Mini organ drug testing

What's better than testing for complications and benefits of a new drug or medical procedure on humans? Nothing really. But since that is illegal in the USA scientist have found a way to produce lab miniature organs. 

University of California, Santa Barbara, has been working on producing a miniature brain that can then be used to study the effects of drugs. Using an army of stem cells, progenitor cells, vesicular cells, and microglila on copious amounts of the right media they grew these mini brains. The brains could then be studied for altered gene expressions caused by drugs using an algorithm. 

As for the mechanics for this miniature organ growth. They plated the cells on a media called Hydrogel which contains all the polypeptides needed for protein production and then they allowed the cells to do what they will. Amazingly, we have not developed a better way to produce tissue other than to let tissues make themselves. 

This will have a huge impact on drug studies.  Even though these lab grown organs are lacking the effect of the physio-chemical environment of the human body, the results will still be more closely related to what will actually happen. Using mice and other model organisms can only give us results that only give us an idea of what could possibly happen in a human. We never know what will actually happen until the clinic trials begin. These mini organoids will allow us to study the drug affects in human tissues. Thus, making clinical trials much safer as we know if something is going harm human tissues or not. 

Here is a link to the article: http://www.futurity.org/stem-cells-drug-testing-1010722-2/

Diabetes and staph bacteria

I have a tendency to want to share random, sometimes useless, information that is generally not interesting to the general population but it is to me. This had lead to various jokes in my family from where I have tried to explain things by saying "if you think about it" and usually ends with a " The more you know!" text from my brother. So in saying that it shouldn't be surprising that I do this at work too. I constantly want to share interesting scientific information with the patients that come through my line.

Well we've been running a promotion for the American Diabetes foundation and one woman donated and expressed her wish from them to find a cure soon. I couldn't help but start talking about this article I recently read about how type 2 diabetes may be linked to an over colonization of Staphylococcus bacteria. Basically we know that there is an increased chance of developing Type 2 with high weight gain. What researchers in Iowa have found that this increased weight also increases the colonization of Staph on the skin which then increases the bodies superantigen response system. Where the link to diabetes comes from is that over production and constant production of the staph superantigen can cause systemic inflammation that then reduces insulin sensitivity.

The same group of researchers are doing further studies on this to try to create a vaccine that will reduce the chances of developing diabetes and also to create a gel that can be applied topically to kill the staph colonies. As more research is done on this it will be interesting to see if these two things are possible.

Here's the link for anyone to read: http://now.uiowa.edu/2015/06/bacteria-may-cause-type-2-diabetes

Is Alzheimer's Disease Infectious?

Recently in an article from USA today it was suggested that Alzheimer's may be able to spread from one person to another. A group of researchers studied 8 cases where people aged 31 to 56 died from Creutzfeldts-Jakob disease after receiving cadaver generated growth hormone injections as kids. Creutzfldts-Jakob disease results from a build up of incorrectly folded proteins called prions. They are produced and aggregate very similarly to those of the protein build ups in Alzheimer's. These patients contracted CJD from exposure to the neurological tissues of infected persons. The researchers are suggesting that a similar phenomenon could happen with proteins involved in Alzheimer's too. Each of the cases studied showed early signs of Alzheimer's before they died which is abnormal for this age group. Could they have possible gotten "seeds" of Alzheimer's disease from the growth hormone infection? I think its possible. There would need to be more research done before it can be supported or disproved but it is defiantly an interesting subject to talk about. We know that the formation of amyloids in the brain caused by Alzheimer's is close to the same process that happens in prion formation. Yes, most of the time it is a random mutation and some people are genetically predisposed for it. But we know nervous tissue can transmit disease so what makes this so unlikely?
USA today and CNN and any other news source that published this article or headline did so to spark interest not panic. This is the type of topic molecular biologist should be working on. If there is some possibility for this to be true wouldn't you want to have every necessary precaution in place? Just like with any other disease or infection carried in blood or saliva or even on the skin its best to excessively clean any surface that comes in contact with it. All donors of neurological tissue should be screened for this and any tools that come in contact with it should be cleaned in a way that would reduce the risk of further spread The more we learn about this supposed phenomenon the more we can do to reduce the cases or find a remedy for the disease. Even if a hypothesis not supported information was still learned and time was not wasted .


Citation: Dier, Arden, "seed of Alzheimer's could be passed from person to person.". USA today. september 10,2015.