White Blood Cells From Cancer-resistant Mice Cure Cancers In Ordinary Mice

Original here.
The original studies on the cancer-resistant mice -- reported in 2003 -- showed that such resistance could be inherited, which had implications for inheritance of resistance in humans, said Mark C. Willingham, M.D., a pathologist and co-investigator. "This study shows that you can use this resistant-cell therapy in mice and that the therapy works. The next step is to understand the exact way in which it works, and perhaps eventually design such a therapy for humans."

The cancer-resistant mice all stem from a single mouse discovered in 1999. "The cancer resistance trait so far has been passed to more than 2,000 descendants in 14 generations," said Cui, associate professor of pathology. It also has been bred into three additional mouse strains. About 40 percent of each generation inherits the protection from cancer.

The original group of cancer-resistant mice, also described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, successfully fought off a range of virulent transplanted cancers.

"Now we know that we can take white blood cells from this strange mouse and put them into a normal mouse and these cells will still kill cancers," said Willingham, professor of pathology and head of the Section on Tumor Biology. "This is therapy in a mouse that does not have this magical genetic inheritance."        

Johns Hopkins researchers find link between cell's energy use and genome health

Another possible link between diet and aging

While studying how a cell keeps its genetic material intact, scientists at Johns Hopkins got busy alternately knocking out two catalysts vital to managing a yeast cell's energy. They discovered to their complete surprise that the removal of one of them led the cell to turn off 70 percent of its 5,000 genes and die.

"We were completely unprepared for such a dramatic event," says Jef Boeke, Ph.D., Sc.D., a professor of molecular biology and genetics at Hopkins and author of the study. "We've never seen anything that can turn off that many genes in a cell at once."

[...]

Further analysis with high-power microscopes revealed that this second enzyme, Asc2p, was residing - unexpectedly -- in the part of the cell housing its genetic material - its chromosomes - rather than in the part of the cell - the mitochondria -- that harvests energy from sugar.

But why would an enzyme involved in generating energy live in the "wrong" part of the cell? A closer look at the chromosomal and non-chromosomal parts of the cell showed that although the enzyme itself is found only in the former, the chemical made by it is found in both places

[...]

When the research team removed the enzyme Asc2p that makes acetyl-CoA from yeast cells, they predicted, if they were right about why the enzyme and its chemical product are found near chromosomes, that the chromosomes would have less acetyl-CoA. Less acetyl-CoA, they reasoned, could cause DNA to be more tightly wrapped in chromosomes, and this might lead to genes being turned off. That is exactly what they found when they looked at the more than 5,000 genes in the yeast cells lacking this enzyme. More than 70 percent of them were indeed turned off.

According to Boeke, other studies have shown that reducing the number of calories a yeast cell "eats" not only can affect chromosomes, but also increase lifespan, allowing the yeast to live longer, an observation that fits their findings. .

Cryonics

Things on the cryonics front are looking good.  With the advances Alcor has made in cryonics using their cryoprotectant that becomes glassy instead of cryatalline, and this new, we'll be looking real good before long

[...]

Long the domain of transhumanist nut-jobs, cryogenic suspension may be just two years away from clinical trials on humans (presuming someone can solve the sticky ethical problems). Trauma surgeons can’t wait – saving people with serious wounds, like gunshots, is always a race against the effects of blood loss. When blood flow drops, toxins accumulate; just five minutes of low oxygen levels causes brain death.

Chill a body, though, and you change the equation. Metabolism slows, oxygen demand dives, and the time available to treat the injury stretches. Alam has suspended 200 pigs for an hour each, and although experimental protocol calls for different levels of care for each pig, the ones that got optimal treatment all survived.  

Slow-frozen people

Good news for cryonics:

WASHINGTON – The latest research on water - still one of the least understood of all liquids despite a century of intensive study – seems to support the possibility that cells, tissues and even the entire human body could be cryopreserved without formation of damaging ice crystals, according to University of Helsinki researcher Anatoli Bogdan, Ph.D.

He conducted the study, scheduled for the July 6 issue of the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry B, one of 34 peer-review journals published by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

In medicine, cryopreservation involves preserving organs and tissues for transplantation or other uses. Only certain kinds of cells and tissues, including sperm and embryos, currently can be frozen and successfully rewarmed. A major problem hindering wider use of cryopreservation is formation of ice crystals, which damage cell structures.

cryopreservation may be most familiar, however, as the controversial idea that humans, stricken with incurable diseases, might be frozen and then revived years or decades later when cures are available.

Bogdan's experiments involved a form of water termed "glassy water," or low-density amorphous ice (LDA), which is produced by slowly supercooling diluted aqueous droplets. LDA melts into highly viscous water (HVW). Bogdan reports that HVW is not a new form of water, as some scientists believed.

"That HVW is not a new form of water (i.e., normal and glassy water are thermodynamically connected) may have some interesting practical implications in cryobiology, medicine, and cryonics." Bogdan said.

"It may seem fantastic, but the fact that in aqueous solution, [the] water component can be slowly supercooled to the glassy state and warmed back without the crystallization implies that, in principle, if the suitable cryoprotectant is created, cells in plants and living matter could withstand a large supercooling and survive," Bogdan explained. In present cryopreservation, the cells being preserved are often damaged due to freezing of water either on cooling or subsequent warming to room temperature.

"Damage of the cells occurs due to the extra-cellular and intra-cellular ice formation which leads to dehydration and separation into the ice and concentrated unfrozen solution. If we could, by slow cooling/warming, supercool and then warm the cells without the crystallization of water then the cells would be undamaged."

From cancer to nerve regrowth

Cancer researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have found that a protein known for driving the growth of cancer also plays a surprising role in restoring the ability of neurons to regenerate, making it an important target for addressing spinal cord damage or neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

[...]

Dr. Iavarone added that there is no chance that such a therapy would cause cancer in the brain or spinal cord. “Neurons have completely lost the ability to create new cells so there’s no danger of creating a tumor. The only growth they’re capable of is regeneration of their axons,” he said.

I'm not a doctor (but I play one on TV), but from what I've heard that last statement is not completely true.  A number of people have found that nerve cells can replenish themselves, albiet slowly.  I don't think this would be much of a problem though.

Learning from progeria

From EurekAlert!

PITTSBURGH--Carnegie Mellon University researchers Kris Noel Dahl and Mohammad F. Islam have made a new breakthrough for children suffering from an extremely rare disease that accelerates the aging process by about seven times the normal rate.

Dahl, an assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, said her work with researchers at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the John Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania reveals that children suffering from Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS) have an excessively stiff shell of proteins.

The nucleus in all three trillion cells of the human body contains the DNA genome, which is wrapped with a stiff protein shell called the nuclear lamina. Children with HGPS have a mutation in one of the proteins of the lamina shell. For years, experts have thought this mutation made their nuclei much softer and more likely to be ruptured when cells were under stress.

But in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Journal article to be published this month, Dahl and her colleagues show that the lamina shell in HGPS patients is stiffer than normal. However, stiffer isn't necessarily better. The stiffer lamina did protect the HGPS nucleus from some forces, but under excessive force the HGPS lamina was more brittle and eventually fractured.

"The mutant HGPS lamina is like an egg shell that cracks when excessive pressure or force is exerted against it," Dahl said. "By contrast, normal lamina resembles the rubbery outer shell of a racquetball, which does not break under stress or force but can assume its original shape even after hard play."

The researchers also think that the stiffer lamina in HGPS patients may be unable to communicate the proper biological signals to the DNA inside the nucleus to help the cell grow, which contributes to the disease.

Islam, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science and engineering, says that the increased stiffness of the lamina may be caused by mutant proteins self-organizing into ordered structures within the HGPS lamina.

"This could make the lamina stiffer and cause fractures in the nuclei," Islam said. The healthy lamina remains disordered and therefore less rigid.

"Once we understand what causes the lamina to stiffen, we can try to reverse or stop the problem," Dahl said. "We think this stiffening mechanism happens over time with increased protein concentration, so we need to determine the tipping point that causes real problems."

When people grow old, the walls of the cell nuclei exhibit similar problems to the HGPS nuclei, like losing their round shape and perkiness. "Our NIH collaborators have also found that the normal aged nuclei show the same structural changes as HGPS," Dahl said.

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Other experts involved in the research included Paola Scaffidi and Tom Misteli of the National Cancer Institute, Katherine Wilson from Johns Hopkins and Arjun Yodh from the University of Pennsylvania.

Calorie restriction

May have just gotten easier.  Something called "pinolenic acid" appears to cut calorie consumption by overweight people by 36%.  Don't know if that applies to normal weight people, but hopefully it does.  See the article on LEF here.  Pinolenic acid is found in pine nuts, although it is not mentioned how many you have to eat to get the 3 grams of pinolenic acid from the study.  I also notice that the 36% figure mentioned is “prospective food intake”.  In a more recent study, this translated to about a 10% decrease in body weight for low calorie diet with pinolenic acid, and a 14% decrease for very low calorie.