Several weeks ago I sat in Neuro 300 and listened to a talk by
Hui Ye. He was concerned about the demyelination of neurons exposing ion
channels, leading to poor signal conduction and thus some neurodegenerative
disease. At the end of his talk, some brave soul (because no one likes to ask
questions) raised his hand to ask if there was anyway to re-myelinate these
neurons to gain back function. His answer was no - short and somber. We wish
there was something that we could do. Maybe there is.
Several days ago I sat in my biology lecture and listened to
my professor bring up the Nobel Peace prize awards. I watched from my seat in
the back as half of my peers heaved out a sigh and fidgeted in their seats,
dreading the tangent he was about to go off on even with an exam looming ahead.
Thankfully - for once - this spiel wasn't much of a distraction. There in our
classroom we were in the middle of discussing how specialized cells were
programmed for their specific functions, and somewhere else in the world Shinya
Yamanaka and Sir John Gordon had just won Nobel Peace Prizes for their research
in re-programming cells.
I'll spare you the nitty-gritty science of it all and say
that this change's Hui Ye's answer to our brave soul's question from a 'no' to
a 'maybe'. These Nobel laureates have figured out an almost foolproof way to
take any old cell in your body, add a few transcription factors, and make it
travel back in time! What was once a cell approaching its death that could
perform one measly function is now a cell ready to be assigned its function for
the first time! And one of the best parts about this procedure? No
controversial stem cells involved!
Not only could this be a solution for demyelinating diseases
like MS, which affects 2.1 million people world wide, but it could be the
solution for many other diseases that prematurely destroy cells necessary for
life. Your doctor could take your old cells (using your own prevents an autoimmune
response from the body) and culture a dish full of vibrant, pluripotent cells
ready to be specialized, then implant them to restore function.
For some time, it was thought that inducing pluripotence
could only be done with germ cells, but Mr. Yamanaka, through several rounds of
elimination, had shown that only four transcription factors are necessary for
reprogramming adult somatic cells.
Think about the implications of this. Not only could we use
this to treat spinal cord injury, something untreatable thus far, but also
diabetes and heart disease, the leading causes of death in the United States. We
could treat our veterans and children born with a death sentence all with a few
old skin cells, four transcription factors, and a few weeks.
Though this isn't put into practice yet and there are
probably many ethical concerns that come hand in hand with such technology, we
could be well on our way to a treatment even better and more effective then
gene therapy. Soon Hui Ye and other researchers can give their audiences more hopeful answers to questions about treatments that were not-so-promising but are now easy as pie.
Sources:
www.genesdev.cshlp.org/content/24/20/2239.full
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:RkGvMCucPAUJ:ntp.neuroscience.wisc.edu/neuro670/reqreading/ReprogrammingSomaticCellsTowardsPluripotencyByDefinedFactors.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShM9uxp6A67_QvhQZ_Q0kwiNhkZrfZrirUOm4frE17FQ6zR7syzOaQ8TFvtA8Ae4SiNi5WA4gsqnmTsATOcALud5dMw2QnG9EKr8kb0dOdLHGt-UBCTzxPTk7-ax8PFqhyeUwrl&sig=AHIEtbQpIST2LahRCdXS97iifKXicP37YA
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