"Several years ago, a postdoctoral researcher working in Fu's lab was taking that approach, using a technique called siRNA to silence the PTB gene in connective tissue cells known as fibroblasts. But it's a tedious process that needs to be performed over and over. He got tired of it and convinced Fu they should use a different technique to create a stable cell line that's permanently lacking PTB. At first, the postdoc complained about that too, because it made the cells grow so slowly.
But then he noticed something odd after a couple of weeks — there were very few fibroblasts left. Almost the whole dish was instead filled with neurons.
In this serendipitous way, the team discovered that inhibiting or deleting just a single gene, the gene that encodes PTB, transforms several types of mouse cells directly into neurons." Science Daily
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Does this have some relevance to approaches to treatment of senile dementia and Alzheimer's? pl
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200625102540.htm
As someone with Parkinson’s, this is very heartening. Tho I don’t expect this breakthrough or any other will save me from this scourge, may future generations reap the benefits of science applied to the general welfare of all people.
Very serious progress has recently been made on containing/reversing dementia. This work has been by a team led by Dale Bredesen. A recent paper presented results for 100 patients teated by several teams of practitioners. The worst outcome for these patients was no further losses. What is interesting is that a wide body of relatively recent research has finally figured out what causes alzheimers dementia and it is not what the alzheimers community had been assuming for decades. I had all of the doctors I deal with, including my medicare PCP, review Bredesen’s work and treatment protocol and they all agree this is solid and game changing.
A good introductory presentation by Bredesen is at https://grandrounds.ifm.org/21st-century-medicine-and-the
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This breif in the May 28, 2020 of Cell magazine
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30556-0
indicates, as far as I understand it, that, in principle, an analogous approach could be applied to the removal of PTB gene, or editing out sufficient scetion of it to silence it.
The applixation to cancer took 8 years, and I expect similar rates elsewhere.
But I am not an specialist.
The Cell paper discussed, here and a follow on paper in Nature, are discussed by two neuroscientist, an MD/neuroscientist and a virologist in the Zoom discussion at the link.
https://www.microbe.tv/twin/twin-8/
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