Posted by iCELL News, on 07th December 2011
Neuromuscular junctions grown for the first time
By Pam Wanderley
For the first time, researchers at UCF have used adult stem cells to grow neuromuscular junctions, which are the main key connectors that allow muscle movement by the brain between human muscle and spinal cells. These grown cells can provide an easier means of testing for treatments and cures for many degenerative diseases in the future.
Our knowledge on stem cells, which are special cells within the body that hold regenerative abilities and have the capability of replacing cells damaged by disease, and the research involving them, continue to grow and create new discoveries.
Through the years there have been conflicting debates on the ethical viewpoints both for and against the use of embryonic stem cells and the research involved in using the cells to create treatments for a multitude of illnesses such as diabetes or heart disease. There are still those who oppose using stem cells, both embryonic and adult, for research purposes. With this new breakthrough, researchers and scientists have many more opportunities and possibilities within their reach than they ever had before.
“It is a long process,” said Nadine Guo, a UCF research professor who was part of the discovery. Guo said she was excited about the breakthrough the team of researchers had come across, which opens the doors to discovering other potentially life-saving treatments for other illnesses.
This breakthrough, which was discovered after conducting numerous experiments involving the testing of a variety of parameters such as cell density, is considered to be a huge step in the development of “human-on-a-chip” systems.
“[These systems] would be a better in vitro model for the studies of human spinal [or] muscular injuries [and] diseases which will ultimately speed up the translation process from bench to clinics,” Guo said.
With these new systems, research and testing for treatments for many muscular degenerating illnesses, such as Lou Gehrig’s disease — which in its later stages can lead to total paralysis — can have the potential to be completed much more quickly.
Compared to the normal 10-year wait most treatments take to go through both animal and patient trials, the “human-on-a-chip” systems will allow more testing to be done in a shorter period of time.
The ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) Association states that currently there is only one FDA-approved drug and a few experimental treatments that only help to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease, but there is no known cure.
However, with the new “human-on-a-chip” systems, there are numerous possibilities for finding newer and better treatments, not only for Lou Gehrig’s disease but for other muscular degenerative diseases as well.
According to James Hickman, the UCF bioengineer who led the breakthrough research, it would even be possible to rebuild entire neuromuscular circuits in the future.
“The idea had been proposed a while ago,” Hickman said.
Prior to being funded in 2004 by the National Institutes of Health for further research, Hickman said that successful tests had been performed before with the use of rat and mouse cells.
Guo, who has worked on the project for roughly 2 years, and Hickman, who started his research about 15 years ago, both say that the next step in the development of these systems is to figure out how to put them into application.
Integrating these “human-on-a-chip” systems with other tissues in the human body is important to avoid the other cells rejecting the system, and this discovery as a whole has opened the doors to a variety of applications in the future, Hickman said.
Neuromuscular junctions grown for the first time
By Pam Wanderley
For the first time, researchers at UCF have used adult stem cells to grow neuromuscular junctions, which are the main key connectors that allow muscle movement by the brain between human muscle and spinal cells. These grown cells can provide an easier means of testing for treatments and cures for many degenerative diseases in the future.
Our knowledge on stem cells, which are special cells within the body that hold regenerative abilities and have the capability of replacing cells damaged by disease, and the research involving them, continue to grow and create new discoveries.
Through the years there have been conflicting debates on the ethical viewpoints both for and against the use of embryonic stem cells and the research involved in using the cells to create treatments for a multitude of illnesses such as diabetes or heart disease. There are still those who oppose using stem cells, both embryonic and adult, for research purposes. With this new breakthrough, researchers and scientists have many more opportunities and possibilities within their reach than they ever had before.
“It is a long process,” said Nadine Guo, a UCF research professor who was part of the discovery. Guo said she was excited about the breakthrough the team of researchers had come across, which opens the doors to discovering other potentially life-saving treatments for other illnesses.
This breakthrough, which was discovered after conducting numerous experiments involving the testing of a variety of parameters such as cell density, is considered to be a huge step in the development of “human-on-a-chip” systems.
“[These systems] would be a better in vitro model for the studies of human spinal [or] muscular injuries [and] diseases which will ultimately speed up the translation process from bench to clinics,” Guo said.
With these new systems, research and testing for treatments for many muscular degenerating illnesses, such as Lou Gehrig’s disease — which in its later stages can lead to total paralysis — can have the potential to be completed much more quickly.
Compared to the normal 10-year wait most treatments take to go through both animal and patient trials, the “human-on-a-chip” systems will allow more testing to be done in a shorter period of time.
The ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) Association states that currently there is only one FDA-approved drug and a few experimental treatments that only help to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease, but there is no known cure.
However, with the new “human-on-a-chip” systems, there are numerous possibilities for finding newer and better treatments, not only for Lou Gehrig’s disease but for other muscular degenerative diseases as well.
According to James Hickman, the UCF bioengineer who led the breakthrough research, it would even be possible to rebuild entire neuromuscular circuits in the future.
“The idea had been proposed a while ago,” Hickman said.
Prior to being funded in 2004 by the National Institutes of Health for further research, Hickman said that successful tests had been performed before with the use of rat and mouse cells.
Guo, who has worked on the project for roughly 2 years, and Hickman, who started his research about 15 years ago, both say that the next step in the development of these systems is to figure out how to put them into application.
Integrating these “human-on-a-chip” systems with other tissues in the human body is important to avoid the other cells rejecting the system, and this discovery as a whole has opened the doors to a variety of applications in the future, Hickman said.