Word: ernest
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...delicate procedure that lasted more than two hours, Ernest and his team tried a new and hopeful approach to macular degeneration. They first took cells from the retina of an aborted fetus, then surgically transplanted them into Van Vliet's severely impaired left eye. Since the operation, the transplanted cells have begun to proliferate, forming minute projections that stretch toward Van Vliet's macula. For Ernest, a large, affable man of 62, the weekly ritual of scrutinizing the eye scans that chronicle Van Vliet's recovery from surgery proved intensely satisfying, not only professionally but also because of his frustrating...
Even now, however, Ernest and his colleagues cannot be certain they are on the right track. Too many promising treatments for macular degeneration, they caution, have failed to produce discernible benefits. But if they--and other researchers around the world--are on to something basic, then eventually ophthalmologists will be able to help their patients, perhaps not to cure macular degeneration (that would be too much to hope for), but at least to stop its relentless progression...
...cells in solution and injecting them into the eye--because cells handled in this fashion did not grow particularly well. The team found that it obtained much better results when it attached the cells to a sticky substrate like fibrinogen, a protein involved in blood clotting. "And then," says Ernest, "we made a serendipitous discovery." Dr. Karine Gabrielian, a physician on the team, had been struggling to fashion the thinnest possible slivers of fibrinogen. Checking on her samples one morning, she found that some of the slivers had curled up into spheres, each the size of a coarsely ground speck...
...team made progress on one front, Ernest grew increasingly worried about the immune system's response to the transplants. Contrary to what many had supposed, fetal RPE cells did not behave as if they were immunologically neutral. In experiments in Sweden, for example, transplanted cells were rejected. And Ernest's team found that adding fetal RPE cells to laboratory cultures sent white blood cells, which attack transplanted tissue, into overdrive. Curiously, however, adding even greater numbers of RPE cells to the culture appeared to force the white blood cells into a quiescent state, thus lowering the chances of rejection. Pearl...
...knows yet whether this hunch is right. Gouras and his Swedish colleagues have found that rejection of fetal RPE cells can occur months down the road. Moreover, slight differences in approach between Gouras' team and Ernest's may or may not prove to be significant. "It's an experiment," says surgeon Patel. "That's all it is. What we're trying to find out is whether there's a rationale for going to a larger study...