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GE3LS Digest - December 22, 2009

New questions are being raised in stem-cell debate – December 10, 2009
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=10665
The University of Alberta's Timothy Caulfield is questioning some of the ethical and legal barriers facing a new stem cell procedure. It was two years ago when a groundbreaking discovery turned ordinary skin cells back into an embryonic or "pluripotent" state. This was recognized as the solution to the controversial ethical question that has plagued stem-cell science for the past decade. But is it the solution? Or have iPS cells (induced pluripotent stem cells) added a new dimension to the legal, social and ethical debates that are an important and necessary part of stem-cell advances? Caulfield, research director at the U of A's Health Law Institute and principal investigator at the Stem Cell Network, says that while iPS technology eliminates some of the ethical issues specific to embryonic stem-cell research it also adds new challenges. "From a legal perspective, iPS technology is fascinating and complex. For example, if an iPS cell can be made into a functional human gamete, the potential exists for reproductive purposes. What would this mean for donor consent, concerns about cloning and rights of a potential child to know its parents," said Caulfield.

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For Sale: Human Eggs Become a Research Commodity – November 2009
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shelling-out-for-eggs
Paying a woman for her eggs to use in stem cell research has been a bioethical no-no for years. But this past June, New York State decided to allow just that, becoming the first state to permit public money to be used in this way. The decision, which allows payment of up to $10,000, will likely jump-start donations—and thereby research. Many bioethicists, however, worry that the financial incentive could exploit women and compromise their health. Ethical issues surround egg donation because the process is not without risk. It requires a series of hormonal stimulation injections as well as an invasive procedure to retrieve the eggs. The long-term health effects and risks of complication are not well known. A woman who provides eggs for research is “assuming unknown risk for unknown benefits,” says Debra Mathews, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University. The lingering unknowns prompted the National Academy of Science to issue in 2005 nonbinding guidelines to prohibit payment (but allow direct reimbursement for expenses), as a means to protect underprivileged women in particular.

GMO or No: Problematic Intersections of Religion, Biotechnology, and Food – November 25, 2009
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/rdbook/2018/gmo_or_no:_problematic_intersections_of_religion,_biotechnology,_and_food__
Why is genetically modified food an issue for kosher Jews, halal Muslims, and vegetarian Hindus? How do religious beliefs intersect with ethical and moral views on biotechnology? A new collection of essays explores the links between religion, culture, and GMOs. In their new book, Acceptable Genes: Religious Traditions and Genetically Modified Foods, Conrad G. Brunk and Harold Coward have compiled a unique set of religious, cultural, and indigenous perspectives on genetically modified foods. Many of us are aware of at least some of the ways biotechnology has invaded the supermarket. But dietary practice often intersects with religious faith, and despite the moral and religious convictions about modified foods, these perspectives have been marginalized in public debate. Oddly enough, religious and moral beliefs may carry more weight with lawmakers and industry regulators than consumer attitudes do. Combating the secrecy surrounding GMOs may only be possible with strong religious and moral arguments for equal tolerance and respect in play.

Is it finally time to embrace GM crops? – November 26, 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/6660965/Is-it-finally-time-to-embrace-GM-crops.html
The mass consultation exercise, set to last a year, is being viewed by opponents of GM foods as a fresh push to persuade the British public to embrace the controversial technology. It comes against a background of calls from scientists, politicians and business for a rethink. They argue that humanity must make use of new genetically modified crop strains to combat a future world food crisis linked to global warming, a growing population and water shortages. But sceptics say that not enough is known to rule out environmental or health dangers from what some refer to as "Frankenstein foods". The last time the public were consulted on the issue, opposition to the new technology was strong but the FSA says that rising food prices and fears for future supplies mean it is time to re-examine the issue. A focus group survey published by the FSA ahead of the national consultation exercise has already angered environmentalists by suggesting that opponents of GM foods are more motivated by "emotion" than "reasoned" argument.

Safety of Genetic Engineered Food Argument: Not a Scientific debate but Rhetorical dispute - November 27, 2009
http://glossynews.com/top-stories/serious-commentary/200911270038/safety-of-genetic-engineered-food-argument-not-a-scientific-debate-but-rhetorical-dispute/
Throughout history, the essence of technological progress has been its unpredictable applications (e.g. polluting industries and printing presses). Innovations are always a double-edged sword. In the past, technology innovations have taken humanity forward beyond anyone’s imagination. Thus some people argue that if we always relied on long-term safety data instead of short-term practicality (provided by innovations) to determine what technology should be and shouldn’t be used, then very little science can actually be applied. (Mokyr 1) Other side argues that some of the new technologies today, such as genetically modified (GM) food, are far too dangerous to allow chances to determine its future.

New Stem Cell Lines Open to Research – December 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/science/03stem.html?_r=1&ref=health
The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it had approved 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for use by federally financed researchers, with 96 more under review. The action followed President Obama’s decision in March to expand the number of such cell lines beyond those available under a policy set by President George W. Bush, which permitted research to begin only with lines already available on Aug. 9, 2001. Since that date, biomedical researchers supported by the N.I.H. have had to raise private money to derive the cells, which are obtained from the fertilized embryos left over from in vitro fertility clinics.With federal money banned from being used in any part of the work on the derived lines, researchers had to divide their laboratories and go to extreme lengths to separate research materials based on the financing source. “You can imagine what it meant not to be able to carry a pipette from one room to another,” said Ali H. Brivanlou, a researcher at Rockefeller University. “They even had to repaint the walls to ensure no contamination by federal funds.”

Privacy needed for patients' data – December 2, 2009
http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=11486
Approximately one half of patients and the general public believe that identifiable patient data should never be used for research without consent. Whilst only 11 per cent of researchers believed this should never happen, 53 per cent of the general public and 46 per cent of patients thought it was unacceptable without prior consent. But more than half of researchers thought patient identifiable data should be used without patient consent if it had first been reviewed by the Patient Information Advisory Group (PIAG). Only 30 per cent of both patients and the general public agreed. Letting researchers search records without PIAG approval was supported by just 7 per cent of the general public and 8 per cent of patients. 29 per cent of researchers thought it was acceptable. The responses came in a consultation on the secondary uses of patient data. The consultation on the Public's, Patients' and Other Interested Parties' Views on Additional Uses of Patient Data (PDF) was launched in September 2008. It explored the use of patient data for healthcare research, auditing the quality and safety of care, improving public health, screening for disease and planning for the improvement of the health service.

Where you live can affect your genes – December 7, 2009
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/12/07/genes-environment-city-rural.html
A new study has found that living in a city can influence the expression of your genes.
The findings, published in Sunday's online issue of Nature Genetics, are further evidence that our environment and lifestyle play a key role in our genetics. For the study researchers recruited 200 Moroccan individuals from two ethnic groups — Arab and Berber — said geneticist and supervising author Greg Gibson of Georgia Tech in the U.S. "The Amazigh Berbers are descendants of the first modern humans who populated north Africa 35,000 years ago. The Arabs moved into southern Morocco between the seventh and 11th centuries," write the authors. Gibson says many of the Amazigh and Arabic people in Morocco live in villages, but some have relocated to cities. The aim of the research, says Gibson, was to examine both populations and determine the effect of "nature, nurture and culture on human physiology."He says the environment includes "the complex mix of what you eat, how stressed you are and where you live."

Tissue samples available as onCore closes biobank facility – December 8, 2009
http://www.phgfoundation.org/news/5056/
The cancer biobanking organisation onCore UK was established with a stated mission to inform, coordinate and develop cancer biobanking to enable research towards the discovery and development of new interventions against cancer. This involved two key roles: promotion of cancer biobanking, and serving as an active national cancer biobank resource. Following a decision made earlier this year, onCore UK will no longer undertake the latter role. In a public statement (PDF) explaining the decision, onCore UK says that ‘a standardised national approach has been difficult to achieve’ for biosample collection and that ‘the needs for biobanking can be effectively fulfilled by local biobank activity’. Instead, the organisation will focus solely on the promotion of cancer biobanking in the research and health service communities, subject to Charity Commission approval since onCore is a charitable body.

Stem Cells Can Be Engineered to Kill HIV, Scientists Show – December 9, 2009
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132732.htm
Researchers from the UCLA AIDS Institute and colleagues have for the first time demonstrated that human blood stem cells can be engineered into cells that can target and kill HIV-infected cells -- a process that potentially could be used against a range of chronic viral diseases.The study, published Dec. 7 in the-peer reviewed online journal PLoS One, provides proof-of-principle -- that is, a demonstration of feasibility -- that human stem cells can be engineered into the equivalent of a genetic vaccine.
"We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells," said lead investigator Scott G. Kitchen, assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute. "These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors."

Should patients be obliged to take part in research? – December 9, 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8399763.stm
Not enough patients are volunteering to take part in ground-breaking stem cell research in the UK.
In this week's Scrubbing Up, leading heart stem cell scientist, Professor Anthony Mathur, argues that if people want treatment for a heart problem, they should be obliged to take part in the research. “Without doubt the future of medicine is dependent on clinical research that, in turn, relies on the willingness of patients to be exposed to new therapies.” There exists an unwritten contract between society and medicine which acknowledges the interdependence of the two - the only way that important advances in medicine can be made is with the help of patients volunteering to participate in clinical trials.

Genetic 'map' of Asia's diversity – December 11, 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8406506.stm
An international scientific effort has revealed the genetics behind Asia's diversity.
The Human Genome Organisation's (HUGO) Pan-Asian SNP Consortium carried out a study of almost 2,000 people across the continent. Their findings support the hypothesis that Asia was populated primarily through a single migration event from the south. The researchers described their findings in the journal Science. They found genetic similarities between populations throughout Asia and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern latitudes. The team screened genetic samples from 73 Asian populations for more than 50,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These are variations in pieces of the DNA code, which can be compared to find out how closely related two individuals are genetically. The study found that, as expected, individuals who were from the same region, or who shared a common language also had a great deal in common genetically. But it also answered a question about the origin of Asia's population. It showed that the continent was likely populated primarily through a single migration event from the south.

'Nanosensors' Spot Early Signs of Cancer – December 13, 2009
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/breast-cancer/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100250922
Miniature "nanosensors" can detect early signs of cancer in everyday blood samples taken from patients, researchers report. The sensors hunted for and picked up biomarkers for prostate and breast cancers. Study co-author Mark Reed, associate director of the Yale Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering in New Haven, Conn., said the technology "can generally be applied to many other types of biomarkers." The ultimate, hoped-for outcome is quick, easy and low-cost tests that can be done in a doctor's office to detect cancer before it becomes troublesome. "From a personalized medicine point of view, you could take a spot of blood from a fingerprick and get results within minutes. It would be simple, stable and relatively inexpensive," said William C. Phelps, program director of Translational and Preclinical Cancer Research at the American Cancer Society.

Australia lifts 5-year ban on clinical trials of animal-to-human tissue transplants – December 10, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/yhzef2f
Australia announced Thursday it will lift a 5-year ban on clinical trials of animal-to-human transplantation, after the government's top health body determined the risk of transmitting animal viruses to people was low. The decision by the National Health and Medical Research Council means Australia will join a slew of other countries - including the United States and New Zealand - who have conducted trials of xenotransplantation, the transfer of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another. Xenotransplantation researchers hope the procedure can someday serve as a substitute for human organs, which are in chronic short supply, and help treat diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's. The council issued a ban on clinical trials in 2004, after concerns were raised about the risks of transmitting animal viruses - particularly those from pigs - to humans.

Mapping the God of Sperm: One of the Midwest's most prolific sperm donors may hold the key to understanding how genes affect our health – December 16, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/227104?GT1=43002
It's a crisp fall day in Northville, Mich., a small suburb of Ann Arbor, and Kirk Maxey, a soft-spoken, graying baby boomer with a classic square jaw, is watching his 12-year-old son chase a soccer ball toward the goal. Maxey is doing what he does every Saturday, along with hundreds of other family men and women across the country, but he's not your average soccer dad. Maxey, 51, happens to be one of the most prolific sperm donors in the country. Between 1980 and 1994, he donated at a Michigan clinic twice a week. He's looked at the records of his donations, multiplied by the number of individual vials each donation produced, and estimated the success of each vial resulting in a pregnancy. By his own calculations, he concluded that he is the biological father of nearly 400 children, spread across the state and possibly the country....Maxey, now the CEO of Cayman Chemical, a 300-person global pharmaceutical company, says back then he just "didn't think about it a lot." He didn't have to. When he began volunteering, he wasn't asked to take any genetic tests and received no psychological screening or counseling. He merely signed a waiver of anonymity, locked himself in a room with a cup and a sexy magazine, and didn't consider the emotional or genetic consequences for another 30 years. Both his cavalier attitude and the clinic's lax standards, Maxey says, explain why he may have so many offspring. But now a fierce conscience is catching with his robust procreative drive. When he's not running his company, Maxey has become a devoted advocate for better government regulation of the sperm-donor business. He is also making his genome public through Harvard's Personal Genome Project, and hopes that the information collected there might one day help his offspring and their mothers. "I think it was quite reckless that sperm banks created so many offspring without keeping track of their or my health status," he says.

Most Stem Cells Used in Research Come From Whites – December 16, 2009
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100251210
Human embryonic stem cell lines currently used for research come mostly from white donors, a new report finds. That could mean that nonwhites will benefit less from any medical breakthroughs that emerge from that research down the line, experts say. Blacks could be especially affected. In fact, none of the most widely used stem cell lines studied showed any traces of recent African ancestry, the team reported online in a Dec. 16 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. To increase the diversity of embryonic stem cell lines, the researchers urge increased efforts to include stem cells from other populations. "We have examined the population ancestry of a large collection of human embryonic stem cell lines that are commonly used in research," said study co-author Noah Rosenberg, an associate professor in the department of human genetics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "Most of these lines appear to derive from European or Middle Eastern populations," he added. Only two of the lines were linked to East Asians, and "none of these lines derive from populations with recent African ancestry," the researchers wrote.

Disease Risk Depends on Which Parent a DNA Variant Is Inherited From – December 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/science/19gene.html?_r=1&ref=science
Icelandic biologists have discovered that the genetic risk of several common diseases, like Type 2 diabetes and cancer, can depend on which parent a DNA variant is inherited from. The finding may help explain part of a serious gap in understanding the genetics of common diseases. Using an extensive genealogy that includes almost all the present population of Iceland and many in previous generations, the Reykjavik company DeCode Genetics managed to distinguish which chromosomes came from the father and which from the mother in some 40,000 people. The company then ran standard tests, known as genome wide association studies, the tool that scientists have hoped would track down the roots of common diseases and fulfill the promise of the Human Genome Project. But with most of these common diseases, the tests have so far identified genetic variants that account for only a small percentage of the risk. This is in contrast to simple diseases, most of them rare, where a single gene is the cause and the disease has a clear family pedigree.

Cancer treatment takes a giant step forward as scientists crack code – December 17, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6959325.ece
The complete genetic codes of two human cancers have been mapped for the first time. The move could herald a medical revolution in which every tumour can be targeted with personalised therapy. The exhaustive genetic maps, which catalogue every DNA mutation found in two patients’ tumours, will transform treatment of the disease. It has been described as the most significant milestone in cancer research in more than a decade. Scientists predict that by about 2020 all cancer patients could have their tumours analysed to find the genetic defects that drive them. This information would then be used to select the treatments most likely to work. Insights from the genomes will also lead to the development of powerful drugs to target DNA errors that cause cancer and highlight ways in which the disease can be prevented. Cancers would be diagnosed and treated according to their genetic profiles rather than their position in the body.


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OECD Guidelines on Human Biobanks and Genetic Research Databases
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/47/44054609.pdf
This OECD Recommendation on Human Biobanks and Genetic Research Databases (“Recommendation”) aims to provide guidance for the establishment, governance, management, operation, access, use and discontinuation of human biobanks and genetic research databases (“HBGRD”), which are structured resources that can be used for the purpose of genetic research and which include: (a) human biological materials and/or information generated from the analysis of the same; and (b) extensive associated information.

Biotechnology Education Magazine Now Online:  Your World Focuses on Agricultural Biotechnology
http://www.biotechinstitute.org/resources/your_world_magazine.html
The Biotechnology Institute has released the latest issue of Your World: Biotechnology & You, the nation's leading biotechnology education magazine. The issue focuses on agriculture biotech crop-- the science involved, the benefits possible, and the controversies. It helps students, teachers, parents, farmers, and other stakeholders around the globe to better understand agricultural biotechnology as a system of sustainable agriculture that will satisfy human food needs, enhance environmental quality, and sustain the economic viability of farms. The full version of the issue can be downloaded for free at the link above.