Paralysed man Darek Fidyka, walks again after breakthrough treatment

A paralysed man can walk again after receiving revolutionary treatment which one of the British scientists responsible hailed as a breakthrough "more impressive than a man walking on the Moon," although others urged caution.

Darek Fidyka was paralysed from the chest down, but can now walk using a frame after nerve cells from his nose were transplanted into his severed spinal column in Poland, according to research published Tuesday in the journal Cell Transplantation.

"When there's nothing, you can't feel almost half of your body. You're helpless, lost," the patient, who is now recovering at the Akron Neuro-Rehabilitation Centre in Wroclaw, told reporters, who filmed his remarkable recovery.

"When it (the feeling) begins to come back, you feel you've started your life all over again, as if you are reborn," said the 40-year-old Polish man, whose injuries were caused by a knife attack in 2010.

"It's an incredible feeling, difficult to describe," he added.

Olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), which form part of the sense of smell, were used in the treatment as they are pathway cells that enable nearby nerve fibres to be regenerated.

Pawel Tabakow, consultant neurosurgeon at Wroclaw University, led a team of surgeons in removing one of the patient's olfactory bulbs before transplanting cultured cells into the spinal cord in the treatment's two crucial operations.

He said to reporters that the patient was "exhausted" by the documentary filming schedule, which lasted a year.

'Be very prudent'

The scientists involved think that the cells, implanted above and below the injury, enabled damaged fibres to reconnect, although other researchers have reacted more sceptically.

"What we've done is establish a principle, nerve fibres can grow back and restore function, provided we give them a bridge," said Geoff Raisman, chair of neural regeneration at University College London's Institute of Neurology, who led the British research team working on the joint project.

"To me, this is more impressive than a man walking on the Moon. I believe this is the moment when paralysis can be reversed."

But other scientists were far more cautious, saying it was important to await the results of clinical testing with more cases.

"We have to be very prudent," said Alain Privat from France's health and medical research institute Inserm.

Simone Di Giovanni, head of restorative neuroscience at Imperial College London, added that there was "no evidence that the transplant is responsible for the reported neurological improvement".

This assertion was disputed by Wagih El-Masri, a professor of spinal surgery at Keele University in Britain, who was an independent assessor on the Polish case.

"It is clear that on the balance of probability, the changes are due to the treatment," he said, adding that there was only a one percent chance that the recovery would have occurred due to other factors.

"As a clinician with 40 years' experience, I would strongly support that this line of research is pursued without raising the hopes too much of patients," he said.

'Significant progress'

For two years after his injury, Fidyka showed no sign of recovery despite intensive five-hour physiotherapy sessions.

The first signs of improvement came three months after the surgery, when his left thigh began putting on muscle.

Three months later, Fidyka was able to take his first steps with the aid of parallel bars and leg braces.

He can now walk outside using a frame and has also recovered some feeling in his bladder and bowel.

The research was funded by the UK Stem Cell Foundation and the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation (NSIF), set up by chef David Nicholls after his son Daniel was paralysed in a 2003 swimming accident.

"When Dan had his accident I made him a promise that, one day, he would walk again," Nicholls told the BBC.

"The results with Darek show we are making significant progress towards that goal."
NSIF has given £1 million ($1.6 million, 1.26 million euros) to researchers in London and £240,000 to the team in Poland. Both camps say they will not seek to profit from the research.

They hope to raise enough money to hold clinical trials on 10 patients in Britain and Poland.

More information: Tabakow, P.; Raisman, G.; Fortuna, W.; Czyz, M.; Huber, J.; Li, D.; Szewczyk, P.; Okurowski, S.; Miedzybrodzki, R.; Czapiga, B.; Salomon, B.; Halon, A.; Li, Y.; Lipiec, J.; Kulczyk, A.; Jarmundowicz, W. Functional regeneration of supraspinal connections in a patient with transected spinal cord following transplantation of bulbar olfactory ensheathing cells with peripheral nerve bridging. Cell Transplant. Appeared or available on-line: October 21, 2014. www.ingentaconnect.com/content… T-1239_Tabakow_et_al

Dutch Scientists make breakthrough in Nuclear fusion power station

The superconductivity research group of the University of Twente (UT) has made a technological breakthrough crucial to the success of nuclear fusion reactors, allowing for clean, inexhaustible energy generation based on the workings of the stars in our galaxy.

The crux of the new development is a highly ingenious and robust superconducting cable system.

This makes for a remarkably strong magnetic field that controls the very hot, energy-generating plasma in the reactor core, laying the foundation for nuclear fusion.

The new cables are far less susceptible to heating due to a clever way of interweaving, which allows for a significant increase in the possibilities to control the plasma.

Moreover, in combination with an earlier UT invention, the cables are able to withstand the immense forces inside the reactor for a very long time.

The increased working life of the superconductors and the improved control of the plasma will soon make nuclear fusion energy more reliable: the magnet coils take up one third of the costs of a nuclear fusion power station.

The longer their working life, the cheaper the energy will be. The research is a project within the context of the Green Energy Initiative of the University of Twente.

Cost-effective clean energy Project leader Arend Nijhuis: 'The worldwide development of nuclear fusion reactors is picking up steam, and this breakthrough leads to a new impulse.'

Arend Nijhuis

'Our new cables have already been extensively tested in two institutes.' Mr Nijhuis has been invited to form a new collaboration with oppressive China and expects that the UT system will become a global standard.

The world's largest nuclear fusion reactor, ITER, is under construction in Cadarache in France, and is expected to start operation by 2020, as a joint project of the US, EU, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea and China.

However, China and South Korea have also initiated their own national large-scale nuclear fusion projects, in which the UT technology can be incorporated.

Read the full article here

Post Higgs breakthrough, CERN readies for next cosmic quest

A view of the detector in the 12,500-ton Compact Muon Solenoid experiment (CMS). Image courtesy of CERN

A year ago, the world's largest particle collider made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science, identifying what is believed to be the Higgs Boson—the long-sought maker of mass.

Today, its computer screens are dark, the control desks unstaffed and the giant, supercooled tunnel empty of the crashing proton beams whose snapshots of the Big Bang helped flush out the elusive particle.

But the silence is an illusion.

Behind the scenes, work is pushing ahead to give the vast machine a mighty upgrade, enabling it to advance the frontiers of knowledge even farther.

The 27-kilometre (17-mile) circular lab, straddling the French-Swiss border 100 metres (325 feet) underground, went offline in February for an 18-month overhaul.

When experiments resume in 2015, scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) will use its enhanced power to probe dark matter, dark energy and supersymmetry—ideas considered as wild as the Higgs Boson was, half a century ago.

As engineers focus on the technical mission, physicists are sifting through the mountains of data that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has churned out since 2010, for there could be more nuggets to find.

"The things that are easy to spot have already been exploited, and now we're taking another look," said Tiziano Camporesi of CERN, noting wryly that dealing with the unknown was, well, unknowable.

"We always say that astronomers have an easier task, because they can actually see what they're looking for!"

The LHC's particle collisions transform energy into mass, the goal being to find fundamental particles in the sub-atomic debris that help us to understand the Universe. At peak capacity, the "old" LHC managed a mind-boggling 550 million collisions per second.

"We give the guys as many collisions as we can," said Mike Lamont, head of its operating team. "That's our bread and butter."

"Most of that stuff is not very interesting, so there are real challenges sorting out and throwing most of that away, and picking out the interesting stuff," he explained in the tunnel, which mixes installations fit for a starship with the low-tech practicality of bicycles for inspection tours.

Diabetes: New Compound Prevents Retina Damage

A compound that prevents damage to the retina caused by diabetic retinopathy has been developed by scientists.

University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center scientists have developed a compound that targets two mechanisms: inflammation and the weakening of the blood barrier that protects the retina that is the root cause of the disease.

Diabetic retinopathy is the most common diabetic eye disease. It is caused by changes in the blood vessels in the retina, and can cause blindness in adults.

In some people with diabetic retinopathy, blood vessels may swell and leak fluid. In others, abnormal new blood vessels grow on the surface of the retina. The retina is the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. A healthy retina is necessary for good vision.

Crystal structure of Vammin, a VEGF-F from a snake venom

Until now, scientists believed that retina damage was caused by the activity of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein that weakens the protective blood-retinal barrier.

Drugs, created to treat diabetic retinopathy, have been desigend to block the protein but now, researchers have found that inflammation could also contribute to the disease.

"In diabetic retinopathy and a host of other retinal diseases, increases in VEGF and inflammatory factors - some of the same factors that contribute to the response to an infection - cause blood vessels in the eye to leak which, in turn, results in a buildup of fluid in the neural tissue of the retina," said David A Antonetti, a Kellogg Eye Center researcher, in a statement. "This insidious form of modified inflammation can eventually lead to blindness."

Scientists created the new compound while studying kinase C (aPKC), a protein that was common to both mechanisms as an important target in regulating the disease process.

They claim that the new compound blocks the kinase C (aPKC) protein, which in turn blocks the VEGF protein and reduces inflammation.

"This is a great leap forward. We've identified an important target in regulating blood vessel leakage in the eye and we have a therapy that works in animal models. Our research is in the early stages of development. We still have a long way to go to demonstrate effectiveness of this compound in humans to create a new therapy but the results are very promising," Antonetti said.

A Supernova Cocoon Breakthrough

Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided the first X-ray evidence of a supernova shock wave breaking through a cocoon of gas surrounding the star that exploded.

This discovery may help astronomers understand why some supernovas are much more powerful than others.

On November 3, 2010, a supernova was discovered in the galaxy UGC 5189A, located about 160 million light-years away. Using data from the All Sky Automated Survey telescope in Hawaii taken earlier, astronomers determined this supernova exploded in early October 2010 (in Earth's time-frame).

This composite image of UGC 5189A shows X-ray data from Chandra in purple and optical data from Hubble Space Telescope in red, green and blue. SN 2010jl is the very bright X-ray source near the top of the galaxy (mouse-over for a labeled version).

A team of researchers used Chandra to observe this supernova in December 2010 and again in October 2011. The supernova was one of the most luminous that has ever been detected in X-rays.

In optical light, SN 2010jl was about ten times more luminous than a typical supernova resulting from the collapse of a massive star, adding to the class of very luminous supernovas that have been discovered recently with optical surveys. Different explanations have been proposed to explain these energetic supernovas including (1) the interaction of the supernova's blast wave with a dense shell of matter around the pre-supernova star, (2) radioactivity resulting from a pair-instability supernova (triggered by the conversion of gamma rays into particle and anti-particle pairs), and (3) emission powered by a neutron star with an unusually powerful magnetic field.

In the first Chandra observation of SN 2010jl, the X-rays from the explosion's blast wave were strongly absorbed by a cocoon of dense gas around the supernova. This cocoon was formed by gas blown away from the massive star before it exploded.

In the second observation taken almost a year later, there is much less absorption of X-ray emission, indicating that the blast wave from the explosion has broken out of the surrounding cocoon. The Chandra data show that the gas emitting the X-rays has a very high temperature -- greater than 100 million degrees Kelvin -- strong evidence that it has been heated by the supernova blast wave.

The energy distribution, or spectrum, of SN 2010jl in optical light reveals features that the researchers think are explained by the following scenario: matter around the supernova has been heated and ionized (electrons stripped from atoms) by X-rays generated when the blast wave plows through this material. While this type of interaction has been proposed before, the new observations directly show, for the first time, that this is happening.

This discovery therefore supports the idea that some of the unusually luminous supernovas are caused by the blast wave from their explosion ramming into the material around it.

In a rare example of a cosmic coincidence, analysis of the X-rays from the supernova shows that there is a second unrelated source at almost the same location as the supernova. These two sources strongly overlap one another as seen on the sky. This second source is likely to be an ultraluminous X-ray source, possibly containing an unusually heavy stellar-mass black hole, or an intermediate-mass black hole.

Scottish scientists discovers cancer breakthrough

New DNA discovered in the city of Discovery

A PROTEIN has been discovered which could have major implications for cancer treatments, it emerged last night.

Researchers at the University of Dundee described the find as “molecular scissors” which repair damaged DNA in human cells, helping to prevent mutations leading to cancer.

The protein at the centre of the development is known as FAN1 and is present in each cell.

Yesterday, one of the experts behind the discovery explained how it might help further research against the killer disease.

John Rouse, of the university’s renowned College of Life Sciences, said the findings helped unlock a “major part of the puzzle”.

He added: “The DNA in our cells is like an instruction manual for the proper working of each cell.

“A major problem is that DNA becomes damaged regularly. If DNA damage is not fixed quickly then these instructions are changed and the result is mutations – undesirable changes in DNA – that can cause the cell to become abnormal.

“This is essentially what causes cancer.

“However, cells are very good at recognising when DNA has become damaged and they are good at finding DNA damage and repairing it.

“For example, cells can quickly detect breakages in DNA and quickly fix these breaks. Many different factors help this process but we still haven’t identified all of them or exactly how this process works. FAN1 carries out this task, and in this sense it acts like a ‘molecular scissors’.”

Tasmanian Devil Facial Cancer breakthrough

Scientists have discovered the true identity of a contagious form of cancer that is killing Tasmanian devils.

The cancer, called devil facial tumor disease, stems from cells that normally insulate nerve fibres, a new study shows.

Save the Tasmanian Devil Program

Genetic analysis of tumors taken from infected devils in different parts of Tasmania reveals that these insulating cells, known as Schwann cells, became cancerous in a single Tasmanian devil and have since passed to other devils, an international group of researchers reports in the Jan. 1 Science.

Previously, scientists had suspected that a virus might be the source of the infection, but the new study confirms that cancer cells themselves are transmitted from devil to devil.

Knowing the origin of the contagious tumors could help conservationists diagnose the disease more accurately and may eventually lead to a vaccine that would target tumor proteins, says Katherine Belov, a geneticist at the University of Sydney who was not involved with the project.

A vaccine against the facial tumor disease, “while now pie in the sky, in 10 years might not be,” says Gregory Hannon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y. “Ten years might be enough time” to save the devils from extinction, he says.

About 70 percent of the Tasmanian devil population has disappeared as a result of the disease, and if the current rate of decline continues, devils could become extinct in the wild in 30 to 50 years, says Elizabeth Murchison, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England. Murchison, a native of Tasmania who grew up seeing devils in the wild, led the project while working in Hannon’s lab at Cold Spring Harbor. “I didn’t want to sit back and let the devils disappear,” she says.