Wired: Top Stories

Injured? Horsing Around With Stem Cells May Get You Back in the Saddle

Doctors might soon be able to regrow injured muscles, tendons and bones without invasive surgery, simply by injecting a person's own stem cells into the site of an injury. Veterinarians are already doing it with injured horses, and research into human applications is well under way.

The National Institutes for Health seem to think regenerating human muscle and bone using a person's own adult stem cells is nearly ready for prime time. Last week, the NIH announced to its staff that it's creating a bone marrow-stem cell transplant center within the National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

Researchers at the NIH labs in Bethesda, Maryland, are already growing human muscle, cartilage and spinal disks in vitro. The tissue isn't mechanically sound yet, says lead researcher Rocky Tuan, but that will come with further work.

"I have a piece of tissue that looks like a spinal disc, a sand bag, tough as nails on the outside and like sand on the inside," says Tuan, a Ph.D. and the senior investigator in the Cartilage and Orthopedics branch of the NIAMS. "The mechanical properties are lousy, but it's a beginning."

While the use of stem cells harvested from human embryos has been getting the most media attention, scientists and doctors have also been working with adult stem cells that also have the ability to become one with their environment and to replicate as cells of their adopted tissue. Using adult stem cells -- grown inside the body or in the lab -- has become accepted in the veterinary community, and horses have benefited greatly. Researchers are working to bring those same benefits to humans, but there are still hurdles left to clear.

The NIH project comes in part from what veterinarians have learned from injecting adult stem cells into valuable horses who've suffered injuries. In many cases, those horses' careers were saved when the stem cells regrew damaged tendons and ligaments.

Rodrigo Vazquez, a Southern California veterinarian, has been using adult stem cells to regrow damaged muscles in horses for several years. It's a fairly common procedure in the veterinary arena, and the results are impressive: One of Vazquez's patients is participating in this year's Olympics Dressage events; another is a prize-winning jumper.

The procedure is simple and straightforward. Inside a surgical suite at his equine hospital, Vazquez removes blood full of adult stem cells from the sternum of the anesthetized horse.

Then he rolls his stool to the other end of the horse, where ultrasound data has helped guide needles into the exact areas on the rear leg where the beautiful horse's ligaments are torn. He injects the stem cells into those spots.

"A few years ago, these injuries were career-ending," Vazquez says. Not any more. "In a month, the torn tissue will be completely regrown and healed."

Vazquez would like to put himself in his patients' place. He has had surgery several times for spinal injuries he incurred while lifting horses. Human medicine, unable to regrow or heal the injured spine, simply fuses the bone and tissue through a surgical procedure. At best, the surgery relieves some of the pain and restores some mobility. But it's not a true repair.

"I wish I could have had a procedure like this," Vazquez says of the treatment he gives horses. "This will lead to human treatments, but they can't move as fast as we can."

Tuan, who is using stem cells to cultivate experimental tendons and disks in his lab, thinks it's about time to look to treating humans.

An emerging body of scientific studies from all over the world -- including a cardiac study under way in Miami and a pediatric ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) study at the Harvard-affiliated Children's Hospital of Boston -- is showing that using a patient's own stem cells can prompt the growth of new muscle, from the knee to the heart. And the precursor step, using platelet-rich plasma for injuries, is on the verge of becoming mainstream.

Adult stem cells, particularly mesenchymal cells that come from muscle, bone and fat, are cells with a powerful ability to replicate and not a lot of personal identity. They easily take on the characteristics of surrounding cells and they tend to grow quickly once they get there. Ultrasounds of Vazquez's horses, for example, show regeneration of muscle in four to six weeks.

The final product is this cartilage-like tissue grown around the scaffolding by NIH scientists. Tuan says the tissue resembles the human version, but may not be mechanically sound -- yet.
Courtesy NIAMS

Adult stem cells can be found all over the body, in bone and marrow. Tuan says they're also found in tonsils and in the placenta and umbilical cord, which suggest that the discarded body parts can be stored for later use.

Because researchers are using autologous cells -- from the patient's own body -- the research is not controversial. No one has challenged the ethics or funding of adult stem cell research the way embryonic stem cell studies have been challenged. And because adult stem cells are native to the patient's own body, the chances of a patient rejecting them are slim to none.

Tuan and his team have been able to coach adult stem cells to form muscle and disks using goo from the small intestine and a polymer scaffold to tell cells how to grow. But, he cautions, the primitive structures aren't ready to go into humans.

"After a few weeks (of lab growth), it will turn into something that resembles a tendon, but it has to be the mechanical equivalent and we don't know that we're there," Tuan says. "Stem cells are very promising, but what they do for horses may not work so well for humans because humans are the hardest animal to rebuild."

Once they're perfected, Tuan sees a day when the tendons will change the dreaded surgery for torn anterior cruciate ligaments that sideline up to a quarter-million people in the United States and Canada every year.

"Often, that injury is a complete tear -- the ligament is snapped in two and the ends ball up and even if you untangle them and pull them together, they won't heal," he says. "So they take part of the patella tendon, which is short and tough, and stretch it and staple it to the bones. So not only is your ACL not working too well and you have to stretch it out, but your knee hurts like crazy."

"If we can learn to grow a tendon that works right, or figure out how to make the ACL heal back together, we can save a lot of people a lot of pain," he says.

In fact, doctors are already treating people with adult stem cells. Bone marrow transplants for cancer patients are basically stem cell therapy. But the marrow often comes from other people, and its primary purpose is to boost a weakened immune system, not to generate tissue.

And treating with platelet-rich plasma -- a blood product made by spinning a patient's blood in a centrifuge to concentrate the platelets -- is already in limited use and is becoming more widely accepted as a safe therapy. PRP is routinely used in cardiac surgery, where applying it to a cut sternum before closing has been shown to cut the infection rate in half. The plasma has growth factors that also promote healing.

"PRP helps recruit stem cells to the injury," says Dr. Allan Mishra, who has used PRP on its own and as part of surgery in sports injuries -- including treating tennis elbow and getting Stanford football player James McGillicuddy's patellar tendon to heal after his second surgery. "The body knows how to heal itself -- we're speeding up and concentrating the process."

Last year, Mishra wrapped up a study where he used platelet-rich plasma to treat the 20 worst tennis-elbow injuries he'd culled from more than 100 volunteers. "Ninety-three percent got better with a single injection and stayed better for two years," Mishra says.

The treatments are about one-tenth of the cost of surgery, or about $2,000 to $2,500, he says. The patient's blood is drawn, centrifuged by a specialist called a perfusionist, and injected, all in one visit. "I will guess that five years from now, insurance companies won't authorize surgery until the patient has tried and failed at PRP."

The obvious next step is to isolate the stem cells and send them to work, both inside and outside the body, researchers say. "PRP is reparative. Stem cells are regenerative," says Angela Nava, a perfusionist who processes both animal and human blood for PRP, stem cell and other procedures.

But getting from animals to humans is going to take a lot more research, according to Dr. Thomas Rando, an associate professor of neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Rando studies the body's signaling systems that tell stem cells what to do.

"We don't always know how stem cells, when injected into some tissues, work their magic," Rando said. "Veterinarians don't go back and study the horse's tendons to figure out what the stem cells did to promote healing."

"There are all kinds of ways stem cells could work. If we could understand how they are actually promoting better function of the tissue, we might be able to further improve their therapeutic effects," he adds.

Stem cell treatment is not without risks, researchers say. The worst-case scenario is that the stem cells could cause cancer -- or become cancerous themselves.

"You're putting in cells that want to grow. That has to be under control," Rando says. "Or we can end up with cancer."

Tuan also says that researchers don't entirely trust stem cells and their ability to adapt and grow.

"There's a nagging feeling that there's a cancer stem cell, that when it's agitated by exposure to carcinogens or radiation or something, it goes nuts, and that we can't identify it from the other stem cells," he says. "How do you find this bad boy and pull him out?

"And there's a nagging worry it's the same cell. We only know these cells by what they've done, and by the time they've become cancer, it's too late."

18.08.2008 06:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Aug. 18, 1947: Birth of the Cool (Company, That Is)

1947: Eight years after its founding, Hewlett-Packard incorporates. The tiny garage in Palo Alto, California, where the company originated is now regarded as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

Plenty of rock bands have come out of garages, and Jobs and Wozniak noodled around in one with their goofy little computer, too, but Hewlett-Packard must be considered the mother of all garage productions.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard met as engineering students at Stanford back in the early '30s and cemented their lifelong friendship during a post-graduation camping trip. Packard went off to take a job with General Electric, while Hewlett went on to postgraduate studies. They were reunited by Stanford prof Fred Terman, who encouraged the two to "make a run for it."

With a nut of $500 in cash, borrowed from Terman, plus a used Sears, Roebuck drill press, Hewlett-Packard swung into action in the small shed behind Packard's modest house at 367 Addison Ave. The company's first product, released in 1938, was an audio oscillator used for testing sound equipment. When the Walt Disney Company bought eight of them to develop the technically advanced movie Fantasia, HP was off-and-running.

Packard and Hewlett (and that's the last time you'll see the names in that order) made the partnership permanent Jan. 1, 1939. The formal name was determined by the gracious winner of a coin toss. Even though Packard won the toss, he apparently liked the way "Hewlett-Packard" sounded, so they went with that. He never had reason to regret the choice.

Hewlett-Packard's rise as a tech powerhouse is a story that's been told ad nauseam. The electronics products were first-rate and eagerly embraced. Want became need with the coming of World War II, and HP quickly grew, moving out of Packard's garage in 1940.

But the company was innovative in another, perhaps less-known way, that's equally important. Thanks to the humanistic sensibilities of Messrs. Hewlett and Packard, HP also demonstrated a new type of management technique, one that placed a premium on the workers and their happiness. This open-management style was the prototype for how many technology companies, particularly in Silicon Valley, would operate decades later.

Packard, especially, was interested in fostering a relaxed working atmosphere. In practicing "management by walking around," he devised what became known as his 11 simple rules. He also practiced what he preached. Once, when an engineer defied his direct order to stop work on an oscilloscope that later became a commercial success, Packard had a special medal struck -- "Extraordinary Contempt and Defiance Beyond the Usual Call of Engineering" -- for the man.

HP further softened the hierarchy by establishing open cubicles and not putting doors on management offices. It also provided medical coverage to its employees at a time when that was not generally done.

Source: Hewlett-Packard

18.08.2008 03:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Study: TV News Still Trumps the Web

Fewer Americans are reading newspapers and are instead getting their news online, but television remains the leading source of news in the country, according to a survey released Sunday.

18.08.2008 00:36:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Building a World 101: Ask the Right Questions

In the second post of the series on how to build a world, Geekdad talks about the importance of asking questions about your new world as a starting point.

17.08.2008 16:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Uranium Processing Site Reborn as Wildlife Preserve

After extensive environmental remediation, a site once home to a Cold War-era uranium processing plant re-emerges as a haven for wildlife and a memorial to those who worked to make the area safe.

16.08.2008 23:15:00 - Wired: Top Stories

High-Tech Timing System Settles Phelps' Race for 7th Gold

To the disbelief of many, Michael Phelps' closing stroke edges out his competition -- by the length of a fingernail -- to win his seventh gold medal. That's because it's tech, not the naked eye, that's able to establish who won the race.

16.08.2008 19:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Defense Spooks: Let's Control Enemy Minds

Rather than developing performance-enhancing drugs for soldiers, defense agents want to study performance-degrading drugs for our enemies. A report recommends investment in neuroscience research that could reveal ways to eliminate our enemies' motivation to fight and get them to obey our commands.

16.08.2008 15:03:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Lego Tableaus Re-Create Classic Photos

: Photo: Mike Stimpson

Lego fanboy and amateur photographer Mike Stimpson found a way to combine his two loves: He recreates scenes from historic photographs using the plastic bricks, then snaps his own photos.

The British videogame programmer first began assembling his Lego duplications in October 2007 as a way to pay homage to his favorite lensers: French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, World War II-era shooter Robert Capa, American landscape photographer Ansel Adams.

Stimpson, 34, has used Lego bricks to duplicate everything from Buzz Aldrin's first steps on the moon to '60s antiwar protesters, but he has yet to produce a plastic version of an Ansel image. "Recreating large sections of Yosemite National Park is a little beyond my skills," he said.

Left:

Charles Ebbets' Lunch Atop a Skyscraper served as the inspiration for Stimpson's first Lego duplication. The original was shot during construction of Rockefeller Center in 1932. To stock up for the shoot, Stimpson says he bought more than 30 Lego minifigures to ensure he'd have enough variety to imitate the men in Ebbets' photo.

Recreating Ian Bradshaw's famous 1974 photograph of streaker Michael O'Brien during a rugby match wasn't easy for Stimpson, who struggled with figuring out how to undress the stock figurine.

"He's actually made up of a yellow Lego spaceman with his body on backwards so you can't see the space insignia," Stimpson said. It's one of the few recreations without a smiling mug: "I tried, but he looked too much like a woman. The face I chose seemed to fit with the 'Jesus' look of the original."

Stimpson cites Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, the celebrated 1932 image by French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, as one of his favorites. For this blocky recreation of Cartier-Bresson's legendary snapshot of a man leaping over a puddle behind a train station, Stimpson tied a Lego figurine to a piece of thread and suspended it above a baking tray that held a few millimeters of water.

Although Stimpson Photoshopped the string out, the reflection is real -- he used a foam board to help reflect the Lego man in the light. "It took a long time to get all of the elements to work together," said Stimpson. "[There was] a lot of scenery that really liked to float away!"

War photographer Robert Capa became famous in 1936 for his image of a soldier collapsing after a fatal gunshot during the Spanish Civil War. Stimpson used towels and jumpers to create the backdrop of the photograph, then added a Lego character to mimic the dying militiaman.

Although nowadays Lego manufactures plastic characters with a range of facial expressions, Stimpson elected to use one with a simple smile to offset the severity of the original image. "It's a similar effect to [the] Lego versions of Darth Vader or the stormtroopers," he said. "Taking something serious and menacing, and replacing that with something cute, harmless and funny."

Stimpson special-ordered a miniature Lego firearm to complete this blocky rendition of a Pulitzer Prize-winning picture by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams.

At first, Stimpson wasn't sure how to represent the graveness captured in the 1968 image -- which shows a Viet Cong prisoner being executed -- but in the end he arranged a Lego-ized U.S. soldier and civilian on a Lego roadway and took the shot.

"Some people find it funny," said Stimpson. "Some people find it a bit disturbing."

Stimpson subbed Lego figurines of an airline pilot and a nurse to stage Alfred Eisenstaedt's celebrated image of an American soldier dipping a young woman into a kiss in New York's Times Square in 1945.

"This was a difficult one," said Stimpson. "Lego don't make sailor figures as far as I can tell."

Stimpson made a few modifications for this version of an iconic 1967 image showing a hippie holding a flower out to a line of armed soldiers.

The original was taken by French photographer Marc Riboud at a Vietnam War protest in Washington, D.C. Stimpson swapped the antiwar activist in the image for Star Wars hero Han Solo, then used Imperial stormtroopers for his creation, dubbed Anti-Empire Protest.

"My normal working practice if something doesn't work is to add more Lego stormtroopers," he said. "I think it worked."

After requests flooded Stimpson's inbox asking for a toy edition of Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, the historic 1945 image by Joe Rosenthal, he knew he had to recreate it.

He hung a white sheet for the backdrop, gathered rocks and pebbles for the landscape and had custom figures made by BrickArms, a company that specializes in Lego weaponry.

Stimpson even carefully printed an American flag for the Marines to plant, but forgot one detail -- the correct number of stars. "I'm English," he admitted sheepishly. "That's my excuse."

How did Stimpson reproduce American journalist Malcolm Brown's 1963 shot of Thick Quang Duc's self-immolation to protest the persecution of Buddhists in Vietnam? With an oilcan, Lego fire purchased on eBay and X-wing pilot Legos wearing red Imperial Guard capes.

"It took weeks to find all those Lego flames," said Stimpson. "I was going to set a Lego figure on fire for this, but I couldn't bring myself to destroy Lego."

Stimpson stuck with his decision to keep facial expressions consistent among his photographs, and said he thinks the soft smile on the burning monk's face reflects inner peace attained through Buddhism.

The reenactment of a 1969 photograph of U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon didn't require much -- just a base plate of Lego turf, a sheet of black paper to resemble space and a Lego astronaut.

"Unfortunately, my '80s 'classic' spacemen were a bit too broken and chewed to use for that shot," Stimpson said. He hunted down a space-suited figure from a set, although he worried it looked too modern.

Although Stimpson says he has more Lego sets and parts than he can count, he often mixes and matches parts to get the right look. The biggest challenge is finding proper Lego-ized attire for the figures in his recreations, he said.

16.08.2008 06:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Review: 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' -- Kids Will Love It, Geeks Will Shudder

Star Wars: Clone Wars was released, and though it was a much anticipated event (or ploy) to get every Star Wars geek to the theater for something a little different, you might spend your money better on the Genndy Tartakovsky versions.

16.08.2008 05:14:00 - Wired: Top Stories

How to Set Up a Home Server

If you're curious about running your own website, broadcasting your tunes to your friends or create your own file-storage system, you're going to need some hardware first. This guide from Webmonkey will help you build a machine you can use to become the master of your own digital domain.

16.08.2008 01:45:00 - Wired: Top Stories