stem cell
oracknows | September 10, 2017A week ago, I wrote about a naturopath in Utah named Harry Adelson, who was advertising his use stem cells to treat lumbar and cervical disk problems, including degenerated and dehydrated disks. That alone was bad enough, but what elevated "Not-a-Dr." (my preferred translation of the "ND" that naturopaths like to use after their names to confuse patients because it's so close to "MD") Adelson above and beyond the usual naturopathic quackery is his cosplay of an interventional radiologist, in which he purchased a C-arm to use fluoroscopy to inject his "stem cells" right into the intervertebral…
oracknows | July 19, 2017I've written quite a few times about stem cell quackery. Although I had taken an interest in dubious stem cell treatments before, because I live in the Detroit area, the stories from a couple of years ago about hockey great Gordie Howe's stem cell treatment for his stroke, how it was credulously reported in the media, and how expressing the slightest degree of skepticism about "miracle cure" testimonials like Howe's is not appreciated by the media or patient families because it's interpreted incorrectly as attacking the patient or the family. Basically, people want to believe and don't like…
dr. dolittle | June 28, 2016 Image of a naked mole rat By Roman Klementschitz, Wien - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=252701
Researchers trying to find cures for cancer find naked mole rats rather interesting. Not only are these animals long-lived by rodent standards, they are also resistant to the development of cancer. By long-lived, we are talking up to 30 years! A team of researchers from Hokkaido University and Keio University in Japan have now isolated stem cells from the skin of naked mole rats and induced them to revert back to pluripotent stem cells, the type capable of…
dr. dolittle | April 15, 2013Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston) have successfully regenerated kidneys that were unsuitable for transplantation. They stripped the tissue of all native cells, then added donor stem cells to the scaffolding that was left behind. The re-animated kidneys successfully created urine after being transplanted into rats! The hope is to apply this technique to humans with end stage renal disease who are in need of kidney transplants and reportedly would work for the regeneration of other tissues as well.
dr. dolittle | November 21, 2012Jasper is just one of the injured dogs that this research team has been able to help walk following an injection of nasal cells:
dr. dolittle | September 18, 2012
Damage to the auditory nerve connecting the inner ear and brain causes hearing loss in some individuals. Researchers Dr. Marcelo Rivolta from the University of Sheffield and colleagues have shown that human embryonic stem cells that were differentiated into auditory nerve cells can improve overall by ~45% hearing in gerbils that were treated with ouabain to damage the nerves. Ten weeks after transplantation, some of the differentiated cells were shown to grow projections that connected with the brain stem and the animals could perceive more faint sounds.
Of course the purpose of the studies…
edyong | February 16, 2010All of our cells are staffed by armies of executioners. They are usually restrained but when unleashed, they can set off a fatal chain reaction that kills the cell. This suicide squad does away with billions of cells every day. It helps to balance the production of new cells with the loss of old ones, to sculpt growing tissues and to destroy potential cancer cells.
But a new study suggests that the executioners aren't always lethal. In fact, they're essential for life. Through the unorthodox method of damaging our DNA, they can actually activate important genes. This technique for switching…