disease
Why We’re So Excited About Stem Cells
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Certainly – as you can see here – stem cells are spectacularly beautiful. But they also hold spectacular promise for medicine. That’s why I immediately expressed my enthusiasm for Monday’s Supreme Court ruling that effectively enables NIH to continue conducting and funding responsible, scientifically worthy stem cell research.
There are many kinds of stem cells. This is a picture of induced pluripotent stem cells – or, iPS cells. Investigators have recently begun using iPS cells to model several neurological diseases – including Parkinson’s. The cells here have been treated with growth factors that coax them into becoming the dopamine producing (dopaminergic) neurons lost in Parkinson’s. The colorized markers indicate the presence of three proteins found within dopaminergic neurons: (1) the enzyme needed to produce dopamine (tyrosine hydroxylase, in blue), (2) a structural protein specific to neurons (Type III beta-tubulin, in green), and (3) a gene regulatory protein needed in dopaminergic neurons (FOXA2, in red). The color-mixing in some cells indicates that all three proteins are present – confirming that these cells are on their way to becoming dopaminergic neurons.
Today’s image is more than just a pretty picture. It’s a window into the ways that disease affects the body – and possibly the ways we might counter those affects. The NIH/NINDS web site has more information about how iPS cells are being used to study Parkinson’s and other neurological disorders.
New Weapon Targets Ancient Foe
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Source: Clifton E. Barry III, Ph.D., NIAID, NIH.
Tuberculosis is an ancient scourge that has evolved in lockstep with humans for more than ten millennia. It infected residents of ancient Egypt; remnants of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the deadly bacterium that ravages the lungs and other organs of its victims, have been found in Egyptian mummies dating back 3,000 years. It is considered one of the world’s deadliest diseases.
I’ve had my own experience with TB. As a medical resident in the intensive care unit in North Carolina in 1977, I was exposed to the bacterium during emergency care of a young migrant worker who arrived at our hospital in extremis from internal bleeding. Only after the hemorrhaging was stopped did we discover his advanced tuberculosis. But I’m happy to say we treated him successfully with a battery of drugs, and he walked out of the hospital. My own TB skin test tested positive a few months later, and so I had to take a year’s worth of therapy with isoniazid to wipe out those little microbial invaders. That was all it took.
For the most part, TB cases have been reduced to a trickle in the Western world—thanks to antibiotics—and relegated to the history books with descriptions of ‘consumption’ in nineteen-century England and tales of jail-like sanatoria where those consumptives were quarantined and often died.
