One of the goals of tissue engineers is to reverse the effects of injury or aging of cartilage, nerve damage or scarring from burns and other trauma. Another major achievement would be the ability to grow entire organs using stem cells taken from the organ recipient, replacing the need for a suitable donor and eliminating the risk and waiting time required for finding said donor, or the potential complications of xenotransplantation.

One breakthrough in tissue engineering announced in 2009 was the development of a biodegradable resin, by a group at University of Twente, that could be used as a scaffold in situ, for human organ generation. Another significant development, announced by scientists at Stanford and NY University School of Medicine, was the ability to grow tissues in an environment of well-vascularized cells. Using laboratory animals, they demonstrated that fatty tissue from the groin area of rats containing blood vessels, fat and skin, could be used as a scaffold for stem cells. They called the scaffolds "explanted microcirculatory beds" (EMBs). Once the cells are well embedded in the tissue they can be transplanted back into the animal, where they are not rejected. Both of these discoveries hold enormous promise for therapeutic cloning and organ transplant research.

_Sources:

InSciences Organisation. Breakthrough in Twente: Biodegradable synthetic resin replaces vital body parts. 13 June 2009.

Chang et al. 2009. Tissue engineering using autologous microcirculatory beds as vascularized bioscaffolds. FASEB Journal, March 2009. doi:10.1096/fj.08-114868.

Breakthroughs in Tissue Engineering originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 06:22:53.

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• How to direct differentiation into the desired tissue type
• Optimizing growth conditions and the physical environment for cell cultures or for growing organs for transplant
• How to inject and transport stem cells to the target location in the body

Challenges Remain for Stem Cell Therapies originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 21:20:29.

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Although Dr. Semmelweis was not quite on the mark about the cause of childbed fever, he had pinpointed a key fact that we take for granted today: Hand washing prevents the spread of germs. A key strategy for fighting H1N1 (Swine Flu) around the world today, is public education on the importance of washing our hands especially after sneezing, blowing noses or contact with other potentially infected individuals. Dr. Semmelweis was ridiculed by the medical profession and lost his job. Imagine where we would be today, in the fight against Swine Flu, if the germ theory had never caught on? If only he was around today to see how significant his observations were!

The Semmelweis Society International is a website named in honor of the shamed doctor, with the intent to address bioethics issues and assist physicians and other medical professionals who are falsely accused of misconduct or subjected to biased peer review.

_{Source: Biotech Chronicles: www.accessexcellence.org}

Imagine H1N1 in 1850 originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 06:33:05.

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Development of this substance into a drug was expedited by the need for an antibiotic to treat soldiers injured in the war. Thus, penicillin saved the lives of many veterans, and, as the first antibiotic, is one of the most significant achievements in the history of biotechnology.

Scientists would later discover restriction enzymes while investigating bacterial defenses against antibiotics. Antibiotics and restriction enzymes are two very important tools that made it possible to develop techniques for cloning and studying genes.

Biotech Discoveries and the World War II Connection originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 08:27:11.

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PCR and Synthetic Biology originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 07:33:47.

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Travelling during a global pandemic is a risky business! I just got back from a trip to another province of Canada, a four hour flight away. While Ontario is handing out Swine Flu vaccine to the "priority groups" - small children, seniors and health-care workers, BC is facing a shortage and Alberta is dealing with bioethics issues arising from the public outcry over vaccination of the Calgary Flames, and a debate over whether firefighters are a high-risk group. One of the participants of a meeting I attended refused to shake anyone's hand for fear of getting sick, and last week I heard from a friend that children in her neighborhood of Toronto were not allowed to go Trick-or-Treating, because of influenza fears.

During my flight home I wasn't feeling the greatest and my colleague said, a little too loud, "I hope you aren't getting sick". I quickly told her not to say that too loud and looked around for the lynch mob that might throw me off the airplane at 10,000 feet. Every year there is a percentage of people getting the flu who die from it. In the USA, approximately 36,000 people die every year from the flu, although many of those are cases complicated by additional infections such as Pneumonia and Staphylococcus. This year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a new PCR-based diagnostic kit for detection of H1N1, which will not only help diagnosis but will aid in collection of more accurate statistics. In many past cases, flu patients also had known risk factors that compromised their immune system, but many don't, including roughly half of the pediatric cases. The CDC estimates mortalities due to H1N1 at somewhere over 1000, 114 of which were children, as of the end of October. Initial reports were that this strain had actually turned out to be fairly mild, so while people weigh the risks of taking the new vaccine against risks of getting, or even dying from H1N1, confusion abounds and we are experiencing the same sort of panic that prevailed in Toronto during the SARs epidemic.

H1N1: What are the Real Risks? originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 17:10:27.

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According to the Geron News Release, test animals receiving the treatment, GRNOPC1, developed a higher number of cysts at the area of spinal cord injury than in previous studies. However, the FDA has agreed to allow the studies to continue, since the cysts appear to be non-proliferative, confined to the injury site, and not associated with any serious adverse effects or SUSARS.

GRNOPC1 consists of human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). Oligodendrocytes are cells of the nervous system that produce the myelin shealth, which insultates the axons of nerve cells. Injection with the cells was shown to enhance remyelination of the spinal cord in adult rats. Demyelination after spinal cord injury contributes to loss of neural function. Rats treated with GRNOPC1 seven days after injury exhibited substantially better recovery and improved locomotor ability.

Geron expects re-initiation of the clinical trial in late 2010. Since the treatment must be applied shortly after injury, anyone wanting to participate in a clinical trial must agree to injections within 7 to 14 days of spinal injury.

Geron's pipeline also includes an anti-cancer drug and vaccine that target the telomerase enzyme.

_{Source: Keirstead, H. et al. 2005. Human embryonic stem cell-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cell transplants remyelinate and restore locomotion after spinal cord injury. J. Neuroscience 25:4694-4705. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0311-05.2005.}

Geron Corporation's Stem Cell Trial originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 20:29:12.

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Biofuels still seem to have a long way to go before widespread use and acceptance validate the claims of their proponents. While the biofuels industry has it's critics, the arguments in favour include the use of renewable feedstocks. Many pharmaceuticals today are actually semi-synthetic molecules, made in fermentation processes by living organisms and later chemically modified, if need be. The costs associated with batch production, and complications pertaining to large-scale protein purification and equipment sterilization, are among the downsides to bioprocessing. The most well-known biotech product in the home might be enzyme-based detergents, like those produced by the widely recognized Novozymes.

Just about everyone is familiar with the story of stone-washed jeans and how they came to be enzymatically-altered. But jeans don't make an industry and biotech has yet to gain acceptance in many areas where the public is wary of the bioethical ramifications and potential health risks (xenotransplantation, stem cell research, nanotechnology). With so many complex issues to solve, will we ever become a fully sustainable, bio-based world?

Is a Bio-Based Economy a Fantasy? originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 22:57:40.

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At University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Bertozzi and her research group study cell surface interactions and use synthetic biology to manipulate cellular processes. In doing so, they have been able to adjust the intercellular environment, control how the cells stick to one another, which affects their assembly into tissues. They reported using different types of genetically engineered cells to make artificial tissues capable of many of the functions of cell clusters, such as secreting and responding to hormones.

This work is really founded on the alteration of already existing cells, not the creation of completely new ones from scratch. The novelty of the work, however, is that tissues formed from these cells are like none other and can perform as no individual cell can. In systems such as this, the community of cells acts as a whole towards an end product of the scientist's design, such as large scale drug production. Smart polymers are also examples of synthetic biology, in that they are artificial polymer-based substances that can be designed to react in a cascade-like fashion to changes in their environment, much like the inner workings of a cell.

_{Source: Gartner, Z. and Bertozzi, C. 2009. Programmed assembly of 3-dimensional microtissues with defined cellular connectivity. PNAS 106(12):4606-4610.}

Synthetic Biology and Artificial Systems originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 20:20:28.

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The information obtained about the immune system, or viral and bacterial systems, can be used to produce better vaccines. For example, scientists at the Institute for Systems Biology are using what they have learned about the systems of the influenza virus to determine what makes one strain more potent than another. Some of this has to do with polymorphisms of proteins on the viral outer envelope, and their tolerance for remaining functional upon mutation.

For a complete lecture on this topic, the Institute has provided a 4-part video online.

Using Systems Biology to Study Influenza originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 06:36:26.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

One of the goals of tissue engineers is to reverse the effects of injury or aging of cartilage, nerve damage or scarring from burns and other trauma. Another major achievement would be the ability to grow entire organs using stem cells taken from the organ recipient, replacing the need for a suitable donor and eliminating the risk and waiting time required for finding said donor, or the potential complications of xenotransplantation.

One breakthrough in tissue engineering announced in 2009 was the development of a biodegradable resin, by a group at University of Twente, that could be used as a scaffold in situ, for human organ generation. Another significant development, announced by scientists at Stanford and NY University School of Medicine, was the ability to grow tissues in an environment of well-vascularized cells. Using laboratory animals, they demonstrated that fatty tissue from the groin area of rats containing blood vessels, fat and skin, could be used as a scaffold for stem cells. They called the scaffolds "explanted microcirculatory beds" (EMBs). Once the cells are well embedded in the tissue they can be transplanted back into the animal, where they are not rejected. Both of these discoveries hold enormous promise for therapeutic cloning and organ transplant research.

_Sources:

InSciences Organisation. Breakthrough in Twente: Biodegradable synthetic resin replaces vital body parts. 13 June 2009.

Chang et al. 2009. Tissue engineering using autologous microcirculatory beds as vascularized bioscaffolds. FASEB Journal, March 2009. doi:10.1096/fj.08-114868.

Breakthroughs in Tissue Engineering originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 06:22:53.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

• How to direct differentiation into the desired tissue type
• Optimizing growth conditions and the physical environment for cell cultures or for growing organs for transplant
• How to inject and transport stem cells to the target location in the body

Challenges Remain for Stem Cell Therapies originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 21:20:29.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

Although Dr. Semmelweis was not quite on the mark about the cause of childbed fever, he had pinpointed a key fact that we take for granted today: Hand washing prevents the spread of germs. A key strategy for fighting H1N1 (Swine Flu) around the world today, is public education on the importance of washing our hands especially after sneezing, blowing noses or contact with other potentially infected individuals. Dr. Semmelweis was ridiculed by the medical profession and lost his job. Imagine where we would be today, in the fight against Swine Flu, if the germ theory had never caught on? If only he was around today to see how significant his observations were!

The Semmelweis Society International is a website named in honor of the shamed doctor, with the intent to address bioethics issues and assist physicians and other medical professionals who are falsely accused of misconduct or subjected to biased peer review.

_{Source: Biotech Chronicles: www.accessexcellence.org}

Imagine H1N1 in 1850 originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 06:33:05.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

Development of this substance into a drug was expedited by the need for an antibiotic to treat soldiers injured in the war. Thus, penicillin saved the lives of many veterans, and, as the first antibiotic, is one of the most significant achievements in the history of biotechnology.

Scientists would later discover restriction enzymes while investigating bacterial defenses against antibiotics. Antibiotics and restriction enzymes are two very important tools that made it possible to develop techniques for cloning and studying genes.

Biotech Discoveries and the World War II Connection originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 08:27:11.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

PCR and Synthetic Biology originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 07:33:47.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

Travelling during a global pandemic is a risky business! I just got back from a trip to another province of Canada, a four hour flight away. While Ontario is handing out Swine Flu vaccine to the "priority groups" - small children, seniors and health-care workers, BC is facing a shortage and Alberta is dealing with bioethics issues arising from the public outcry over vaccination of the Calgary Flames, and a debate over whether firefighters are a high-risk group. One of the participants of a meeting I attended refused to shake anyone's hand for fear of getting sick, and last week I heard from a friend that children in her neighborhood of Toronto were not allowed to go Trick-or-Treating, because of influenza fears.

During my flight home I wasn't feeling the greatest and my colleague said, a little too loud, "I hope you aren't getting sick". I quickly told her not to say that too loud and looked around for the lynch mob that might throw me off the airplane at 10,000 feet. Every year there is a percentage of people getting the flu who die from it. In the USA, approximately 36,000 people die every year from the flu, although many of those are cases complicated by additional infections such as Pneumonia and Staphylococcus. This year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a new PCR-based diagnostic kit for detection of H1N1, which will not only help diagnosis but will aid in collection of more accurate statistics. In many past cases, flu patients also had known risk factors that compromised their immune system, but many don't, including roughly half of the pediatric cases. The CDC estimates mortalities due to H1N1 at somewhere over 1000, 114 of which were children, as of the end of October. Initial reports were that this strain had actually turned out to be fairly mild, so while people weigh the risks of taking the new vaccine against risks of getting, or even dying from H1N1, confusion abounds and we are experiencing the same sort of panic that prevailed in Toronto during the SARs epidemic.

H1N1: What are the Real Risks? originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 17:10:27.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

According to the Geron News Release, test animals receiving the treatment, GRNOPC1, developed a higher number of cysts at the area of spinal cord injury than in previous studies. However, the FDA has agreed to allow the studies to continue, since the cysts appear to be non-proliferative, confined to the injury site, and not associated with any serious adverse effects or SUSARS.

GRNOPC1 consists of human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). Oligodendrocytes are cells of the nervous system that produce the myelin shealth, which insultates the axons of nerve cells. Injection with the cells was shown to enhance remyelination of the spinal cord in adult rats. Demyelination after spinal cord injury contributes to loss of neural function. Rats treated with GRNOPC1 seven days after injury exhibited substantially better recovery and improved locomotor ability.

Geron expects re-initiation of the clinical trial in late 2010. Since the treatment must be applied shortly after injury, anyone wanting to participate in a clinical trial must agree to injections within 7 to 14 days of spinal injury.

Geron's pipeline also includes an anti-cancer drug and vaccine that target the telomerase enzyme.

_{Source: Keirstead, H. et al. 2005. Human embryonic stem cell-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cell transplants remyelinate and restore locomotion after spinal cord injury. J. Neuroscience 25:4694-4705. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0311-05.2005.}

Geron Corporation's Stem Cell Trial originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 20:29:12.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

Biofuels still seem to have a long way to go before widespread use and acceptance validate the claims of their proponents. While the biofuels industry has it's critics, the arguments in favour include the use of renewable feedstocks. Many pharmaceuticals today are actually semi-synthetic molecules, made in fermentation processes by living organisms and later chemically modified, if need be. The costs associated with batch production, and complications pertaining to large-scale protein purification and equipment sterilization, are among the downsides to bioprocessing. The most well-known biotech product in the home might be enzyme-based detergents, like those produced by the widely recognized Novozymes.

Just about everyone is familiar with the story of stone-washed jeans and how they came to be enzymatically-altered. But jeans don't make an industry and biotech has yet to gain acceptance in many areas where the public is wary of the bioethical ramifications and potential health risks (xenotransplantation, stem cell research, nanotechnology). With so many complex issues to solve, will we ever become a fully sustainable, bio-based world?

Is a Bio-Based Economy a Fantasy? originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 22:57:40.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

At University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Bertozzi and her research group study cell surface interactions and use synthetic biology to manipulate cellular processes. In doing so, they have been able to adjust the intercellular environment, control how the cells stick to one another, which affects their assembly into tissues. They reported using different types of genetically engineered cells to make artificial tissues capable of many of the functions of cell clusters, such as secreting and responding to hormones.

This work is really founded on the alteration of already existing cells, not the creation of completely new ones from scratch. The novelty of the work, however, is that tissues formed from these cells are like none other and can perform as no individual cell can. In systems such as this, the community of cells acts as a whole towards an end product of the scientist's design, such as large scale drug production. Smart polymers are also examples of synthetic biology, in that they are artificial polymer-based substances that can be designed to react in a cascade-like fashion to changes in their environment, much like the inner workings of a cell.

_{Source: Gartner, Z. and Bertozzi, C. 2009. Programmed assembly of 3-dimensional microtissues with defined cellular connectivity. PNAS 106(12):4606-4610.}

Synthetic Biology and Artificial Systems originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 20:20:28.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

The information obtained about the immune system, or viral and bacterial systems, can be used to produce better vaccines. For example, scientists at the Institute for Systems Biology are using what they have learned about the systems of the influenza virus to determine what makes one strain more potent than another. Some of this has to do with polymorphisms of proteins on the viral outer envelope, and their tolerance for remaining functional upon mutation.

For a complete lecture on this topic, the Institute has provided a 4-part video online.

Using Systems Biology to Study Influenza originally appeared on About.com Biotech / Biomedical on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 06:36:26.

Permalink | Comment | Email this