Batten disease is a genetic disorder in which waste builds up in the body and kills healthy cells. This disease affects about three in every 100,000 children in the United States and most of them die before they reach their teenage years. Batten disease causes the victim to go blind and become paralyzed before they die, and there is absolutely no cure for it. Martin McGlynn, CEO of Stem Cells Inc., came up with the idea of inserting highly purified neural stem cells into the patient’s brain to the create new cells to replace the ones killed by the waste build up. This idea wouldn’t be a cure to the disease, but a treatment to at least extend the patient’s lifespan. Fetal tissue transplant treatments need to be federally approved on a case-by-case basis due to high moral objections of embryonic stem cells and abortion issues. Since McGlynn was only testing his theory and knew that it would be hard to get a procedure approval, he decided to use a “test subject” and pay for the operation with his company’s money.

Meet Daniel Kerner, a six-year-old Batten disease victim from Trabuco Canyon, California. He’s a second grader at Robinson Elementary School and he’s waiting to die. Daniel’s family was scared for his life ever since two years ago when he was diagnosed with Batten disease and pronounced his death sentence. McGlynn got in touch with Daniel’s father, Marcus Kerner, and proposed his experimental plan of stem cell transplantation and the need for a “test subject” with Batten disease. The McGlynn family initially had many reservations about this entirely experimental treatment that had never been done before. They were over-whelmed with the embryonic stem cell and abortion controversies, as well as the possibility of Daniel’s body rejecting the cells. However, Daniel’s life had been waning away over the past two years as he lost his ability to walk and talk. McGlynn was offering Daniel a chance to get to live his life for longer than expected; maybe five years, maybe ten, maybe twenty, no one knows. The Kerner family agreed to administer the experimental treatment to Daniel last month in Portland. For the first time ever, eager doctors inserted neural embryonic stem cells from aborted fetuses into Daniel’s brain as an attempt to extend his life. Daniel has successfully recovered from his eight hour surgery and is scheduled to return home on December 15 since his body is showing no signs of rejection of the stem cells. “He was a little boy who was basically waiting to die, now he’s waiting to get better,” Marcus Kerner says as he thanks the doctors who helped his son. Thanks to Daniel and his family, this experiment will be conducted on five more children over the course of a year. The results will hopefully help to build towards a widely accepted form of treatment for all Batten disease victims.

-Amy Shah

Researchers from Queensland University of Technology learn out how bone cells work and figure out how they can heal them. Scientists are working on a device that will help heal bones in half the time. Being a person who breaks bones quite often (by quite often I mean once or twice a year) the minute I saw this I knew this could help change my life. Last Christmas I broke, fractured, dislocated, and had surgery on my wrist and it took about 8 months to fully recover from this unfortunate snowboard accident. If this device can cut the healing time in half then I can have more time to relax (break more bones). The next step for this bone healing theory is to test it. I will gladly volunteer myself for any test that Dr. Hannay (the person directly involved with this research) has to do.

“In the future we might be able to make a device utilizing these combined stimulants that could be attached to the body and help heal the bone.”
-Dr. Hannay

For more information check out QUT

-Sujan Patel

Stem cell research over at the University of California, Irvine is booming! Dr. Ken Cho is on his way to finding the cure for diabetes. He has discovered over 50 genes in mouse embryonic stem cells that promote insulin-producing cells. If he is able to activate these genes in mice, he’s one step closer to finding out how to activate them in humans. Activating these cells will mean that a diabetic person’s life-style can go back to normal with their cells producing insulin for them.

-Amy Shah

What is brain-computer interface? Contrary to what most people believe, the computer cannot read the patient’s mind. Brain-computer interface is an experiemental device that aids physically disabled people to independently control various tasks such as using a television set or checking their e-mail. This is an amazing discovery in science because a person that doesn’t even have the ability to eat food without help can surf the web, watch TV, play video games, and even work on the computer all without any further assistance!

-Amy Shah

Campath is a breakthrough drug used to help patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). CLL is cancer of white blood cells which leads to weakening of the immune system. It affects over 12,000 people a year in the United States alone and there is no largely successful therapy for it. The most common drug used in chemotherapy for CLL patients is chlorambucil, which only about 55% of all patients respond to. However, William Wierda, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Texas, encourages usage of Campath for chemotherapy on CLL patients. Although Wierda’s patients have been responsive, many people are spectacle of this drug because it’s usually involved in excess infectious. At the 48th American Society of Hematology meeting that took place from December 9th to 12th, proof was presented that 83% of test subjects responded to Campath. An amazing 24% of patients responded completely to Campath, which is an explosion compared to the mere 2% of patients that respond completely to chlorambucil. “We can’t really say we can cure this disease,” Wierda said, “but we can change it into something that is truly chronic such as diabetes.”

More Information On Campath

-Amy Shah

About one in every 800 people in the US has diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus, also known as type 1 diabetes or child-onset diabetes, is a chronic, autoimmune disorder. It is characterized by the pancreas’s inability to produce insulin, which results in high blood glucose levels.

Diabetes mellitus has been solely linked to the immune system, however a research group called SickKids has been looking for a link with the nervous system. They recently found a connection between the pancreas’s ability to secrete insulin and sensory (pain) nerves. They found that this sensory control circuit doesn’t release enough neuropeptides to activate insulin secretion. By researching on diabetic mice, the SickKids research group, along with the help of University of Toronto, found a way to supply neuropeptides and reverse diabetes in these mice. They have plans to extend this study to diabetes insipidus as well and this amazing discovery can soon be perfected to be extended to humans. The cure for diabetes lies in the close future.

-Amy Shah