X-Message-Number: 26160 Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 21:13:44 -0500 From: The NanoAging Institute <> Subject: Two great news one bad news Discovery reveals how stem cells can be used to help repair acute spinal cord damage A treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells improves mobility in rats with spinal cord injuries, providing the first physical evidence that the therapeutic use of these cells can help restore motor skills lost from acute spinal cord tissue damage. Hans Keirstead and his colleagues in the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at UC Irvine have found that a human embryonic stem cell-derived treatment they developed was successful in restoring the insulation tissue for neurons in rats treated seven days after the initial injury, which led to a recovery of motor skills. But the same treatment did not work on rats that had been injured for 10 months. The findings point to the potential of using stem cell-derived therapies for treatment of spinal cord damage in humans during the very early stages of the injury. The study appears in the May 11 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. http://www.nanoaging.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1275 UCI epilepsy researcher receives nation's top neuroscience prize ( this is the reason why a cryo prize is good) Ivan Soltesz to use $2.7 million Jacob Javits award to study brain-injury tie to epilepsy Irvine, Calif., May 10, 2005 -- Ivan Soltesz, a UC Irvine School of Medicine neurobiologist who studies epilepsy, has received a Senator Jacob Javits Award in the Neurosciences, the nation's most prestigious prize for cutting-edge research on brain injuries and illnesses. A professor of anatomy and neurobiology, Soltesz and his research team will receive $2.7 million over seven years from the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke. With this funding, Soltesz will study the neurological factors behind the higher instances of epilepsy in people who have recovered from severe head trauma, with the hope that the research will lead to new epilepsy treatments. "I am honored and excited to receive the Javits neuroscience award," Soltesz said. "The award represents a unique opportunity for our laboratory to pursue fundamentally novel research avenues into the mechanisms that underlie post-traumatic epilepsy." Research in the Soltesz lab focuses on how traumatic brain injury leads to seizures and epilepsy. More than a million people suffer traumatic brain injury in the United States every year, and head injury is the leading cause of death and disability among young adults. It is estimated that the overall economic cost of traumatic brain injury to society approaches $45 billion each year. The Soltesz lab uses a combination of experimental and computational modeling techniques to determine the nature of the key alterations that occur in neuronal circuits following head injury, in order to develop new anti-epileptic treatment strategies. http://www.nanoaging.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1273 and the bad news: Greg Fahy cannot be an advisor since we are a cryonics organisation. --Jon Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26160