The American company Aspen Neuroscience, which is based in San Diego, California, announced that it intends later this year to start clinical trials on the idea of taking a stem cell from a person, cultivating it in the laboratory, and injecting it into the same person again to stop the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. ). In people with Parkinson's, neurons die, and they lose their ability to produce the chemical dopamine, which leads to a loss of muscle movement. The American start-up wants to know if the body's restoring stem cell will regain its ability to produce dopamine, and thus stop the muscular and nervous tremors that are the main feature of this incurable disease. The company's chief executive, Damian McDevitt, said that animal testing in the lab showed good promise. Several companies, including Aspen Neuroscience, are seeking to genetically engineer normal cells so that they are transformed into stem cells, which behave similarly to embryonic cells in that they can grow into all types of cells in the human body. The researchers of these companies hope that these normal cells will be treated so that they can be re-planted in the body to treat a number of incurable diseases. Among those researchers is a team from the US National Institutes of Health, who started an experiment in 2019 to treat macular degeneration, which is one of the main causes of vision loss. This is done using an eye membrane that was grown from a sample taken from the patient's blood. It also means that later this year, Mayo Clinic scientists will perform surgery to transplant heart tissue taken from a patient's skin cells, in an effort to treat congenital heart disease. The pioneer of stem cell research during the eighties and nineties of the twentieth century, Professor Rudolph Gainesch told the "Wall Street Journal" that the idea of using stem cells in treatment is still impractical, because it costs time and money. However, he believed that opening the door to the aforementioned experiments represented an important stage in determining the feasibility of these therapeutic pathways. Researchers in this field are encouraged by the success of an experiment to modify adult cells so that they act like a gushing fountain of youth. Modern experiments differ from the traditional experience of benefiting from embryonic stem cells. The cells in the new experiments are taken from blood or skin cells and converted into stem cells in the laboratory. After that, a specific specialization is determined for it, such as eye tissue, a heart cell, or a neuron. Although the development of these tissues takes a lot of time and money; However, scientists hope that this will reduce the chances of the body rejecting the cell that is grown in it, because it is originally a cell from the human body itself. Scientists acknowledge that there are risks involved in transplanting tissue originally extracted from stem cells, as unwanted cells or cells capable of forming tumors may result from such transplantation. There is still a small chance that the immune system will reject the transplanted cell. For years, researchers have relied on extracting embryonic stem cells from embryo-fertilization clinics that couples donate for research purposes, or from fetal tissue from abortions. However, the source of these cells is very limited. There are also significant legal hurdles preventing the US government from funding such research. Cell medicine received a major boost in 2006, when Japanese stem cell scientist Shinya Yamanaka, during research conducted at the University of Tokyo, identified genes that could turn back the hands of youth in adult mice in the laboratory. This means that he succeeded in returning those cells to their embryonic state. Thanks to technological advances in stem cell science, researchers have been able to make subtle changes in the transformation of adult cells. They found the right mix of growth factors, proteins, and machinery to produce the needed cells, mimicking the environment in which an embryo develops. They updated their lab protocols for mapping the genome of cells and analyzing the proteins the cells produced, to determine precisely whether their cell they had grown in the lab was the correct type, and that the process was flawless. Despite this, scientists acknowledge that progress is very slow, as the process of converting cells taken from the body into function-defining stem cells takes months. It is noteworthy that the Japanese scientist Yamanaka had received the Nobel Prize in 2012 for his advanced research in stem cells. One of his pioneering experiences was that he treated an elderly Japanese woman who began to lose her sight due to advanced age. In 2014, the Japanese scientist took cells from the skin of the elderly and turned them into stem cells, which he returned to the body to carry out the task of vision. The New England Journal of Medicine published a report stating that after a year of experimentation, there was no improvement in the elderly woman. Also, no deterioration occurred. No side effects occurred. Yamanaka said he decided to set up a bank of transferable cells to reduce the time it took to find donors for those cells. But patients who receive these modified cells face the problem that their immunity will reject them.
Antibiotics do not help patients with viral infections
Researchers at the University of Oslo, Norway, said that most hospitalized patients due to acute viral infection are usually given doses of antibiotics, in anticipation that there is a bacterial infection accompanying the viral infection. But the Norwegian study says this common practice may not improve these patients' chances of survival. Study team leader Dr. Maggret Jarlsdatter indicated that her team researched the effect of antibiotics in saving more than 2,100 patients in a hospital in Norway, during the period 2017-2021. The team concluded that giving antibiotics to patients with respiratory infections would not likely reduce the risk of death within 30 days of starting treatment. About 70% of people with COVID-19 were prescribed antibiotics in some countries. This may have led, albeit inadvertently, to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant microbes, dubbed "supermicrobes". The Norwegian study indicates that the world is witnessing an excessive use of antibiotics, which helped microbes to become resistant to antibiotics. It is a development that scientists believe represents one of the greatest threats to global public health. The volunteers were selected for the study after examining a nasal or throat swab, as a result of which it was confirmed that they had a viral infection, either with influenza, respiratory syncytial infection, or Covid-19. And 63% of them were given antibiotics to treat respiratory infection while they were in hospital. Within 30 days of the start of the study, 168 patients died, 22 of whom were not prescribed antibiotics. After taking into consideration the important factors, such as gender, age, and medical history; The researchers found that patients who were prescribed antibiotics while they were in hospital were nearly twice as likely to die within 30 days, compared to patients who were not prescribed antibiotics.
Okaz (London, Washington) @OKAZ_online