Increasing Stem Cell Production For Faster Healing 67
Wandering Wombat tips a BBC story about researchers from Imperial College London who were able to stimulate stem cell production by a factor of 100 in the bone marrow of mice. Such stem cells are released by the marrow to help with the regeneration of damaged bone and tissue. "Techniques already exist to increase the numbers of blood cell producing stem cells from the bone marrow, but the study focuses on two other types — endothelial, which produce the cells which make up our blood vessels, and mesenchymal, which can become bone or cartilage cells." The scientists hope that the increased production rate could be used to greatly speed tissue repair and to allow recovery from wounds that would otherwise be too severe. "There are also hopes that the technique could help damp down autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, where the body's immune system attacks its own tissues. Mesenchymal stem cells are known to have the ability to damp down the immune system." The full research paper is available at Cell Stem Cell.
Re:Cancer? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no "optimal balance" with evolution. It does not work that way. Traits that lead to reproductive success are continued those that do not are not. This is it.
A good point, which I understand. I "get" what view you're trying to combat. There's a tendency first to anthropomorphize "evolution," and also to attribute motives to animals to evolve -- as though it is a change undergone by an individual, and as though it is that individual's conscious decision. Of course it's all just shorthand to make talking about these things easier, but it can be very misleading if you're not constantly "translating" -- which is something that the public at large probably doesn't do!
An important caveat for your statement, of course, is that it's not really about individuals and their offspring, but about genes -- so if a gene does not positively impact an individual's number of offspring, it may nevertheless be selected for because it helps others in that person's community (who presumably have similar genes) to survive and reproduce. This is a point that lots of people have brought up. One example is menopause: Why were primates whose ability to reproduce turned off as they got older selected by evolution? Presumably, it enabled them to survive to older ages, and the benefits (the wisdom and experience of one's elders?) that this brought to others in the community with the same genes outweighed the cost (loss of some reproductive members of society) to the gene's ability to propagate itself.
Hence, "getting cancer at 80" might actually be selected against. Also, we might not be talking about cancer at 80, but about cancer at 40: Would humans with abnormally-high stem-cell-production rates get cancer earlier, while they were still of reproductive age?
Re:Telomeres (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cancer? (Score:3, Interesting)
do have one worry, though: Stem cells, some research is starting to indicate, are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they allow new tissue to grow, but on the other, that new growth may end up being cancerous. One wonders whether the fact that we don't naturally produce stem cells at this rate reflects the optimal balance that evolution has found.
That's great insight, assuming you didn't read it in an article. That's very close to the actual explanation the field has come up with. Adult stem cells generally divide comparatively slowly, the thinking is that each time a cell divides, there's an increased frequency of errors, and increased chances for it to turn cancerous in other words. Stem cells have the ability to renew themselves, that translates into they are missing a major check against cancer right off the bat. The thinking is that by having them divide slow, that limits their potential to turn cancerous.
In many settings, stem cells give rise directly to transient amplifying cells, which divide much faster but are limited in their reproductive potential. They divde fast, and so have more chances to turn cancerous, but their ability to endlessly self-renew is turned off, at some point they will extinguish and turn into differentiated, non-dividing cells. In that way, the body may minimize the chances of cancer.
So yes, this treatment would probably increase your chances of getting cancer, and that's something that's going to have to be rigorously tested and hopefully minimized, but it would presumably be used in very limited applications.
Interestingly, many cancer drugs themselves merely increase the rate of errors during division. Cancer cells kind of remind me of Reaver ships from Firefly, they're dangerous, but they're comaratively unstable. Those chemotherapy drugs, and radiation therapy affect cancerous cells more because their genomes are highly unstable, and genetic damage is more lethal to them, but it does also increase the chances of healthy cells going cancerous.
There never is a magic bullet when it comes to medicine, and nearly everything causes cancer.
Re:Space and Medical discovery (Score:1, Interesting)
How is yours is "a much brighter" version? How is it "brighter" that those who don't agree with your particular impotent little revenge fantasy shall suffer eternally? Shall I change my ways -- somehow force myself to believe in something that is clearly a vile self-delusion -- so I can have a chance to spend eternity with a bunch of gloating assholes and their tyrant of a god in heaven? Too bad your god doesn't just mod me "flamebait" and let it go at that, huh? No, the god you believe in is a bigger dick than you are. Thank goodness he's not real.