For Cars or Cures?

December 9, 2008 by Ryan Ward

Food for Thought… what if we invested $40 billion into scientific research!?

The US and Canadian automotive sectors are lobbying their governments for $34 billion (US), and $6 billion (CAN) respectively. 40 BILLION dollars all tolled!! And it’s looking like they’re going to get it.

Did you know that the yearly budget for the National Institute for Health (NIH) is $28 billion? Did you know that this amount of money supports “325,000 researchers at over 3,000 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every state and around the world”? The predicament in Canada is even more staggering! The total expenditures of the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) for 2007-08 were less than $1billion: SIX-TIMES LESS than the must-have-to-survive package the Canadian automakers are begging for!

Imagine, for a moment, instead of investing in the automotive sector, who admitted recently that they’ve done a pretty terrible job over the past decade producing cars we might actually want to buy, that we invested the same amount into scientific research. What might be the result of such a seemingly impossible investment?

First of all, more groundbreaking research would be funded! Academic scientists get the majority of their operating funds through government funded grants (like those from the NIH and CIHR). Scientists compete for funding by sending written proposals to scientific grant panels, but sadly, the success rate in funding competitions is dismally low: less than 25 per cent of applications get funded, a percentage based on the amount of money available to the granting agencies in any given year. To put this in perspective, in 2007 the NIH accepted 64,215 applications but funded only 15,669 grants! That means that close to 50,000 applications from the best scientists within US and around the world went unfunded. 50,000 applications! How many of these applications might lead to big breakthrough discoveries for the treatment of cancer, heart & stroke disease, AIDS, [add your disease of interest here]?

Secondly, more funding would mean more opportunities for young scientists to pursue new and exciting ideas. It’s a sad reality that for every 10 PhDs that graduate there’s only one scientist job at universities and research institutes. Where do the other nine PhDs go? Industry, business, marketing, you name it: but smart, talented and highly trained young investigators leave the world of research so they can pay their bills. More funding allocated to granting agencies means more support and opportunity for young and promising scientists.

Lastly, there’s a lost opportunity by not investing in basic research. Discoveries made today can impact our lives sooner than those made tomorrow. And, discoveries that improve disease outcomes make ALL our lives better. Perhaps an outrageous question, but how many people who have lost loved-ones to some terrible disease wish for better cars, versus better treatments and cures? Not many I would guess.

So, food for thought, which would you prefer: Investing in cars or cures?

Written by Ryan Ward · Filed Under Home Blog 2, Point of View

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Rett Syndrome and induced Pluripotent Stem cells goes “Green”

June 17, 2009 by Aaron Cheung

Stem cell researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children have now devised a method, reported in the scientific journal Nature Methods, that will facilitate the generation of induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells. I have previously blogged about the promise of iPS cells (see related articles). iPS cells are cells which have been reprogrammed from a differentiated somatic cell (such as your skin cells) to a pluripotent stem cell (like an embryonic stem cell, only that you don’t need to use embryos!). The generation of iPS cells is inherently very rare which occurs at a frequency of about 0.01% meaning you can generate about one iPS cell line out of hundred thousand cells. Out of which, many lines fail to satisfy the different rigorous tests necessary to be given the prestigious name of “iPS cell”.

A group led by Dr. James Ellis, and lead author Dr. Akitsu Hotta, at The Hospital for Sick Children has generated a reporter, named EOS, that will facilitate the generation of iPS cells for both mouse and human. The reporter has DNA elements (called promoters) that will drive the expression of a fluorescent protein (GFP) and an antibiotic resistance gene (puromycin) that will only turn on in pluripotent stem cells, but remain off in differentiated cells. Therefore, scientists can now generate iPS cells from different sources and the iPS cells will literally “light up with a green colour” once reprogramming has been achieved. Furthermore, by adding puromycin to your culture, it will keep the iPS cells in a pluripotent state as iPS cells will normally spontaneously differentiate.

To demonstrate the applicability of EOS, Ellis also derived iPS cells from patients who have a neurodevelopmental disorder called Rett Syndrome. Rett Syndrome is an Autism Spectrum Disorder which affects almost exclusively females at an incidence of 1 in 10,000 and is one of the leading causes of mental retardation in girls. These Rett Syndrome iPS cells were green when placed under a fluorescent microscope and Ellis demonstrated that neurons can be generated from these Rett Syndrome iPS cells, the cell type affected in Rett Syndrome.

In conclusion, the EOS reporter will facilitate the generation of iPS and will be particularly useful for new labs going into this rapidly developing field. Furthermore, Rett Syndrome iPS cells that were also generated in this study will be invaluable for future drug screens that may be beneficial to those with Rett Syndrome.

Article:
Hotta, A. et al. Isolation of human iPS cells using EOS lentiviral vectors to select for pluripotency. Nature Methods 6, 370–376 (2009).

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