Running, cycling and swimming for a cure

Any excuse to link stem cell research and a favorite activity...

In the top 10 list of our most popular entries, spinal cord injury ranked among the topics of most interest to readers. And for good reason. It's the first condition to be approved for an embryonic stem cell trial. It's also a terrible condition in dire need of a therapy.

Those readers interested in helping find a cure for spinal cord injury might want to check out the Team Reeve Marathon season. Short of toiling in the lab, this a great way to move the research forward. The Reeve Foundation will help train runners in return for their fund-raising efforts.

If running for a cure sounds appealing but your heart lies with an ailment other than spinal cord injury, you can check out your favorite disease charity. Many raise money by training volunteers for marathons, triathlons, cycling events and hikes.

The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute also recently posted information about Team Sanford-Burnham in which fund-raisers run with the scientists whose work they are supporting.

As runner Judy Wade, a Team Stanford-Burnham enthusiast, says about marathons she's run:

"You have to remind yourself why you’re doing this, the cause. You feel really good about yourself when you’re finished.”

(She's right!)

While out there raising funds you can also raise awareness of stem cell research. Here are some answers to the most common misconceptions about stem cell research.

A.A.

Stem cells, Id, and cancer

Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute posted an interesting item today on their blog Beaker about a talk given as part of the Southern California Stem Cell Consortium. At the invitation of Evan Snyder, Dr. Antonio Iavarone of Columbia University discussed his work with a protein named Id. According to their entry:

He described how Id keeps stem cells as stem cells – increasing in number, but not settling down and choosing a specialty. When Dr. Iavarone and his colleagues turned Id off, stem cells were allowed to stop dividing and start differentiating.

“We are now beginning to screen chemical libraries to find molecules that target Id,” Dr. Iavarone explained. “We believe anti-Id agents will be effective at inhibiting tumor growth.”

 This type of work will be critical for developing therapies to combat cancer or replace damaged neurons in neurodegenerative diseases.

A.A.

Protein Flips Switch In Embryonic Stem Cell Growth

Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the Scripps Research Institute have found that a protein known to play an important role in maintaining mouse embryonic stem cells has a similarly crucial job in human embryonic stem cells. This protein, called Shp2, acts as a switch, telling the cells to either divide to make more of themselves – a process called self-renewal – or to mature into different cell types – called differentiation. Fine-tuning this balance between self-renewal and differentiation will be critical for developing new therapies based on embryonic stem cells. The cells need to self-renew in order to grow up enough cells to be therapeutically useful. Once researchers have sufficient cells, they need to switch the cells over to a state where they can mature into cell types such as nerves, retinal cells, or pancreatic islets that can be used to study or treat disease.

PLoS ONE: March 17, 2009
CIRM funding: Yuhong Pang (T2-00004)

Related Information: Press Release, Burnham Institute for Medical Research

Protein in Pancreas May Lead to New Therapy for Type II Diabetes

Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the University of California, San Diego have found parallels between how the pancreas develops in the embryo and type II diabetes (also known as adult diabetes). When the pancreas develops in an embryo, a protein called Wnt (pronounced “wint) helps control how the cells mature into insulin-producing cells. In most adults, the pancreas contains very little Wnt protein, but in people with type II diabetes Wnt protein is abundant in the pancreas. The authors suggest that Wnt could be a target for new type II diabetes therapies.

Experimental Diabetes Research: January 20, 2009
CIRM funding: Seung-Hee Lee (T2-00004), Carla Demeterco (T2-00003)

Related Information: Press Release, Burnham Institute for Medical Research

Method Produces Nerve Cells More Quickly

Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research have developed a new way of quickly maturing embryonic stem cells into neural cells. Other research groups have worked out lab conditions that encourage embryonic stem cells to mature into various types of nerve cells, but those methods were slow and resulted in early stage nerve cells that were more likely to cause tumors when transplanted into mice. This new method could speed work by researchers who are trying to develop therapies for diseases of the nervous system. As an additional benefit, this work showed that some previously overlooked genes are worth studying as potential regulators of embryonic stem cell maturation.

Cell Death and Differentiation: March 13, 2009
CIRM authors: R Bajpai (T2-00004), Stuart Lipton (RC1-00125), Alexi Terskikh (RS1-00466)

Related Information: Press release, Burnham Institute for Medical Research, Lipton bio, Terskikh bio