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This week, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) reported the first success in generating new populations of insulin-producing cells using skin cells of Type 1 diabetes patients. The achievement involved the newer embryo-free technique for generating stem cells, and marked the first step toward building a treatment that could one day replace a patient's faulty insulin-making cells with healthy, functioning ones. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...
Douglas Melton, co-director of HSCI, and his team took skin cells from two Type 1 diabetes patients, exposed the cells to a cocktail of three genes that converted them back to an embryonic state - which are referred to as pluripotent stem cells - then instructed the newly reborn cells to grow into beta cells, the cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin. In Type 1 diabetes, these beta cells no longer work to break down the glucose that floods the body after each meal, leading to blood-sugar spikes that can damage the kidneys and heart...
...example, it turns out that the new beta cells can be made to survive the attack by the immune system, then the next step would be to return the functional beta cells, generated through strategies like the one used by Melton, back into the patients from whom the original skin cells came. But even that won't happen until more testing is done on the cells to ensure they are both safe and effective...
...Islam is "what it was for people when I was a kid - a quarter of their lives," he says. "You're a soccer fan, you go shopping, watch TV and you're a Muslim." The England Kureishi chronicles - indeed, helped create - is a country where Islam, curries and brown skin have become as British as Earl Grey tea and rain...
...That was back in 1989, when over 190 nations signed the Montreal Protocol, phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The decade before, scientists had discovered that CFCs were blowing a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, exposing us to dangerous ultraviolet radiation and boosting the risk of skin cancer. Today, CFCs are no longer in widespread use, and the ozone layer appears to be on the mend...