as how the pneumoencephalogrphy tests were quite the norm in Crownsville State Hospital as described in (pg. 275-276).

I can see in 3-D (first 3-D tissue created: 2010)

Not exactly, new, but I thought it was an intresting article about how a retina was constructed from hESCs from a local university (UCI).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100526170248.htm

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Top-grade stem cells seen boosting research trials

http://news.yahoo.com/top-grade-stem-cells-seen-boosting-research-trials-131443171.html

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have made the first human embryonic stem cells of a high enough grade to use in patients and deposited them in a public stem cell bank for development in human trials by drug companies and researchers by 2014.

A team from King's College London said on Monday they were submitting two clinical-grade stem cell lines to the UK Stem Cell Bank (UKSBC), which will test and validate them before offering them to researchers.

This could speed the path towards new stem-cell treatments for conditions like blindness, severe injury or heart disease.

"This first batch of cells is the culmination of nearly 10 years of research. This is a significant milestone," said Peter Braude, who led the King's team.

The cells are the first to be grown completely free from animal-derived products, known as "xeno-free," and developed specifically to be of clinical grade and for public use.

The hope is that the cells will be grown and processed by the bank to feed cell stocks for human trials and, beyond that, patient treatments.

The cells have the potential to become the "gold standard" lines for developing new stem cell based therapies for use in regenerative medicine trials in patients, Braude told reporters at a briefing.

It is likely to be many years before treatments are fully developed and licensed, but the cells could be used in human trials of potential therapies by 2014, the team said.

Stem cells are the body's master cells, the source for all other cells. Scientists say they could transform medicine, providing treatments for blindness, spinal cord and other severe injuries, as well as generating cells for damaged organs.

Human embryonic stem (hES) cells can be grown in the laboratory indefinitely while retaining their capacity to develop into specialized cell types, such as nerve or heart muscle cells, which can then be used in clinical trials.

The UK Stem Cell bank already has more than 90 research grade stem cell lines for use in laboratory studies, but as yet has no clinical grade xeno-free lines for use in human trials.

"In the future, patients hoping for the benefit of regenerative medicine for serious medical conditions caused by illness, injury and ageing can expect improved progress on cures or amelioration from hES cell-based therapy," said Dusko Ilic, a senior lecturer in stem cell science at King's.

A few companies, such as Pfizer and Advanced Cell Technology, are already conducting or are about to start human trials using hES cells -- which are harvested from embryos -- to test their potential for repairing spinal cord injuries and eye disorders like macular degeneration.

But the hES cell lines for these early trials were reclassified from "research grade" to "clinical grade" for specific short-term clinical studies in selected disease areas.

Braude said this is not considered appropriate for the future of cell therapy because of the expense of extra testing and reclassification, and the potential risks.

"While it might be reasonable to incur additional risks for these early pioneering studies, it is not reasonable to accept these risks for the long-term future," he said. "Therefore the highest standard of xeno-free lines are urgently needed."

Braude's team's cells were grown from frozen embryos donated by patients who had had in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment and no longer wanted to use their remaining stored embryos. The embryos would otherwise have been discarded, Braude said.

Glyn Stacey, head of the UKSCB, said these first clinical grade lines would be an "important resource" and an initial step towards the bank's aim to make available a panel of tested clinical grade lines within the next three years.

"The process of testing will be rigorous and not all cells lines received will make the grade," he said.

(Editing by David Cowell)