Researchers at UNSW Australia have for the first time used electrical pulses delivered from a cochlear implant to deliver gene therapy, thereby successfully regrowing auditory nerves.

The research also heralds a possible new way of treating a range of neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease, and psychiatric conditions such as depression through this novel way of delivering gene therapy.

The research is published today (Thursday 24 April) in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

"People with cochlear implants do well with understanding speech, but their perception of pitch can be poor, so they often miss out on the joy of music," says UNSW Professor Gary Housley, who is the senior author of the research paper.

"Ultimately, we hope that after further research, people who depend on cochlear implant devices will be able to enjoy a broader dynamic and tonal range of sound, which is particularly important for our sense of the auditory world around us and for music appreciation," says Professor Housley, who is also the Director of the Translational Neuroscience Facility at UNSW Medicine.

The research, which has the support of Cochlear Limited through an Australian Research Council Linkage Project grant, has been five years in development.

The work centres on regenerating surviving nerves after age-related or environmental hearing loss, using existing cochlear technology. The cochlear implants are "surprisingly efficient" at localised gene therapy in the animal model, when a few electric pulses are administered during the implant procedure.

"This research breakthrough is important because while we have had very good outcomes with our cochlear implants so far, if we can get the nerves to grow close to the electrodes and improve the connections between them, then we'll be able to have even better outcomes in the future," says Jim Patrick, Chief Scientist and Senior Vice-President, Cochlear Limited.

It has long been established that the auditory nerve endings regenerate if neurotrophins -- a naturally occurring family of proteins crucial for the development, function and survival of neurons -- are delivered to the auditory portion of the inner ear, the cochlea.

But until now, research has stalled because safe, localised delivery of the neurotrophins can't be achieved using drug delivery, nor by viral-based gene therapy.

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Hearing quality restored with bionic ear technology used for gene therapy: Re-growing auditory nerves

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WASHINGTON - Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They used the technology to beam gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing.

The approach reported Wednesday isn't ready for human testing, but it's part of growing research into ways to let users of cochlear implants experience richer, more normal sound.

Normally, microscopic hair cells in a part of the inner ear called the cochlea detect vibrations and convert them to electrical impulses that the brain recognizes as sound. Hearing loss typically occurs as those hair cells are lost, whether from aging, exposure to loud noises or other factors.

Cochlear implants substitute for the missing hair cells, sending electrical impulses to directly activate auditory nerves in the brain. They've been implanted in more than 300,000 people. While highly successful, they don't restore hearing to normal, missing out on musical tone, for instance.

The idea behind the project: Perhaps a closer connection between the implant and the auditory nerves would improve hearing. Those nerves' bush-like endings can regrow if exposed to nerve-nourishing proteins called neurotrophins. Usually, the hair cells would provide those.

Researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales figured out a new way to deliver one of those growth factors.

They injected a growth factor-producing gene into the ears of deafened guinea pigs, animals commonly used as a model for human hearing. Then they adapted an electrode from a cochlear implant to beam in a few stronger-than-normal electrical pulses.

That made the membranes of nearby cells temporarily permeable, so the gene could slip inside. Those cells began producing the growth factor, which in turn stimulated regrowth of the nerve fibers closing some of the space between the nerves and the cochlear implant, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The animals still needed a cochlear implant to detect sound but those given the gene therapy had twice the improvement, they concluded.

Senior author Gary Housley estimated small studies in people could begin in two or three years.

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Researchers add gene therapy to cochlear implants in deaf animals

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MADRID, SPAIN - Spanish scientists have for the first time used gene therapy to reverse memory loss in mice with Alzheimer's, an advance that could lead to new drugs to treat the disease, they said Wednesday.

The Autonomous University of Barcelona team injected a gene which causes the production of a protein that is blocked in patients with Alzheimer's into the hippocampus -- a region of the brian essential to memory processing -- in mice that were in the initial stages of the disease.

"The protein that was reinstated by the gene therapy triggers the signals needed to activate the genes involved in long-term memory consolidation," the university said in a statement.

Gene therapy involves transplanting genes into a patient's cells to correct an otherwise incurable disease caused by a failure of one or another gene.

The finding was published in The Journal of Neuroscience and it follows four years of research.

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Scientists reverse memory loss in Alzheimer's-afflicted mice

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Women with mutations in the BRCA1 gene are at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer, and there are currently no drugs proven to reduce their cancer risk.

Now, early research suggests that existing drugs, already approved to treat other conditions, may help prevent breast cancer in these women, although more research is needed to prove this.

One drug, called benserazide, is currently used for Parkinson's disease, and in studies it reduced the formation of breast tumors in mice that had been implanted with cancer cells containing the BRCA1 gene mutation. All of the mice that did not receive the drug developed breast tumors, but 40 percent of mice given the drug were tumor-free, said study researcher Elizabeth Alli, of Stanford University School of Medicine. [7 Diseases You Can Learn About From a Genetic Test]

Some studies show that women with mutations in the BRCA1 gene have a 50 to 70 percent chance of getting breast cancer by age 70, compared with a 12 percent lifetime risk for the average American woman. Last year, actress Angelina Jolie announced she had undergone a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer because she has a BRCA1 gene mutation.

Two drugs, tamoxifen and raloxifene, are already approved to prevent breast cancer, but there's little information about how well they work for women with BRCA1 gene mutations. Both drugs work by blocking the action of estrogen on breast cells; the hormone can fuel the growth of certain types of breast cancer.

"The data out there for the efficacy of these drugs [among carries of BRCA1 mutations] is controversial, and inconsistent," Alli said. "So really it'd be ideal to identify new drugs that are more effective for this population."

The BRCA1 gene is involved in repairing damaged DNA a critical function, because damage to DNA can lead to cancer. Mutations in the BRCA1 gene increase the risk of cancer because they impair this repair process.

Benserazide, and possibly other drugs, may work to prevent breast cancer from BRCA1 mutations by restoring cells' ability to perform one type of DNA repair, the researchers said.

Alli noted that tamoxifen also increases the risk of endometrial cancer (cancer of the uterus lining), and for some women, this risk may outweigh the drug's benefits.

The next step in the research is to see whether benserazide, or other drugs that work similarly, prevents breast cancer in mice that have been genetically engineered to have BRCA1 gene mutations.

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Parkinson's drug shows promise in preventing breast cancer

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Symbiosis and Genetic engineering clip from "Core Biology: Plant Sciences"
1886-Nitrogen-Fixing of the Pea Family is Explained from the video Core Biology: Plant Sciences For more information and to purchase, please visit: DVD http:...

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Symbiosis and Genetic engineering clip from "Core Biology: Plant Sciences" - Video

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

23-Apr-2014

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, April 23, 2014Men whose testosterone falls below normal levels are more likely to have erectile dysfunction and to be overweight and have heart disease and type 2 diabetes. A new simple screening questionnaire designed to identify testosterone-deficient men for further testing and possible treatment is described in an article in Journal of Men's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Men's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jmh.

The article "Male Androgen Deficiency Syndrome (MADS) Screening Questionnaire: A Simplified Instrument to Identify Testosterone-Deficient Men" presents a variety of patient factors that are predictive of risk for testosterone deficiency and MADS. These include overweight status, race, exercise frequency, erectile dysfunction, and type 2 diabetes, according to study authors Nelson Stone, MD, The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York), Martin Miner, MD, Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University (Providence, RI), Wendy Poage, MHA, Prostate Conditions Education Council (Centennial, CO), and Aditi Patel and E. David Crawford, MD, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (Aurora, CO).

###

About the Journal

Journal of Men's Health is the premier peer-reviewed journal published quarterly in print and online that covers all aspects of men's health across the lifespan. The Journal publishes cutting-edge advances in a wide range of diseases and conditions, including diagnostic procedures, therapeutic management strategies, and innovative clinical research in gender-based biology to ensure optimal patient care. The Journal addresses disparities in health and life expectancy between men and women; increased risk factors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, and obesity; higher prevalence of diseases such as heart disease and cancer; and health care in underserved and minority populations. Journal of Men's Health meets the critical imperative for improving the health of men around the globe and ensuring better patient outcomes. Tables of content and a sample issue can be viewed on the Journal of Men's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jmh.

About the Societies

Journal of Men's Health is the official journal of the International Society of Men's Health (ISMH), American Society for Men's Health, Men's Health Society of India, and Foundation for Men's Health. The ISMH is an international, multidisciplinary, worldwide organization, dedicated to the rapidly growing field of gender-specific men's health.

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Screening instrument to identify testosterone deficiency

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A CT scan showing a cochlear implant in the left ear of a guinea pig. Image: UNSW Australia Biological Resources Imaging Laboratory, NationalImaging Facility of Australia, and UNSW TranslationalNeuroscience Facility

Scientists have devised a strategy they hope will one day make bionic ears even sharper. The idea is to make neurons inside the ear sprout new branches and become more sensitive to signals from a cochlear implant.

The cochlear implant is arguably the most successful bionic device ever invented. More than 200,000 people with severe hearing loss have received one, allowing them to understand speech and hear things like barking dogs and fire alarms. But theres plenty of room for improvement.

Pitch perception is not so good, and that impacts music appreciation and hearing in a complex environment like a noisy room, said Gary Housley, a physiologist and neuroscientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, and the senior author of a new study out today in Science Translational Medicine.

To appreciate what Housleys team did, you have to picture whats going on inside the inner ear. The bony, spiral cochlea is where sound waves get translated into the electrical language of neurons. Its essentially a coiled tube. The implant is thin like a wire, and it has an array of electrodes along its length. Surgeons thread it into the tube of the cochlea.A microphone worn on the ear converts sound into electrical signals and transmits them to the implant, thereby stimulating the auditory nerve directly and bypassing whatever part of the persons own hearing apparatus has broken down.

A cross section of the spiral tube of the cochlea shows the auditory nerve reaching up through the center. Image: Grays Anatomy, via WikiCommons

But a lot of information gets lost in the communication between the implant and the nerve.

Housley thinks one important reason is that in people with severe hearing loss, auditory nerve fibers degenerate and shrink into the bony core of the cochlea, farther away from the implant.

To try to overcome this communication breakdown, Housleys team borrowed some tricks from genetic engineering. We refer to it as closing the neural gap, he said.

Work by other scientists had suggested that growth factorschemicals that encourage neurons to grow new branchescouldimprove the performance of implants in lab animals. These studies used viruses to deliver genes encoding the growth factors, but Housleys team tried another strategy they think could be more precise.

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Genetic Tricks Could Make Bionic Ears Hear Better

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My Parkinson #39;s Story: Genetics
Young onset of Parkinson #39;s Disease (PD) -- is it hereditary? Veterans who develop PD under the age of 45 years likely have a larger genetic component to thei...

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Can You Overcome Genetics?
Genetics are big, but they aren #39;t the only factor in greatness. Get my books the Cube Method and 365STRONG at http://www.store.jtsstrength.com PLEASE SUBSCRIBE!!

By: Brandon Lilly

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Can You Overcome Genetics? - Video

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Brandon Lilly - Genetics
Like my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/tiagofaleiro For coaching at affordable prices, contact me at: tiago.vasconcelos.silva@gmail.com.

By: Tiago Vasconcelos

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Brandon Lilly - Genetics - Video

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Pronounce Medical Words Gene Therapy
This video shows you how to say Gene Therapy. How would you pronounce Gene Therapy?

By: Medical 101

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Pronounce Medical Words Gene Therapy - Video

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........................................................................................................................................................................................

WASHINGTON Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They beamed gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing. The approach reported Wednesday isnt ready for human testing, but its part of growing research into ways to let users of cochlear implants experience richer, more normal sound.

Normally, microscopic hair cells in the cochlea detect vibrations and convert them to electrical impulses that the brain recognizes as sound. Hearing loss typically occurs as those hair cells are lost, whether from aging, exposure to loud noises or other factors.

Cochlear implants substitute for the missing hair cells, sending electrical impulses to directly activate auditory nerves in the brain. Theyve been implanted in more than 300,000 people but, while highly successful, they dont restore hearing to normal, missing out on musical tone, for instance.

The idea behind the project was a closer connection between the implant and the auditory nerves, whose bush-like endings can regrow if exposed to nerve-nourishing proteins called neurotrophins, usually provided by the hair cells.

Researchers at Australias University of New South Wales figured out how to deliver one of those growth factors. They injected a growth factor-producing gene into the ears of deaf guinea pigs, animals commonly used as a model for human hearing. Then they adapted an electrode from a cochlear implant to beam in stronger-than-normal electrical pulses. That made the membranes of nearby cells temporarily permeable, so the gene could slip inside. Those cells began producing the growth factor, which in turn stimulated regrowth of the nerve fibers closing some of the space between the nerves and the cochlear implant, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The animals still needed a cochlear implant to detect sound but those given the gene therapy had twice the improvement, they concluded. Senior author Gary Housley estimated small studies in people could begin in two or three years.

Thats a really clever way of delivering the nerve booster, said Stanford University otolaryngology professor Stefan Heller, who wasnt involved with the Australian work. But Heller cautioned that its an early first step and its not clear how long the extra improvement would last or if it really would spur richer sound. He said other groups are exploring such approaches as drug coatings for implants; Hellers own research aims to regrow hair cells.

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Gene therapy may boost hearing, study finds

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They used the technology to beam gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing.

The approach reported Wednesday isn't ready for human testing, but it's part of growing research into ways to let users of cochlear implants experience richer, more normal sound.

Normally, microscopic hair cells in a part of the inner ear called the cochlea detect vibrations and convert them to electrical impulses that the brain recognizes as sound. Hearing loss typically occurs as those hair cells are lost, whether from aging, exposure to loud noises or other factors.

Cochlear implants substitute for the missing hair cells, sending electrical impulses to directly activate auditory nerves in the brain. They've been implanted in more than 300,000 people. While highly successful, they don't restore hearing to normal, missing out on musical tone, for instance.

The idea behind the project: Perhaps a closer connection between the implant and the auditory nerves would improve hearing. Those nerves' bush-like endings can regrow if exposed to nerve-nourishing proteins called neurotrophins. Usually, the hair cells would provide those.

Researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales figured out a new way to deliver one of those growth factors.

They injected a growth factor-producing gene into the ears of deafened guinea pigs, animals commonly used as a model for human hearing. Then they adapted an electrode from a cochlear implant to beam in a few stronger-than-normal electrical pulses.

That made the membranes of nearby cells temporarily permeable, so the gene could slip inside. Those cells began producing the growth factor, which in turn stimulated regrowth of the nerve fibers closing some of the space between the nerves and the cochlear implant, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The animals still needed a cochlear implant to detect sound but those given the gene therapy had twice the improvement, they concluded.

Senior author Gary Housley estimated small studies in people could begin in two or three years.

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Study: Gene Therapy May Boost Cochlear Implants

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The performance of cochlear implants has been improved with the use of gene therapy, suggesting a new avenue for developing better hearing aids

A computer-tomography scan shows a deaf guinea pig's skull and cochlear implant. Credit:UNSW Australia Biological Resources Imaging Laboratory and National Imaging Facility of Australia

Gene therapy delivered to the inner ear can help shrivelled auditory nerves to regrow and in turn, improve bionic ear technology, researchers report today inScience Translational Medicine. The work, conducted in guinea pigs, suggests a possible avenue for developing a new generation of hearing prosthetics that more closely mimics the richness and acuity of natural hearing.

Sound travels from its source to ears, and eventually to the brain, through a chain of biological translations that convert air vibrations to nerve impulses. When hearing loss occurs, its usually because crucial links near the end of this chain between the ears cochlear cells and the auditory nerve are destroyed. Cochlear implants are designed to bridge this missing link in people with profound deafness by implanting an array of tiny electrodes that stimulate the auditory nerve.

Although cochlear implants often work well in quiet situations, people who have them still struggle to understand music or follow conversations amid background noise. After long-term hearing loss, the ends of the auditory nerve bundles are often frayed and withered, so the electrode array implanted in the cochlea must blast a broad, strong signal to try to make a connection, instead of stimulating a more precise array of neurons corresponding to particular frequencies. The result is an aural smearing that obliterates fine resolution of sound, akin to forcing a piano player to wear snow mittens or a portrait artist to use finger paints.

To try to repair auditory nerve endings and help cochlear implants to send a sharper signal to the brain, researchers turned to gene therapy. Their method took advantage of the electrical impulses delivered by the cochlear-implant hardware, rather than viruses often used to carry genetic material, to temporarily turn inner-ear cells porous. This allowed DNA to slip in, says lead author Jeremy Pinyon, an auditory scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Pinyon and his colleagues were able to deliver a gene encoding neurotrophin, a protein that stimulates nerve growth, to the inner-ear cells of deaf guinea pigs. After injecting the cells with a solution of DNA, they sent a handful of 20-volt pulses through the cochlear-implant electrode arrays. The cells started producing neurotrophin, and the auditory nerve began to regenerate and reach out for the cochlea once again. The researchers found that the treated animals could use their implants with a sharper, more refined signal, although they did not compare the deaf guinea pigs to those with normal hearing. The work was partially funded by Cochlear, a cochlear-implant maker based in Sydney.

Regenerating nerves and cells in the inner ear to boost cochlear implant performance has long been a goal of auditory scientists. This clever approach is the most promising to date, says Gerald Loeb, a neural prosthetics researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who helped to develop the original cochlear implant. Although clinical applications are still far in the future, the ability to deliver genes to specific areas in the cochlea will probably reduce regulatory obstacles, he says. But it is unclear why cochlear implants help some patients much more than others, so whether this gene therapy translates into actual clinical benefit is still unclear.

Listening to sounds is an intricate process, and a cochlear implant cannot simulate such complexity, says Edward Overstreet, an engineer at Oticon, a hearing technology company in Somerset, New Jersey. So it is not clear that simply sharpening the electrodes signal will help a user to hear sounds in a more natural way. We would probably need a leap in cochlear-implant electrode array technology to make this meaningful in terms of patient outcomes, he says.

If the method works well in humans, the authors say, it might help profoundly deaf people enjoy music and follow conversations in restaurants. And it might also enhance a newer type of hearing technology: hybrid electro-acoustic implants, which are designed to help people who have only partial hearing loss. The gene therapy might work to keep residual hearing intact and allow the implants to replace only what is missing, creating a blend of natural and electric hearing.

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Bionic Ears Boosted by Gene Therapy and Regrown Nerves

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The gene therapy study is hoped to lead to the development of new drugs to treat the incurable disease

GENE THERAPY. Spanish scientists injected a gene which causes the production of a protein that is blocked in patients with Alzheimers, into the hippocampus in mice that were in the initial stages of the disease.

MADRID, Spain Spanish scientists have for the first time used gene therapy to reverse memory loss in mice with Alzheimer's, an advance that could lead to new drugs to treat the disease, they said Wednesday, April 23.

The Autonomous University of Barcelona team injected a gene which causes the production of a protein that is blocked in patients with Alzheimer's into the hippocampus a region of the brian essential to memory processing in mice that were in the initial stages of the disease.

"The protein that was reinstated by the gene therapy triggers the signals needed to activate the genes involved in long-term memory consolidation," the university said in a statement.

Gene therapy involves transplanting genes into a patient's cells to correct an otherwise incurable disease caused by a failure of one or another gene.

The finding was published in The Journal of Neuroscience and it follows 4 years of research.

"The hope is that this study could lead to the development of pharmaceutical drugs that can activate these genes in humans and allow for the recovery of memory," the head of the research team, Carlos Saura, told Agence France-Presse.

Alzheimer's, caused by toxic proteins that destroy brain cells, is the most common form of dementia.

Worldwide, 35.6 million people suffer from the fatal degenerative disease, which is currently incurable, and there are 7.7 million new cases every year, according to a 2012 report from the World Health Organization.

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Scientists reverse memory loss in mice with Alzheimer's

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Cochlear implants have restored hearing to many deaf people, but they havent advanced much since they were unveiled in the 1970s. That may be set to change with an exciting new advance, not in the technology of the device itself, but rather in using gene therapy to increase the devices effectiveness. Today researchers announced that theyve been able to restore tonal hearing in guinea pigs with the new method of gene delivery.

Cochlear implants, or bionic ears, work by stimulating the auditory nerve to restore a rudimentary kind of hearing. This works pretty well, butthe gap between the electrodes and the degenerating nerve is pretty big, which makes communication difficult. Andeven the state-of-the-art implants only have 22 electrodes, enabling them to hear 22 different tones. They cant, for example, distinguish between the soft buzz of a clarinet and the shrill sound of a flute.

Teams of researchers have tried to improve upon the implants over the last decade by trying to focus the electrical currents more narrowly, to stimulate a smaller, more pitch-specific area of the nerve, or to use drugs that improve the communication between the electrodes and the neurons. But this new method, reported today in Science Translational Medicine, has a distinct advantage: it actually encouraged the regrowth of the auditory nerve. This decreased the gap between the nerve and the cochlear implant, and improved communication between the two.

Image credit: Science Translational Medicine

The team implanted bionic ears indeaf guinea pigs, whose auditory systems are very similar to humans. With the device, then, they delivered DNA that coded for a protein called brain-derived neruotrophic factor (BDNF), which encourages nerves to grow. The DNA was taken up by cells in the cochlea and, after two weeks, the nerves had grown significantly toward the electrodes. When the guinea pigs hearing was tested they found that animals that were once completely deaf had their hearing restored to almost normal levels.

Its unclear, however, whether the treatment will work long-term: neuron production in the guinea pigs dropped off six weeks after the gene therapy. Researchers are also unsure whether tones heard after this treatment accurately reflect how they sound with normal hearing.

The technique is very close to being ready for human trials, where some of these questions should be answered. If it proves successful in clinical trials, the technique of combining gene therapy with device could also be used for other implants like retinal prosthesis and deep brain stimulation.

Top image credit:Elizabeth Hoffmann/Shutterstock

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Cochlear Implant Plus Gene Therapy Could Restore Hearing to the Deaf

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UNSW Australia Biological Resources Imaging Laboratory and National Imaging Facility of Australia

A computer-tomography scan shows a deaf guinea pig's skull and cochlear implant.

Gene therapy delivered to the inner ear can help shrivelled auditory nerves to regrow and in turn, improve bionic ear technology, researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine1. The work, conducted in guinea pigs, suggests a possible avenue for developing a new generation of hearing prosthetics that more closely mimics the richness and acuity of natural hearing.

Sound travels from its source to ears, and eventually to the brain, through a chain of biological translations that convert air vibrations to nerve impulses. When hearing loss occurs, its usually because crucial links near the end of this chain between the ears cochlear cells and the auditory nerve are destroyed. Cochlear implants are designed to bridge this missing link in people with profound deafness by implanting an array of tiny electrodes that stimulate the auditory nerve.

Although cochlear implants often work well in quiet situations, people who have them still struggle to understand music or follow conversations amid background noise. After long-term hearing loss, the ends of the auditory nerve bundles are often frayed and withered, so the electrode array implanted in the cochlea must blast a broad, strong signal to try to make a connection, instead of stimulating a more precise array of neurons corresponding to particular frequencies. The result is an aural smearing that obliterates fine resolution of sound, akin to forcing a piano player to wear snow mittens or a portrait artist to use finger paints.

To try to repair auditory nerve endings and help cochlear implants to send a sharper signal to the brain, researchers turned to gene therapy. Their method took advantage of the electrical impulses delivered by the cochlear-implant hardware, rather than viruses often used to carry genetic material, to temporarily turn inner-ear cells porous. This allowed DNA to slip in, says lead author Jeremy Pinyon, an auditory scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

UNSW Australia Translational Neuroscience Facility, Jeremy Pinyon and Gary Housley

Gene therapy stimulated cochlear nerve growth (top) in deaf guinea pigs, compared to measurements taken before treatment (below).

Pinyon and his colleagues were able to deliver a gene encoding neurotrophin, a protein that stimulates nerve growth, to the inner-ear cells of deaf guinea pigs. After injecting the cells with a solution of DNA, they sent a handful of 20-volt pulses through the cochlear-implant electrode arrays. The cells started producing neurotrophin, and the auditory nerve began to regenerate and reach out for the cochlea once again. The researchers found that the treated animals could use their implants with a sharper, more refined signal, although they did not compare the deaf guinea pigs to those with normal hearing. The work was partially funded by Cochlear, a cochlear-implant maker based in Sydney.

Regenerating nerves and cells in the inner ear to boost cochlear implant performance has long been a goal of auditory scientists. This clever approach is the most promising to date, says Gerald Loeb, a neural prosthetics researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who helped to develop the original cochlear implant. Although clinical applications are still far in the future, the ability to deliver genes to specific areas in the cochlea will probably reduce regulatory obstacles, he says. But it is unclear why cochlear implants help some patients much more than others, so whether this gene therapy translates into actual clinical benefit is still unclear.

Read more:
Regrown nerves boost bionic ears

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The Regeneration of Organs Can Soon Be Commonplace
Don #39;t miss new Big Think videos! Subscribe by clicking here: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Science can give patients regenerated organs in the next five years or so....

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Bangalore, Apr 22 : City-based Narayana Health City (NHC) with over 300 successful Bone Marrow Transplants to its credit, today show cased the efficacy of this treatment modality with over 80 per cent success rate for curing cancerous and genetic blood diseases.

The two types of diseases which can be cured by bone marrow transplant are Leukemia, Severe Aplastic Anemia, Thassemia and Immune Deficiency Disorders.

Bone marrow transplant is a highly advanced procedure that involves transfusion of bone marrow stem cells from a healthy donor to a patient.

Speaking to reporters here, Dr Sharat Damodar, HoD and Senior Consultant Hematologist, Bone marrow transplant unit at NHC said the nature of blood diseases/disorders is either genetic in nature or acquired due to exposure to several risk factors including hazardous environment and consumption of adulterated food.

"Bone marrow transplants are now producing high success rates as it is curative in nature and offers hope to patients of a life beyond painful and fatal diseases," he said.

Dr Damodar, however, regretted that most of bone transplants are now done using bone marrow stem cells from blood relatives of the patients. "In India it is a challenge to find donors and we should consider it as our social responsibility to volunteer for donating healthy bone marrow and help patients in need," he added.

He said the government had recently opened donor registry DATRI and 50,000 people had enrolled into it.

"Compared to a population of 126 crore, we have just 50,000 donors. This is in comparison to an European country like Germany you can find millions of them," he added.

Dr Damodar and his team of experts also presented and shared the cases of patients who have been in remission for five years and leading a disease free life post bone marrow transplantation.

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NHC showcase bone marrow transplant to cure blood disorders

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A quality sword requires toughness on the inside and hardness on the outside. That way it can keep a sharp edge yet bend instead of shatter. Getting these properties requires blanking the metal back to a virgin state, adding the right molecular alloying ingredients, and then controlling the rate of the natural processes that occur as its final structure crystallizes out. Using that general method, researchers have just succeeded in returning adult somatic (body) cells to a virgin stem cell state which can then be made into nearly any tissue.

The key word here is adult. Last year, researchers from Oregon perfected a process to therapeutically clone human embryos. Basically that means producing cells that are genetically identical to a donor for the purpose of treating disease. We described the critical details of the technique, known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer, in an earlier post. In a nutshell, the nucleus from the cell to be cloned is fused with an egg that has its own nucleus removed. Caffeine is used to stall various autonomous developmental programs during a fusion process that has been initiated with an electric pulse. The new hybrid cell that results has full stem cell character which can be biased into different forms by adding various instructor molecules to the mix.

The new results, as we mentioned, were achieved with somatic cellsfrom two men [DOI:10.1016/j.stem.2014.03.015].This is important because it is generally adults who stand to benefit the most from a fresh supply of cells to revitalize their ailing organs. In smithing a sword, the desired crystal structure is achieved by controlling the amount of time spent in different phases of cooling. Often there is more than one heating stage as the metal is first slowly tempered through one regime, than recycled back for a second tortured phase with a quicker quench. As for swords, the key element for getting the adult cells to work was to extend a critical delay phase in this case that around the time the cells were electrically fused. This tempering period is a time for the cell to reorganize prior to committing itself to cell division. After many painstaking experiments, it was found that the 30-minute delay used for the embryonic cell fusions needed to be extended to two hours for the adult cells.

An alternative method for creating stem cells was recently presented which used acid and mechanical persuasion to beat normal cells back into the pluripotent form. This method has been difficult to replicate, and as a result of the controversy surrounding the affair the study has been retracted. Thats not to say that this shortcut is off the table though. Researchers continue to look for better ways to produce stem cells with more creative power, from cells that are ever further set in their ways. The new studies reported here were able to use dermal fibroblasts, essentially skin cells, from both a 35-year-old and 75-year-old man. Previously skin cells have been turned into other kinds of cells, particularly neurons. Now they can become any kind of cell. (Read:Regenerated human heart tissue beats on its own, leads towards replacement hearts and other organs.)

In a sense all cells are like playdough. The longer they have been held in any one sculpted form, the more dried-out and difficult to revert to a multipotent state they become. The same inflexibility still persists as a social mindset of fear in many countries that do not permit federal funding of this kind of research (this new work was funded in South Korea with some participation from US scientists). As researchers begin to learn new tricks to re-infuse cells with moisturizing chemical and mechanical regimens, we all have much to gain. If we are going to be benefactors of this technology, it seems that we should also be producers of it.

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Stem cells created (cloned) from adult cells for the first time

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

St. Petersburg, FL (PRWEB) April 23, 2014

Human Fibroblast Conditioned Media is a revolutionary ingredient that is taking the beauty and anti-aging industries by storm. These stem cells are in the Sublime Beauty "Cell Renewal | Fibroblast Serum."

These non-embryonic stem cells are rich in growth factors. When topically combined with our own skin, studies have shown that our cells are stimulated to create more collagen resulting in younger, firmer and healthier skin.

"The discovery of growth factors was a big deal in science," says Kathy Heshelow, founder of Sublime Beauty, "and plays a part in wound healing, medical applications and now skin care."

The company offers a product paper about the serum and background on its ingredients on its webstore.

The scientific anti-aging serum will be discussed on the Consumer NewsWatch TV program Thursday morning.

"Cell Renewal" is of high purity, produced under the strictest quality controls and use the latest extraction methods to capture the purest cells. This is a top of the line anti-aging treatment.

Use twice daily on cleansed skin before any other serum or cream is applied.

The company offers 25% off the serum at SublimeBeautyShop now with coupon code STEM25.

About Sublime Beauty: Sublime Beauty offers quality anti-aging skincare to "age younger". Products are available at its webstore and Amazon. The company also offers Skin Brushes and organic products.

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Improve Skin Dramatically with Stem Cell Serum, "Cell Renewal | Fibroblast Serum", from Sublime Beauty; Will Be ...

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Low back and neck pain; 6 months after stem cell therapy by Dr Harry Adelson
Low back and neck pain; 6 months after stem cell therapy by Dr Harry Adelson http://www.docereclinics.com.

By: Harry Adelson, N.D.

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Low back and neck pain; 6 months after stem cell therapy by Dr Harry Adelson - Video

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Tuesday, April 22 11:57:06

Orbsen Therapeutics, a spin-out from NUI Galway's Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI), is to partner with the University of Birmingham in a E6 million EU FP7 funded MERLIN project to fight liver disease.

The EU FP7-funded project known by the acronym "MERLIN" (MEsynchymal stem cells to Reduce Liver INflammation) is led by Professor Phil Newsome, Clinical Director of the Birmingham University Stem Cell Centre. MERLIN will advance Orbsen's proprietary cell therapy to a Phase 2a clinical trial in patients with inflammatory liver disease. This MERLIN project will evaluate the Orbsen cell therapy in 4 different research laboratories across Europe and the project will culminate in a Phase 2a clinical trial of the therapy in the crippling inflammatory liver disease, Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis.

This is Orbsen's fourth success in attracting FP7 funding (the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research), making them one of Ireland's most successful private companies in this funding programme and now connects Orbsen to 23 global collaborators. Other successful cell therapy projects for Orbsen include PURSTEM (completed), REDDSTAR (ongoing) and DeCIDE (ongoing).

Orbsen Therapeutics Ltd. is a privately-held company founded in 2006 as a spin-out from Ireland's Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) in NUI Galway. As part of the PurStem EU FP7 program, Orbsen developed proprietary technologies that enable the prospective purification of highly defined and therapeutic (stromal) cells from several human tissues, including bone marrow, adipose tissue and umbilical cord.

Orbsen's CEO Brian Molloy said, "Orbsen has secured substantial amounts of research funding in the last 18 months which will further validate our product and bring us through to a "first in man" clinical trial in 2015/16. Our model has always focused on putting the 'science first' and we have successfully used that approach to develop a technology that could potentially position us and indeed Ireland at the leading edge of European Cell Therapy development."

Mr Molloy continued, "As a spin-out from the NUI Galway based REMEDI Institute we have focused the majority of our collaborations with an Irish research team. Our success in the MERLIN project now demonstrates that we are capable of playing a key role in collaborations led by researchers across Europe."

The total research budget for the MERLIN project is close to E6 Million of which E1 Million will go directly to Orbsen Therapeutics over the 4-year period of the project.

The rest is here:
Irish cell therapy firm in E6m research

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

A computational tool developed at the University of Utah (U of U) has successfully identified diseases with unknown gene mutations in three separate cases, U of U researchers and their colleagues report in a new study in The American Journal of Human Genetics. The software, Phevor (Phenotype Driven Variant Ontological Re-ranking tool), identifies undiagnosed illnesses and unknown gene mutations by analyzing the exomes, or areas of DNA where proteins that code for genes are made, in individual patients and small families.

Sequencing the genomes of individuals or small families often produces false predictions of mutations that cause diseases. But the study, conducted through the new USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery at the U of U, shows that Phevor's unique approach allows it to identify disease-causing genes more precisely than other computational tools.

Mark Yandell, Ph.D, professor of human genetics, led the research. He was joined by co-authors Martin Reese, Ph.D., of Omicia Inc., an Oakland, Calif., genome interpretation software company, Stephen L. Guthery, M.D., professor of pediatrics who saw two of the cases in clinic, a colleague at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and other U of U researchers. Marc V. Singleton, a doctoral student in Yandell's lab, is the first author.

Phevor represents a major advance in personalized health care, according to Lynn B. Jorde, Ph.D., U of U professor and chair of human genetics and also a co-author on the study. As the cost of genome sequencing continues to drop, Jorde expects it to become part of standardized health care within a few years, making diagnostic tools such as Phevor more readily available to clinicians.

"With Phevor, just having the DNA sequence will enable clinicians to identify rare and undiagnosed diseases and disease-causing mutations," Jorde said. "In some cases, they'll be able to make the diagnosis in their own offices."

Phevor works by using algorithms that combine the probabilities of gene mutations being involved in a disease with databases of phenotypes, or the physical manifestation of a disease, and information on gene functions. By combining those factors, Phevor identifies an undiagnosed disease or the most likely candidate gene mutation for causing a disease. It is particularly useful when clinicians want to identify an illness or gene mutation involving a single patient or the patient and two or three other family members, which is the most common clinical situation for undiagnosed diseases.

Yandell, the lead developer of the software, describes Phevor as the application of mathematics to biology. "Phevor is a way to try to get the most out of a child's genome to identify diseases or find disease-causing gene mutations," Yandell said.

The published research cites the case of a 6-month-old infant who was ill with what appeared to be a liver problem, but the child's health care providers couldn't diagnose exactly what was wrong. Phevor solved the mystery by identifying the disease and finding an unknown gene mutation that caused it. In two other cases, Phevor identified unknown gene mutations related to an immunodeficiency disease and autoimmunity disorder in the same way -- by sifting through sequenced parts of the genomes of the two young patients and two or three family members.

In one case, Yandell and colleagues used Phevor and another computational tool, VAAST (Variant Annotation, Analysis, Search Tool), to look for the likely mutation in an immunodeficiency syndrome found in three of four members in a family. Blood was taken from each family member, plus an unrelated person who showed the same symptoms as the mother and two children in the family, for DNA sequencing.

VAAST, also developed in Yandell's laboratory, identified a number of mutations that might have caused the syndrome, but couldn't identify an individual candidate as the causative gene. But using the results from VAAST, in combination with Phevor, the Yandell and colleagues identified the one gene that most likely caused the syndrome. Follow-up studies confirmed Phevor's prediction results.

Excerpt from:
Applying math to biology: Software identifies disease-causing mutations in undiagnosed illnesses

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

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Newswise (SALT LAKE CITY)A computational tool developed at the University of Utah (U of U) has successfully identified diseases with unknown gene mutations in three separate cases, U of U researchers and their colleagues report in a new study in The American Journal of Human Genetics. The software, Phevor (Phenotype Driven Variant Ontological Re-ranking tool), identifies undiagnosed illnesses and unknown gene mutations by analyzing the exomes, or areas of DNA where proteins that code for genes are made, in individual patients and small families.

Sequencing the genomes of individuals or small families often produces false predictions of mutations that cause diseases. But the study, conducted through the new USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery at the U of U, shows that Phevors unique approach allows it to identify disease-causing genes more precisely than other computational tools.

Mark Yandell, Ph.D, professor of human genetics, led the research. He was joined by co-authors Martin Reese, Ph.D., of Omicia Inc., an Oakland, Calif., genome interpretation software company, Stephen L. Guthery, M.D., professor of pediatrics who saw two of the cases in clinic, a colleague at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and other U of U researchers. Marc V. Singleton, a doctoral student in Yandells lab, is the first author.

Phevor represents a major advance in personalized health care, according to Lynn B. Jorde, Ph.D., U of U professor and chair of human genetics and also a co-author on the study. As the cost of genome sequencing continues to drop, Jorde expects it to become part of standardized health care within a few years, making diagnostic tools such as Phevor more readily available to clinicians.

With Phevor, just having the DNA sequence will enable clinicians to identify rare and undiagnosed diseases and disease-causing mutations, Jorde said. In some cases, theyll be able to make the diagnosis in their own offices.

Using Phevor in Clinic

Phevor works by using algorithms that combine the probabilities of gene mutations being involved in a disease with databases of phenotypes, or the physical manifestation of a disease, and information on gene functions. By combining those factors, Phevor identifies an undiagnosed disease or the most likely candidate gene mutation for causing a disease. It is particularly useful when clinicians want to identify an illness or gene mutation involving a single patient or the patient and two or three other family members, which is the most common clinical situation for undiagnosed diseases.

Yandell, the lead developer of the software, describes Phevor as the application of mathematics to biology. Phevor is a way to try to get the most out of a childs genome to identify diseases or find disease-causing gene mutations, Yandell said.

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Software Identifies Gene Mutations in 3 Undiagnosed Children

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith