It may take a combination of three molecules to kill brain cells in Parkinson's disease, researchers say. The three molecules — the neurotransmitter dopamine, a calcium channel, and a protein called alpha-synuclein — act together, Eugene Mosharov of Columbia University Medical Center in New York and his colleagues said in Wednesday's online issue of the journal Neuron. "Though the interactions among the three molecules are complex, the flip side is that we now see that there are many options available to rescue the cells," Mosharov said in a release. Symptoms of Parkinson's include uncontrollable tremors and difficulty in moving arms and legs. Scientists had suspected that three molecules were involved in killing neurons. The new findings suggest how it may happen. Using a new electrochemical approach to growing neurons in the lab, the researchers were able to measure dopamine released outside the cells. It's the location of dopamine that matters. Dopamine outside the cells, known as cytosolic dopamine, is toxic to neurons, the researchers found. If dopamine is confined inside cells, it's safe. Neurons lacking alpha-synuclein were resistant to the toxic damage. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 12816 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kaspar Mossman Michael Merzenich, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, is ruthless as he describes how my 37-year-old brain is going to turn to mush over the years to come. “You’re going to slowly decline in operating speed,” he says. “Your brain will become noisier and noisier in its processing.” And I will have more and more trouble figuring out exactly what it was I just heard or saw. The villain: age-related cognitive decline, which Merzenich says is a combination of physical changes and something called negative brain plasticity—the cerebral equivalent of what has happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biceps. A way to combat negative brain plasticity is to train regularly using any of an increasingly wide range of software products designed expressly for the purpose, says Merzenich, who founded Posit Science, which makes one such package. Cognitive training is growing in popularity as baby boomers age. From 2005 to 2007 the U.S. brain fitness business increased from $100 million to $225 million, according to a report by SharpBrains, a market research company specializing in cognitive health. The growth was driven to a large extent by the success of Nintendo’s Brain Age [see my review of it and two other brain-training games in “Circuit Training”; Scientific American Mind, June/July 2006]. Research does confirm that regular brain exercise is beneficial to elderly people. ACTIVE, a nationwide clinical trial of 2,802 seniors that began in 1998, found that training in specific areas such as “processing speed” ­resulted in improvements that persisted at least five years. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12815 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CHRISTOPHER F. CHABRIS We are in the midst of an explosion of knowledge about how the human mind and brain work -- how memory comes in many different types, each stored in a different part of the brain; how our minds constantly process information outside our conscious awareness; how differences in brain function help to define differences in our personalities. A lot of this new knowledge raises provocative questions, not least about human nature. But as disgruntled students have been saying for ages: How are we ever going to use this stuff? Chemistry can boast of miracle drugs, and genetics has done wonders for our food supply and for medical diagnosis. What about psychology and neuroscience? Shouldn't research on learning and memory and thinking help us to learn, remember and think better? Daniel T. Willingham thinks that it should. In "Why Don't Students Like School?" he poses nine questions that a teacher might want to ask a cognitive scientist -- beginning with the question in the title -- and then answers each, citing empirical studies and suggesting ways for teachers to improve their practice accordingly. But Mr. Willingham's answers apply just as well outside the classroom. Corporate trainers, marketers and, not least, parents -- anyone who cares about how we learn -- should find his book valuable reading. So why don't students like school? According to Mr. Willingham, one major reason is that what school requires students to do -- think abstractly -- is in fact not something our brains are designed to be good at or to enjoy. When we confront a task that requires us to exert mental effort, it is critical that the task be just difficult enough to hold our interest but not so difficult that we give up in frustration. ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Incc

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12814 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eric Bland, Discovery News -- Lasers could one day cure, or at least aid in the search for drugs that treat diseases ranging from autism to schizophrenia, according to two new studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University and published in the online issue of the journal Nature. A blue laser shined into a live mouse brain triggered gamma waves, which are a kind of brain wave necessary for concentration and cognition that people with autism and schizophrenia often lack. "There are lots of theories about why [gamma wave oscillation] is impaired," said Li-Huei Tsai, a professor at MIT and a co-author on one of the Nature papers. "This is the first proof that a specific set of neurons are responsible for gamma waves." The specific neurons that trigger gamma waves are called fast-spiking interneurons. Connected to hundreds of other neurons, interneurons regulate which neurons fire and which neurons remain silent. The coordinated firing of these neurons creates a variety of brain waves, from ten waves per second of alpha waves to 40 waves per second of gamma waves. Scientists have known about gamma waves for decades. Using techniques that measure the brain's electrical activity, like EEG, scientists detect gamma waves when subjects concentrate during activities like test-taking. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Autism; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12813 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway If you're going to challenge the Dalai Lama to a memory game, don't do it just after he's meditated. New research finds that meditation boosts visual memory, but only in the short term. The findings counter the claims of some monks who say that years of practicing a meditation technique that centres on creating an elaborate mental picture of deities can offer long-lasting improvements in visual memory and processing. "They claim they can do it all the time – they cannot," says Maria Kozhevnikov, a neuroscientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who travelled to several monasteries in Nepal to test the Buddhist monks' visual memory. Holy challenge In 2003, the Dalai Lama, who has a long-term interest in science and what he calls "the luminosity of being", attended a neuroscience conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There he challenged Kozhevnikov's then post-doctoral advisor, Stephen Kosslyn, to test the visual memory of Buddhist monks. Kosslyn and most other neuroscientists claimed that working memory was too short to maintain an image for more than a few seconds. He found no difference in visual memory between moderately practiced monks and non-meditators who came to his Harvard lab. The Dalai Lama suggested that Kosslyn test more experienced monks in Nepal, and Kozhevnikov took on the task while on sabbatical. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12812 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online -- Females of an Australian species of lizard rely on testosterone for a most unusual method of keeping amorous males off their backs, researchers have found. Evolutionary ecologist Devi Stuart-Fox of the University of Melbourne and colleagues report their findings online ahead of print publication in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A. In most animals that use colorful displays for attraction, such as the peacock, it's usually the male that's flashy. But the female Lake Eyre dragon lizard (Ctenophorus maculosus) is an exception. She displays a bright orange belly and throat during parts of her breeding season, which researchers think is driven by the hormone testosterone. Interestingly, the color features prominently when the female wants to put off a male from copulating with her. Stuart-Fox and colleagues took a close look at a number of female lizards taken from Lake Eyre in South Australia and observed what happened when they were in the company of males. When Lake Eyre lizards copulate, the male bites the female's neck, climbs on top of her, wraps his tail around hers and inserts one of his two penises.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12811 - Posted: 04.30.2009

by Michael Bond ONE look at the effects of a bomb blast suggests that you'd have to be extremely lucky to emerge from one unscathed. If you were not burned by the explosion or blasted by shrapnel, the chances are you'd be hit by the shock wave. Travelling at several hundred metres per second, this causes massive fluctuations in air pressure which can knock you unconscious, rupture air-filled organs such as eardrums, lungs and bowels, and stretch and distort other major organs. Soldiers serving with coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq know only too well how devastating bombs can be. The effect of shrapnel on bodies - amputated limbs, broken bones, lacerated and burned flesh - is plain enough. Less obvious and harder to understand are the long-term effects of the shock wave on the brain. Weeks, months, or sometimes years after being concussed in an explosion, thousands of soldiers are reporting a mysterious clutch of problems. Dubbed post-concussion syndrome (PCS), symptoms include memory loss, dizziness, headaches, unexplained pains, nausea, disturbance of sleep, inability to concentrate and emotional problems. The US military and veterans' groups see PCS as a growing problem, and the US government is pouring millions of dollars into investigating it. Some doctors, however, particularly in the UK, believe that for many patients the symptoms ascribed to PCS are not caused by concussion at all, but by the shock and stress of wartime events. It may even be getting mixed up with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an acknowledged psychological reaction to disturbing events. "Some people are saying it's a hideous mistake and that we're talking up a problem," says Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist and director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research at King's College London. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12810 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Reading may be fundamental, but how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been fundamentally a mystery. Two new studies fill in some details on how the brains of proficient readers handle words. One of the studies, published in the April 30 Neuron, suggests that a visual-processing area of the brain recognizes common words as whole units. Another study, published online April 27 in PLoS ONE, reveals that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech. Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., wanted to know whether the brain reads words letter by letter or recognizes words as whole objects. He and his colleagues showed sets of real words or nonsense words to volunteers undergoing fMRI scans. The words differed in only one letter, such as “farm” and “form” and “soat” and “poat,” or were completely different, such as “farm” and “coat” or “poat” and “hime.” The researchers were particularly interested in what happens in the visual word form area, or VWFA, an area on the left side of the brain just behind the ear that is involved in recognizing words. Riesenhuber and his colleagues found that neurons in the VWFA respond strongly to changes in real words. Changing “farm” to “form,” for example, produced as profound a change in activity as changing “farm” to “coat,” the team reports in Neuron. The area responded incrementally to single-letter changes in made-up words. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 12809 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes The quest to understand the genetic underpinnings of autism has taken a big stride forward with the discovery of a genetic variant carried by more than two thirds of people with the disorder. Previous studies that have identified several genes that are implicated in autism, but Hakon Hakonarson of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who led the new study, says they are extremely rare and account for a very small proportion of autism. "We have for the first time identified a common variant, present in over 65 per cent of autism cases." To identify the gene, Hakonarson and his colleagues screened DNA from more than 2500 people with autism and more than 7000 healthy controls, searching for common gene variants that were associated with the condition. The gene lies between two other genes called CAD 10 and CAD 9, which encode adhesion molecules that enable neurons to connect and communicate with one another – and CAD 10 is already known to be expressed in the very regions of the brain that appear to malfunction in people with autism. Because other, rarer genes associated with autism also encode cell adhesion molecules, researchers had previously speculated that a breakdown in neural connections during development might lie at the root of the condition. The current study provides the first genetic evidence that a similar problem could be implicated in a large number of cases, Hakonarson says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12808 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A good night's sleep could reduce hyperactivity and bad behaviour among children, a Finnish study reports. It has been suggested that some children who lack sleep do not appear tired, but instead behave badly. Of the 280 examined in the Pediatrics study, those who slept for fewer than eight hours were the most hyperactive. Experts said adequate sleep could improve behaviour in healthy children and reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is recognised that chronic sleep deprivation is a problem for many adults in Western countries and that it can have consequences for their health and daily life. The team behind this research said not enough was understood about the role of sleep in children's lives but it has been estimated that a third of US children do not get enough sleep. In this research, the team from the University of Helsinki and Finland's National Institute of Health and Welfare studied 280 healthy children aged seven or eight. They wanted to see if those healthy children who slept the least were the most likely to display the kind of symptoms associated with ADHD. None of the children studied had the attention disorder. Parents filled in questionnaires about their children's usual sleeping habits and then noted how long their children slept for over seven nights. The children also wore devices called actigraphs, which measure movement, to monitor how long they actually rested for. Parents' estimates of sleep duration were longer than the actigraph measurements, which the researchers say could be because they measured from bedtime or because they assumed their children were asleep when they were simply lying awake in bed or reading. The parents were also asked about their children's behaviour, using measures normally used to diagnose ADHD. The children whose average sleep duration as measured by actigraphs was shorter than 7.7 hours had a higher hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour score. They also had a higher ADHD symptom score overall. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sleep; ADHD
Link ID: 12807 - Posted: 04.28.2009

Children with attention deficit problems make bigger academic gains if they are taking stimulant medications compared to similar kids who aren’t receiving drug therapy, a new study shows. The findings, from a five year study of nearly 600 schoolchildren from across the country, are believed to be the first to offer an objective measure of the effect of drug therapy on a child’s long-term academic achievement. Earlier studies have shown that children who receive medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder behave better in class and can complete more homework. But it hasn’t been clear whether treating A.D.H.D. results in any measurable improvement in long-term academic gains. The latest study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and published in Pediatrics, tracked standardized math and reading scores among a nationally-representative sample of 600 children from kindergarten through the fifth grade, all of whom had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D. The researchers compared the scores of the students who were on A.D.H.D. medications with similarly diagnosed students who weren’t receiving drug therapy. In the study, taking A.D.H.D. medication was associated with gains in math scores that equated to about a fifth of a school year in extra learning. In reading, the gains were even greater, equating to progress of about a third of a school year. “I think the findings are important because this is the first time that we’ve had objective educational performance measures, to look at whether kids who are taking medications for A.D.H.D. compared to kids who are not, that actually show that they are doing better,” said Richard Scheffler, distinguished professor of health economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 12806 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Fatty foods 'offer memory boost' A team at the University of California, Irvine discovered oleic acids from fats are converted into a memory-enhancing agent in the gut. They hope their work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could offer a new way to treat memory-related problems. Drugs to mimic the action of the compound are in trials for controlling the dangerous fat triglyceride. Evidence shows high levels of oleoylethanolamide or OEA can reduce appetite, produce weight loss and lower blood cholesterol as well as triglyceride levels, making it an attractive candidate as a diet pill too. Dr Daniele Piomelli and his team discovered that OEA also causes memories to be laid down by activating memory-enhancing signals in the amygdala - the part of the brain involved with memories of emotional events. When they gave OEA to rats, it improved their memory retention in two different tests - running in a maze and avoiding an unpleasant experience. And when they blocked OEA with a drug, their performance on the tasks declined. Dr Piomelli said there was an evolutionary explanation for this role of OEA. He said: "By helping mammals remember where and when they have eaten a fatty meal, OEA's memory-enhancing activity seems to have been an important evolutionary tool for early humans and other animals. "Remembering the location and context of a fatty meal was probably an important survival mechanism for early humans." But he said this might not always be helpful. While OEA contributes to feelings of fullness after a meal, it could also engender long-term cravings for fatty foods that, when eaten in excess, can cause obesity. (C)BBC

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Obesity
Link ID: 12805 - Posted: 04.28.2009

Alison Abbott Nearly half of the neuroimaging studies published in prestige journals in 2008 contain unintentionally biased data that could distort their scientific conclusions, according to scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Experts in the field contacted by Nature have been taken aback by the extent of the methodological errors getting through the supposedly strict peer-review systems of the journals in question. Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Chris Baker and their colleagues analysed 134 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies published last year in five top journals — Nature, Science, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron and The Journal of Neuroscience. The survey, published in Nature Neuroscience on 26 April (N. Kriegeskorte, W. K. Simmons, P. S. F. Bellgowan and C. I. Baker Nature Neurosci. 12, 535–540; 2009), found that 57 of these papers included at least one so-called 'non-independent selective analysis'; another 20 may also have done so, but did not provide enough information to confirm suspicions. The non-independence of the analysis lies in using the same data to set up the conditions to test a hypothesis, then to confirm it. "We are not saying that the papers draw wrong conclusions, because in some cases the error will not have been critical," says Baker. "But in other cases we don't know, and this creates an ambiguity." © 2009 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12804 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Six years after their discovery, the extinct little people nicknamed hobbits who once occupied the Indonesian island of Flores remain mystifying anomalies in human evolution, out of place in time and geography, their ancestry unknown. Recent research has only widened their challenge to conventional thinking about the origins, transformations and migrations of the early human family. Indeed, the more scientists study the specimens and their implications, the more they are drawn to heretical speculation. Were these primitive survivors of even earlier hominid migrations out of Africa, before Homo erectus migrated about 1.8 million years ago? Could some of the earliest African toolmakers, around 2.5 million years ago, have made their way across Asia? Did some of these migrants evolve into new species in Asia, which moved back to Africa? Two-way traffic is not unheard of in other mammals. Or could the hobbits be an example of reverse evolution? That would seem even more bizarre; there are no known cases in primate evolution of a wholesale reversion to some ancestor in its lineage. The possibilities get curiouser and curiouser, said William L. Jungers of Stony Brook University, making hobbits “the black swan of paleontology — totally unpredicted and inexplicable.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12803 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Rowan Hooper PERHAPS because of its non-serious nature, play has been a neglected, even embarrassing subject for serious scientists. Little work has been done on what it's for - that is, its evolutionary function. The Playful Brain has a stab at rectifying this, with some success. Play is so complicated, say the authors, that to understand it we need to build up a towering "layer cake" of information about neurology, physiology and juvenile development. Primates are difficult to experiment on - for this reason, and because of the authors' area of expertise, we are plunged straight into a detailed analysis of play fighting in rats. We have to wade through a lot of technical reading to get to the good stuff - and here I'm going to be shamelessly pro-ape - the parts about primates in general, and humans in particular. I enjoyed an anecdote about two juvenile gorillas play fighting, bashing into each other's shoulders. One abruptly changes his attack, and grabs the other's genitals, making him leap into the air in surprise. So what is play actually for? Pellis and Pellis show that play improves social competence by honing the emotional and intellectual skills necessary to thrive in society. This explains why males play more than females: females are more socially competent to start with, while males by their nature are more aggressive and competitive. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12802 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Kessler researched part of "The End of Overeating" by diving into dumpsters behind restaurants to look for the nutritional labels of menu items high in fat, salt and sugar. He went in the middle of the night, long after the last employee had locked up the Chili's Grill and Bar. He'd steer his car around the back, check to make sure no one was around and then quietly approach the dumpster. If anyone noticed the man foraging through the trash, they would have assumed he was a vagrant. Except he was wearing black dress slacks and padded gardening gloves. "I'm surprised he didn't wear a tie," his wife said dryly. The high-octane career path of David A. Kessler, the Harvard-trained doctor, lawyer, medical school dean and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration had come to this: nocturnal dumpster diving. Sometimes, he would just reach in. Other times, he would climb in. It took many of these forays until Kessler emerged with his prize: ingredient labels affixed to empty cardboard boxes that spelled out the fats, salt and sugar used to make the Southwestern Eggrolls, Boneless Shanghai Wings and other dishes served by the nation's second-largest restaurant chain. Kessler was on a mission to understand a problem that has vexed him since childhood: why he can't resist certain foods. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12801 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE EISENBERG EARBUDS can pipe audio directly from a portable player to the ear. But did you ever imagine that eyeglasses or contact lenses could deliver digital images directly from a smartphone to the retina? An eyeglass from SBG Labs has a tiny projector in its frame. Holographics optics create an overlay image — for example, a map to the wearer’s destination. A contact lens created by Babak A. Parviz and a team at the University of Washington in Seattle offers built-in electronics to create displays. Several companies are developing prototypes for digital devices that look like stylish eyewear but may one day offer such capabilities to consumers. The glasses are called heads-up displays because the wearer can always look through them and see the real world — like the sidewalk just ahead — but can also see, on an overlay image, virtual information like an electronic map or an arrow showing the correct way to a destination. The glasses may also help the wearer remember the name of a long-lost friend she sees on the street. SBG Labs, an optical technology company in Sunnyvale, Calif., is among the businesses that are developing the devices. The glasses are only slightly larger than many chic pairs of wraparounds, but instead of bearing rhinestones or designer initials, they hold a tiny projector and optics — tucked away in the side of the frame. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 12800 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gabrielle Glaser As evidence of widespread vitamin D deficiency grows, some scientists are wondering whether the sunshine vitamin—once only considered important in bone health—may actually play a role in one of neurology's most vexing conditions: autism. The idea, although not yet tested or widely held, comes out of preliminary studies in Sweden and Minnesota. Last summer, Swedish researchers published a study in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology that found the prevalence of autism and related disorders was three to four times higher among Somali immigrants than non-Somalis in Stockholm. The study reviewed the records of 2,437 children, born between 1988 and 1998 in Stockholm, in response to parents and teachers who had raised concerns about whether children with a Somali background were overrepresented in the total group of children with autism. In Sweden, the 15,000-strong Somali community calls autism "the Swedish disease," says Elisabeth Fernell, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and a co-author of the study. In Minnesota, where there are an estimated 60,000 Somali immigrants, the situation was quite similar: There, health officials noted reports of autism among Somali refugees, who began arriving in 1993, comparable to those found in Sweden. Within several years of arrival, dozens of the Somali families whose children were born in the U.S. found themselves grappling with autism, says Huda Farah, a Somali-born molecular biologist who works on refugee resettlement issues with Minnesota health officials. The number of Somali children in the city's autism programs jumped from zero in 1999 to 43 in 2007, says Ann Fox, director of special education programs for Minneapolis schools. The number of Somali-speaking children in the Minneapolis school district increased from 1,773 to 2,029 during the same period. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12799 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Early to bed, early to rise makes a man sleepy and inattentive at twilight. A new brain imaging study suggests morning people’s circadian clocks can’t resist the biological pressure to sleep, while night owls don’t buckle as easily. The research, appearing in the April 24 Science, could change the way scientists view the relationship between sleep and the circadian clock. Two systems control sleeping and waking — the circadian clock and the sleep homeostat. The circadian clock helps synch the body’s rhythms, such as the rise and fall of blood pressure and body temperature, with light and dark cycles. The homeostat is a biological accountant that keeps track of how long a person has been awake or asleep and how much sleep the person has had recently — inducing sleep when it’s been too long. As the day goes on, the waking signal from the clock gets stronger, says Derk-Jan Dijk, a professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England. “It’s not just an alarm clock that gives one signal in the morning,” he says. “It’s really a process.” If the circadian clock operated alone, people would be most awake in the evening, but the homeostat counterbalances the clock’s wake signal. Until now, scientists have either viewed the two systems as separate, or assumed that the clock was the most important factor in determining bedtimes. But the study introduces a new, more intimate link between the two systems. The homeostat plays a more important role than people thought in determining sleeping and waking times, says Allan Pack of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12798 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan A small patch of cells that protects the eye from age-related blindness could begin trials in patients within two years in the UK. The pioneering treatment could be one of the first successful applications originating from embryonic stem cells (ESC), the cells in embryos that can grow into all tissues of the body. Because embryos are destroyed when ESCs are obtained, anti-abortion groups have opposed development of treatments based on them. More recently, they've claimed that ESC research is unnecessary because it's now possible to make ordinary tissue into embryonic-like cells called "induced pluripotent" stem cells (iPS). Success of the eye patch would demonstrate that ESCs can indeed lead to valuable treatments, in this case to prevent blindness. In a major boost for the treatment today, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced that it would be funding clinical development of the treatment and helping to win permission from regulatory authorities to proceed with trials. "This offers such an opportunity for patients, and it's time to start mapping that regulatory pathway towards trials," says Ruth McKernan, chief scientific officer of Pfizer Regenerative Medicine. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Vision; Stem Cells
Link ID: 12797 - Posted: 06.24.2010