Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
11/6/2014 A cure for Lou Gehrig's disease is sought in tiny cells, big data - The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cells-640798-disease-gehrig.html?page=1 1/5
Magazines Unidos Weather
Health People Food Beaches Puzzles Family Fashion Home & Garden Travel Comics More Education Pets
NEWSSouthland woman'scancer battle was afraud, police say
NEWSHalloween hit-and-run bringsmanslaughter charge
NEWSIn past year, OrangeCounty jails are lesscrowded, crime down
NEWSDying with Dignitylaw: Cancer-strickenUCI grad dies on herterms
Log in Subscribe Today Customer Service eRegister Today's Paper
CARS
JOBS
HOMES
SHOP
LIFE
A cure for Lou Gehrig's disease is sought intiny cells, big data
MOST POPULAR
State GOP astounds with multiple wins
Elderly couple struck by OCTA bus in SantaAna
Clippers are crushed by Warriors
Santa Ana 'ahead of the game' with pot law
Authorities identify Rancho Santa Margaritaman who jumped to his death from bridge
/ STAFF WRITERBY JENNA CHANDLER
Published: Nov. 4, 2014 Updated: Nov. 5, 20141:40 p.m.
Before diving too deeply into this story on Lou Gehrig’sdisease research, you should know about a techniquethat manipulates an adult’s blood or skin cell intobehaving like an embryonic stem cell.
Once reverted into that primitive state, this new cell canbe directed to become any other type of cell in thehuman body.
Funded by an $8 million federal grant awarded lastmonth, UC Irvine researchers are leading a team of six
institutions studying Lou Gehrig’s disease using stem cells generated through thisreprogramming method.
The cells are known as induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells. Researchers involved inthe NeuroLINCS program said they might be key to learning why Lou Gehrig’s diseasestrikes patients who did not inherit the neurological condition, and aid in discoveringnew drug treatments for it.
For the study, the iPS cells will be derived from the blood cells of 12 people with LouGehrig’s disease and turned into motor neurons, the nerve cells that control voluntarymuscle movements.
Before iPS cells, researchers’ options for studying nerve cells were limited to thosetaken from mice, or actual embryonic stem cells.
“You’re not destroying any embryos, not destroying any fetuses, and the biggestadvantage is the genetic material does not change. The DNA or whatever the patient
KEVIN SULLIVAN, , STAFFPHOTOGRAPHER
Register ConnectNews Sports Business Entertainment Life Opinion Obits Knowledge Cafe
11/6/2014 A cure for Lou Gehrig's disease is sought in tiny cells, big data - The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cells-640798-disease-gehrig.html?page=1 2/5
ComicsHoroscope Puzzles & Games
MUST-SEE PHOTOS
1.
Underwater pups featured in Chapmanalumnus Seth Casteel's new book
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
1. Terri Nunn is still unleashing herinner animal
2. Queens get freaky on Halloween
3. New Politics treats fans to sold-out, sharp set
4. Marilyn Manson acts up atObservatory
More from this storySLIDE SHOW:A cure for Lou Gehrig'sdisease is sought in tiny cells,big data4 Photos »
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Which fall holiday do you think is better?
Thanksgiving
Halloween
1 2 Next Page
harbors, a certain mutation, a problem with the DNA code, that is maintained when youconvert to iPS,” said Dhruv Sareen, a neurobiology researcher with Cedars-Sinai Boardof Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute.
Researchers will upload their information – and there will be a vast amount of it – into ashared database where analysts will look for commonalities to help doctors betterdiagnose and treat the disease. Along with UCI and Cedars-Sinai, participants includeresearchers from Johns Hopkins University, UC San Francisco, Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, and the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease,
Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, attacks motor neurons, causingthem to degenerate. It leaves the mind intact as it wilts muscles and freezes joints. Inthe grip of its most severe stage, patients can no longer speak, eat or breathe on theirown.
Sareen called it one of the more deadly neurological diseases, with most patients dyingwithin four to five years after diagnosis.
The woman heading up NeuroLINCS, Leslie Thompson, is renowned for her work withHuntington’s disease, another degenerative motor neuron condition. But unlike themajority of Lou Gehrig’s cases, the cause of Huntington’s is known: It is a geneticdefect.
A small number, 5 percent to 10 percent, of Lou Gehrig’s cases are inherited.
When studying motor neurons, Thompson and her team will look for “signatures,”characteristics that make them unique. They will expose the nerve cells to proteins,genes, chemicals and anything else with which they might come in contact in the brain,to see how those factors change them or their activity.
Cedars-Sinai’s regenerative medicine institute is generating the iPS cells for the project.It delivered versions derived from healthy skin cells last week for the control group, andis sending iPS cells from ALS patients this week.
“We want to be able to create in a dish the motor neurons that mirror an individualpatient’s disease so we can see how quickly or slowly degeneration occurs,” theinstitute’s director, Clive Svendsen, said. “We also want to be able to interact with thedisease model and see if we can slow it down in the dish. If so, theoretically, we shouldbe able to slow it down in the patient as well.”
MORE FROM HEALTH AND FITNESSUCI researchers lead study for drug to treat mild to moderate Alzheimer's
Dying with Dignity law: Cancer-stricken UCI grad dies on her termsBrittany Maynard was 29 years old and suffering from an inoperable brain tumor.
Get smart about picking your hospitalYou can find out the institution's infection rate. The catch, observers say, is knowing where tolook.
11/6/2014 A cure for Lou Gehrig's disease is sought in tiny cells, big data - The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cells-640798-disease-gehrig.html?page=2 1/3
Magazines Unidos Weather
Register Connect
Health People Food Beaches Puzzles Family Fashion Home & Garden Travel Comics More Education Pets
NEWSSouthland woman'scancer battle was afraud, police say
NEWSHalloween hit-and-run bringsmanslaughter charge
NEWSIn past year, OrangeCounty jails are lesscrowded, crime down
NEWSDying with Dignitylaw: Cancer-strickenUCI grad dies on herterms
Log in Subscribe Today Customer Service eRegister Today's Paper
CARS
JOBS
HOMES
SHOP
LIFE
A cure for Lou Gehrig's disease is sought intiny cells, big data(Page 2 of 2)
MOST POPULAR
State GOP astounds with multiple wins
Elderly couple struck by OCTA bus in SantaAna
Clippers are crushed by Warriors
Santa Ana 'ahead of the game' with pot law
Authorities identify Rancho Santa Margaritaman who jumped to his death from bridge
Published: Nov. 4, 2014 Updated: Nov. 5, 20141:40 p.m.
The grant from the National Institutes of Health will cover six years of research. Alongthe way, Thompson and her team will have to meet certain milestones. The first isbuilding infrastructure for the database and determining how to upload theinformation.
“We keep track of things in our own lab, but we’re not used to sharing it with others,”Thompson said. “We’ve had ways we’ve been sharing, through publications, and thereare some centralized databases and sources that are available – but not at this level.This is going to take a whole new type of technology to handle this type of data set, andcomputational analysis. It really is really innovative.”
Ryan Lim is a UCI graduate student working in Thompson’s lab. He said one nerve cellhas about 500 gigabytes of data, “and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
One gigabyte in a cell phone’s data plan is the equivalent of sending or receiving 50,000e-mails, streaming 33 hours of music, viewing 1,000 web pages and posting 2,800photos on Facebook, according to the consumers group Citizens Utility Board.
Svendsen said data-analysis teams will collaborate to create computer programs topull all the information together.
“Scientists often focus on very small things, such as a single signaling pathway in cellsor a single gene or protein that is involved in some way with disease development, butidentifying and correcting one component rarely leads to a cure,” he said. “This isespecially true in the brain because its networks are very complex."
Contact the writer: [email protected] and @jennakchandler on Twitter
News Sports Business Entertainment Life Opinion Obits Knowledge Cafe
