Scientists have created a new technique for the production of human cells:
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute scientists and their collaborators at the University of Cambridge have created a new technique that simplifies the production of human brain and muscle cells - allowing millions of functional cells to be generated in just a few days. The results published today (23 March) in Stem Cell Reports open the door to producing a diversity of new cell types that could not be made before in order to study disease.
[...] In a human, it takes 9-12 months for a single brain cell to develop fully. To create human brain cells, including grey matter (neurons) and white matter (oligodendrocytes) from an induced pluripotent stem cell, it can take between three and twenty weeks using current methods. However, these methods are complex and time-consuming, often producing a mixed population of cells.
The new platform technology, OPTi-OX, optimises the way of switching on genes in human stem cells. Scientists applied OPTi-OX to the production of millions of nearly identical cells in a matter of days. In addition to the neurons, oligodendrocytes, and muscle cells the scientists created in the study, OPTi-OX holds the possibility of generating any cell type at unprecedented purities, in this short timeframe.
To produce the neurons, oligodendrocytes, and muscle cells, scientists altered the DNA in the stem cells. By switching on carefully selected genes, the team "reprogrammed" the stem cells and created a large and nearly pure population of identical cells. The ability to produce as many cells as desired combined with the speed of the development gives an advantage over other methods. The new method opens the door to drug discovery, and potentially therapeutic applications in which large amounts of cells are needed.
Inducible and Deterministic Forward Programming of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells into Neurons, Skeletal Myocytes, and Oligodendrocytes (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2017.02.016) (DX)
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The Allen Institute for Brain Science has released an open-access database of live human brain cells:
It contains data on the electrical properties of about 300 cortical neurons taken from 36 patients and 3D reconstructions of 100 of those cells, plus gene expression data from 16,000 neurons from three other patients.
Neurosurgeons near Seattle, Washington provided cells from epilepsy and brain tumor patients that were previously considered to be medical waste.
Previously: A Blueprint for How to Build a Human Brain
Related: Millions of Functional Human Cells Can be Created in Days With OPTi-OX
Stanford researchers develop a gel for growing large quantities of neural stem cells
[Sarah] Heilshorn described a solution to the dual challenges of growing and preserving neural stem cells in a state where they are still able to mature into many different cell types. The first challenge is that growing stem cells in quantity requires space. Like traditional farming, it is a two-dimensional affair. If you want more wheat, corn or stem cells, you need more surface area. Culturing stem cells, therefore, requires a lot of relatively expensive laboratory real estate, not to mention the energy and nutrients necessary to pull it all off.
The second challenge is that once they've divided many times in a lab dish, stem cells do not easily remain in the ideal state of readiness to become other types of cells. Researchers refer to this quality as "stemness." Heilshorn found that for the neural stem cells she was working with, maintaining the cells' stemness requires the cells to be touching.
Heilshorn's team was working with a particular type of stem cell that matures into neurons and other cells of the nervous system. These types of cells, if produced in sufficient quantities, could generate therapies to repair spinal cord injuries, counteract traumatic brain injury or cure some of the most severe degenerative disorders of the nervous system, like Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.
Heilshorn's solution involves the use of better materials in which to grow stem cells. Her lab has developed new polymer-based gels that allow the cells to be grown in three dimensions instead of two. This new 3-D process takes up less than 1 percent of the lab space required by current stem cell culturing techniques. And because cells are so tiny, the 3-D gel stack is just a single millimeter tall, roughly the thickness of a dime. "For a 3-D culture, we need only a 4-inch-by-4-inch plot of lab space, or about 16 square inches. A 2-D culture requires a plot four feet by four feet, or about 16 square feet," more than 100-times the space, according to first author Chris Madl, a recent doctoral graduate in bioengineering from Heilshorn's lab.
Maintenance of neural progenitor cell stemness in 3D hydrogels requires matrix remodelling (DOI: 10.1038/nmat5020) (DX)
Related: First Serotonin Neurons Made from Human Stem Cells
Scientists Develop Very Early Stage Human Stem Cell Lines for the First Time
Millions of Functional Human Cells Can be Created in Days With OPTi-OX
(Score: 1) by EEMac on Monday March 27 2017, @03:26PM (3 children)
This sounds VERY, very cool. It was good to see this story on the front page!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday March 27 2017, @04:00PM (2 children)
Could facilitate vat grown meat?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 27 2017, @04:44PM
By the accounts I've seen, lab-grown meat was already under $100/kilo from naive estimates of hundreds of thousands per kilo. And that's still on the research lab scale. Is it believable? Have they factored in the scientists' salaries and the coffee budget? Beats me.
http://www.sciencealert.com/lab-grown-burger-patty-cost-drops-from-325-000-to-12 [sciencealert.com]
But if this technique was already scaling pretty well, this new development could really shake things up. Now you can create the finished product unnaturally fast, far faster than raising an actual cow. More work will need to be done, but billionaires like Bill Gates and Sergey Brin have their eye on this.
http://farmerdave.calgarystampede.com/farmer-dave-answers/beef-cattle.html [calgarystampede.com]
http://www.aussieabattoirs.com/facts/age-slaughtered [aussieabattoirs.com]
http://articles.extension.org/pages/39353/how-long-does-a-cows-pregnancy-last [extension.org]
http://beef.unl.edu/pregnantcows [unl.edu]
14-18 months from birth to slaughter. About 10 months gestation length. So 2 years and up to raise one cow to slaughter. I'm not sure if this cell technique will scale exponentially as you go from 1 week to say, 4 weeks, but if it does, you can see how this would end meat production as we know it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @09:16PM
so SPAM(R) would change from meaning "SPiced hAM" to "Synthentically Produced hAM" ?