13 ms·
‘Dancing molecules’ successfully repair severe spinal cord injuries
- Pasorrijer 5y agoI truly, truly hope this works as described, even partially, on humans. It is so frustrating to see someone who would be able to walk if only the signal could get to their lower extremities. My grandfather is a paraplegic, and man how much I hope this isn't just faery dust.
- ekianjo 5y agoAgain mice models...
- MrDresden 5y agoYes, as a logical first step. Now we at least have hope this might work for humans.
- ekianjo 5y agoMice models have a very bad track record when it comes to humans. Too much junk publications out there to push papers and get credits.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoYou have to start somewhere though.
- jonplackett 5y agoI would guess things like how nerves and bones work is more similar across species than, say, how drugs might work on the brain, where a mouse brain is a hell of a lot different to human. Is that a reasonable assumption?
- AnthonBerg 5y agoIf there is a difference, we’ll learn what the difference is, and if there’s another one after that the same, and so on.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoRight, exactly! You expressed it much better than I did. :)
- Kaibeezy 5y agoI was wondering the same thing. Pluses and minuses... Rodents represent readily available models that can be used for a deeper understanding of basic biological mechanisms and for proof of concept for preclinical research hypotheses. However, attempts at direct clinical translation to humans have proven problematic or even impossible to date, principally due to issues of scaling and complexity. https://clinmedjournals.org/articles/ijscrt/international-journal-of-stem-cell-research-and-therapy-ijscrt-3-042.php?jid=ijscrt https://clinmedjournals.org/articles/ijscrt/international-jo...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Chris2048 5y agoYes, but publication of hopeful articles should be near the end, not the start.
- Nasrudith 5y agoI thought the main point of mouse models was mostly to be a "first pass filter" for substances before moving onto other animals usually, sometimes humans if the straits are desperate enough. Cancer drugs in particular have little concern for long term side effects in their approval pipeline because the alternative may be having no long term.
- ekianjo 5y agoFirst pass filters mean nothing when it comes to humans. 95% of all "stuff that works on mice" fails miserably on humans. We should treat such announcements with extreme skepticism.
- lr4444lr 5y ago"We are going straight to the FDA to start the process of getting this new therapy approved for use in human patients, who currently have very few treatment options.” This is not a cheap process in terms of money and manpower. I think they probably have reason for confidence. IIRC, the motor CNS in mammals is pretty similar across the board.
- gus_massa 5y agoI'm not an expert, but I guess this part is similar enough in mice and human to be optimistic. But IIUC the treatment only makes the regrow of the cut axons faster, it does not reconnect one part with the other part. So the time you should wait until the axon grows to the initial length in humans will be much longer than in mice.
- StrangeClone 5y agoWhat does “Again” refer to? Was something similar already published? Or you meant “Yet another mice models?
- ekianjo 5y ago"yet another headline that assumes that mice models have any bearing on humans". It's actually the other way around, very rarely do mice models results replicate in humans.
- eganist 5y ago> Again mice models... Do you have a viable alternative for early stage research?
- ekianjo 5y agoAlternative is to stop making headlines about mice models, because it's just completely ridiculous at this stage.
- 0xbadc0de5 5y agoOver the last 25 years or so, there have been at least a dozen announcements of the latest miracle cure that works to repair spinal cord injury in mice. To date, none of them have translated to human efficacy. It's almost a meme at this point - like net-positive fusion being only ten years away. There appears to be a fundamental difference between mice and human nervous system injury repair modes that leads to early confidence. The spinal cords in mice essentially repair themselves if you so much as ask nicely. The real litmus test for claims of effective spinal cord repair treatments is primate testing. If you see mice and not chimps, the treatment is probably a dead end. Not to say this research doesn't have value - I fully support continued and rigorous research in this area - but hyperbolic claims like: "it works in mice, so it should also work in humans" aren't helping the cause.
- FrameworkFred 5y ago...as if some sort of future rodent time travelers went back in earth's pre-history and tasked countless human-filled labs with unlocking the secrets of rodent medical science so they could, in their own time, mine the wisdom of the ancients and ensure their immortality.
- jjk166 5y agoWould be a shame if some Vogons blew up the earth 5 minutes before their project was finished.
- mattko 5y agoThose mice were in car accidents.
- ghastmaster 5y ago> The therapy also induces myelin to rebuild around axons and reduces glial scarring, which acts as a physical barrier that prevents the spinal cord from healing This gives the impression that this would need to be administered before any scaring takes place. It is probably not a remedy for people with old injuries.
- irjustin 5y agoYeah, but this is incredible if it works at the human level. My friend was in a car accident and a subwoofer that wasn't tied down ended up striking in him the back paralyzing him from the mid-back down. Years and years of heartache for both my friend, and the other friend who installed the subwoofer without tying it down. There was a lot of things wrong that allowed this to happen, but knowing future people with injuries like my friend whom this therapy could save or alleviate makes me incredibly excited.
- jgilias 5y agoThis, however, seems to suggest that the therapy actually reduces pre-existing scar tissue: > the breakthrough therapy dramatically improved severely injured spinal cords in five key ways: (1) The severed extensions of neurons, called axons, regenerated; (2) scar tissue, which can create a physical barrier to regeneration and repair, significantly diminished;
- themaninthedark 5y agoMaybe a dumb question but.... If scar tissue forms after an injury and blocks the area (on both sides of the nerve, I assume), like this ---x x--- . Could you then cut the scarred area away, creating "new" injury that this treatment could cure? ----x x---- ---| |--- ---**---
- gus_massa 5y agoI remember reading a story many years ago a about a boy that got a nerve severed and later they opened the wound to remove the scar in the nerve and reconnect the nerve, so it regrows. The problem was that after cutting the scar, the nerve was shorter, so they have to take a shortcut in the elbow. I can't find the story, but these links have info that is similar enough to be confident my memory is not too bad. http://www.rebeccaayers.co.nz/procedures-and-information/hand-surgery/nerve-surgery-and-nerve-repair http://www.rebeccaayers.co.nz/procedures-and-information/han... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_allograft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_allograft
- gibbonsrcool 5y agoI've always wondered... and so far have been unable to Google this: Does the non-nucleus part of a severed nerve cell die? If so, that would mean we only have a small window to "rejoin" severed CNS nerve cells, right? Nerve cells can be very long, I think up to a meter. I'd assume this includes spinal nerve cells of the CNS, which don't regrow. If the cells are severed, like in a spinal injury, that means there's a half-cell fragment with a nucleus, and the other half is the axon that's been cut away without a nucleus. Wouldn't the fragment without a nucleus shrivel up and die? That would be my intuition because I'd assume the nucleus is necessary to keep a cell alive.
- mattlondon 5y agoI would assume that the entire cell would die without the membrane to hold everything together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysis
- gibbonsrcool 5y agoPNS nerve cells regenerate axons: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846285/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846285/
- bawana 5y agoso we just have to inject stem cells into the area where there are a lot of damaged nerve cells without nuclei and have these cells fuse with the damaged remnants. Just throw some PEG in there with the stem cells?
- tryptophan 5y agoYep. The nerve soma(the cell body) does not die when the nerve is cut. The axon distal to the cut dies. The living axon tries to grow into the 'scaffold' of the axon part that died. This can take months and doesn't always restore full functionality.
- rocqua 5y agoBased on this stimulating Axon growth, it sounds like it might help to repair the damage caused by MS. That would be amazing news. Not a cure per se, but a way to actually treat symptoms rather than just surpressing. Worryingly, they mention a few neurodegenerative diseases but not MS.
- BrandiATMuhkuh 5y agoThat was exactly my first thought as well.
- _Microft 5y agoBioNTech is working on a vaccine against MS that is supposed to untrain the immune system to no longer attack own tissue. It should at least slow progress of the disease and even seems to have allowed to reverse early damages in mice. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305956
- steelframe 5y agoThrough the years I've seen dozens and dozens of "cures" for "MS" in mice (I put MS in quotes because, at this point, I've grown skeptical that the induced encephalitis mouse model is all that helpful in predicting drug performance for humans with MS). The closest thing we have to a "cure" is actually a medication that's been on the market for a while, but it was used to treat certain types of blood cancer before they discovered that it works really well for MS too. It's now available generically: Rituximab. There's another hack that Genentech was able to patent and approve for MS to produce Ocrelizumab, which does the same thing as Rituximab but costs an order of magnitude more. Because that's how the world of big pharma works. In essence, wiping out your plasma cells (a.k.a. B cells or lymphocytes) seems to stop MS in its tracks. Where my neurologist would typically see 2 or 3 new lesions in any given patient per year, instead now my neurologist is seeing 2 or 3 new lesions per year in the population of all their RRMS patients who are on Rituximab (or Ocrelizumab). And it turns out the immune system can get along pretty well with all the other cells types it has, such as T cells.
- bilekas 5y agoThese kind of studies and experiments always sound so amazing, but how long would something like this take to be applicable for at least human trials ? I understand there are so many precautions to take etc, but is there any kind of 'complete consent' one could sign to jump start stuff like that ?
- numbsafari 5y agoWould you, as a researcher, want to make your first attempts on human subjects? Even if someone gives you “complete consent”, it makes sense to ensure that that consent is informed and that those administering are prepared to give them care when things inevitably go wrong. At the very least, leaving all the ethical concerns aside, someone will have to pay for that care.
- Karunamon 5y agoI wonder if this would work with something like Guillaine-Barre syndrome (to wit, an autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own nerves, causing demyelination)
- dpcx 5y agoDo I want to know how they get mice with severe spinal cord injuries to test on? I'm guessing it's exactly what I think it is, but I'm wondering if there's another way that it happens.
- mindcrime 5y agoI'm sorry you were downvoted for asking that. I think it's a fair issue to raise. Assuming the mice are intentionally injured to allow testing, it seems reasonable, to me, to question the ethics of that. Of course it's easy to say "they're just mice, who cares?" but it's not wrong to ask "they're living creatures as well, shouldn't we care?" I expect the response to be "it's justified given the benefits we derive for humans, based on this mouse based research", and probably most people would agree with that. But perhaps not everyone would. Also consider the number of really scary books/movies out there rooted in the idea of "medical utilitarianism." For one example, this issue is addressed in a show called Biohackers that I just started watching. And even in real life, people have tried to justify a lot of really sketchy stuff over the years, in the name of "the greater good".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kevinsky 5y agoAnother good question is whether mice are a good analogue for humans as far as spinal injuries
- archontes 5y agoI'm curious if you can elaborate on, "they're living creatures, shouldn't we care?". What about them being living creatures "ought" to lead to that? Why do you think that the base assumption is caring?
- mindcrime 5y agoI'm curious if you can elaborate on, "they're living creatures, shouldn't we care?". No, because I'm not saying that is a position I personally hold. I'm merely presenting it as a position that I know that (some) people do hold. My position here is, roughly speaking, "this (intentionally injuring mice or other animals) is an issue where there is a legit discussion to be had around the ethics of same." Of course I have my own opinion, but I don't really care to get into it. I just didn't think that the parent poster needed to be downvoted for raising the question.
- sidlls 5y agoThe last section about generalizing the treatment is a bit underwhelming. Have they seen any evidence it can be used outside this sort of repair? What about for neuropathies, as from diabetes or surgeries? Stroke? Other dysfunctions (e.g. erectile/genital) having nervous system issues as a contributing factor? Any treatment "might" have more general applicability--but surely there is some specific direction/class of these conditions that are indicated to be more appropriate to apply the treatment to than others. I wish they'd gone in more depth here.
- mleonhard 5y agoA lot of cells will only grow when they feel familiar surroundings. This gel technique is used with various cell types. For example, pancreas cells will not grow alone in glass, but they will grow inside a specially-made gel that mimics their expected extra-cellular matrix [0]. [0] "A microenvironment-inspired synthetic three-dimensional model for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma organoids" https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01085-1 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01085-1
- 0x0nyandesu 5y agoRecently every thread on HN about life and death has been devolving into a debate with people who insist that these things need to be addressed in the comments and those that simply don't care. It's honestly exhausting. It's sort of like making food and having someone at the table try to discuss the morality of the meat you're using.... Except it's every. single. time. Lab mice are killed off everyday after experiments end even if there's nothing wrong with them. Excuse me if I don't lose any sleep over this experiment.
- marcodiego 5y agoA provocative and bad argument in favor of animal experimentation I heard is: "Animal experiments increase our life by X years. What each does with this extra time is a personal question."
- atian 5y agoIt’s a sanity check. Can we afford to not do X? because thank God there is some commonality in disgust. Clearly not at the moment, but I doubt even the original authors of those comments care more than you do. It’s a feature and not a bug.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y agoThe people insisting on this just want to use HN as their megaphone. There is no debate. They have already made up their minds. It comes off about as well as an insufferable teenager at Thanksgiving dinner. Some feature.
- modeless 5y agoI mean, that's 99% of internet comments. There are many topics I disagree with the HN majority (or vocal minority) on, and it becomes tiresome to see the same old stuff rehashed in every article when it's mostly off topic. But if we didn't allow people to comment unless they were genuinely open to having their mind changed about something, there would be no comments. If you debate someone on the internet, you will never change their mind. But you might influence the opinion of someone else who reads your comments, and that's the best you can hope for. Also, when a large number of people are wrong about something, there is often an opportunity of some kind associated with that. An investing opportunity, a career opportunity, a startup opportunity. When you see what others don't it can be a big advantage. So, embrace it.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoNice, I've added a link to my calendar to check up on this work a year from now. As described, it seems as though it would work just as well for traumatic brain injury as well. Either way it would be a huge boost in the quality of life for a lot of people.
- stretchwithme 5y agoFingers crossed. I suspect Christopher Reeve had a hand in this somehow. Creating awareness and motivation to work on this.
- markdeloura 5y agoI find myself wondering whether a useful testing step between mice and people might be the community of small dogs with IVDD. French bulldogs, dachshunds, and corgis seem particularly susceptible and many of them wind up with rear paralysis. https://www.thedogsdown.com/how-can-ivdd-cause-paralysis/ https://www.thedogsdown.com/how-can-ivdd-cause-paralysis/
- yread 5y agoMy wife works on regenerative medicine for spine and they use dogs (and horses) a lot. Cells are similar and they suffer from the same problems. It's mostly dogs who die of natural causes though as dogs are too cute to experiment on...
- tclancy 5y agoYou’d like to think that, but we’ve had multiple beagle rescues who would disagree. And they were the control population because the actual test subjects get killed.
- GordonS 5y agoIt's not unusual for dogs to be used in medical research. Aside from the more well-known use of rats, rabbits are also commonly used.
- throwawaymanbot 5y agoCould this work on degenerative discs?
- iandanforth 5y agoIN MICE. Seriously, mice are really really good at healing these injuries. You can find dozens of 'heals spinal cord injuries IN MICE' articles.