Dying Organs Restored to Life in Novel Experiments

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/health/mitochondria-transplant-heart-attack.html

by ThomPete • 8 years ago

120 32 8 years ago

jhou2• 8 years ago

A brief search shows that mitochondrial transplantation for myocardial infarction was described in 2008. Astonishing work. This is starting to become more mainstream in the last couple of years.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18978192

empath75• 8 years ago

It would be hard to convince me to sign up for such a study, if there’s a 50% chance they give me a placebo and I die.

T-A2• 8 years ago

You would rather not sign up and go for the 100% percent chance they give you nothing and you die?

Engineering-MD• 8 years ago

In clinical trials, pure placebos are very rarely used (only in mild conditions or where no treatment exists). Commonly novel therapies are compared against the current treatment of choice.

michaelscott• 8 years ago

I was about to ask how ethical it could be to give a pure placebo in cases as serious as heart failure, when simply telling the patient (or the patient's family) that they received some other more conventional procedure should produce similar results.

raverbashing3• 8 years ago

Maybe in those cases, if the treatment, if it shows promise, should be given also to the people that were given placebo (after the study)

contravariant• 8 years ago

At that point it's far from certain that the medicine will give you higher chances of survival though.

CodeCube• 8 years ago

I'm very excited about this stuff ... but as a relatively healthy person, I'm gonna wait for v1.1 :)

JacobDotVI• 8 years ago

From Edward Tufte’s book “Data Analysis for Politics and Policy”:

“One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half of the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.” It was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?””

https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/dapp/DAPP1.pdf

(further attributed to Dr. E. E. Peacock, Jr, as quoted in Medical World News, September 1, 1972, p. 45)

T-A2• 8 years ago

It occurs to me that mitochondrial decline also seems to be an important aspect of aging. If you can just infuse mitochondria through the blood and "the organelles will gravitate almost magically to the injured cells that need them and take up residence", that suggests a rather obvious rejuvenation approach.

raverbashing3• 8 years ago

And do different cross have different mitochondria? I would be tempted to say no but I'm not sure

seandougall2• 8 years ago

All the cells in the body have the same mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the maternal side (egg cells have them, sperm cells don’t).

(Edit: except for cells that have no mitochondria, of course)

gaius• 8 years ago

Truly, they are the powerhouse of the cell

tambourine_man• 8 years ago

But where do we get those new mitochondria from? I'm almost afraid to ask.

nine_k2• 8 years ago

Maybe from cloning one's own cells, then carefully dismantling them to free up mitochondria without damaging them? I don't think a lot of the tissue should be required (that is, ounces, not pounds).

tahoe1780• 8 years ago

http://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2010/ss/rejuvenate-you...

http://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2010/2/Reverse-Mitocho...

ArtWomb• 8 years ago

Yup. It is a very promising area of rejuvenation research. I think right now most dollars are allocated to understanding basic mitochondrial function. As well as cures for the pernicious degenerative diseases associated with malfunctioning mitochondria that cruelly tend to develop in young children. But there is no question: further research activities and clinical trials have a high probability of bearing fruit. Cryo-EM visualization of metabolic pathways. Even understanding function and purpose of the THC cannabinoid receptors found on their outer membranes could unlock their mysterious hidden potential.

Symmetry• 8 years ago

Yeah, Mitochondria are a big deal in aging. Animals of a given size with larger mitochondria populations, like hummingbirds, tend to live a lot longer than other animals of similar size. Though hummingbirds lose their ability to hover and hence feed normally in the wild long before they die of old age.

Nick Lane wrote about book about mitochondria I'd heartily recommend: Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life.

EDIT: And Aubrey de Grey of course has a typically audacious/crazy plan for dealing with mitochondrial mutations. http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/m...

dhimes• 8 years ago

It!!!

Could!!!

Work!!!!!!

(Apologies to Mel Brooks/Young Frankenstein)

cromwellian• 8 years ago

Wait, how do the mitochondria get back into the cells? Presumably the cell membrane somehow permits them to pass but how are they recognized? If a mechanism exists to recognize and permit them to move into a cell, doesn’t that either suggest they can move out of cells as well and/or confirm the theory that mitochondria were symbiotes? That is, there’s something in cell DNA that encodes a mechanism for foreign symbiotes to cross the cell membrane?

88e282102ae2e5b• 8 years ago

I was also surprised by this. In the papers where they did this work, they discuss many previously-known mechanisms for intercellular mitochondrial transfer - apparently cells can form nanotubes and exchange organelles, and that's relatively well-studied. That's not what's happening here, though, and they state that the mechanism at play is unknown.

Dying Organs Restored to Life in Novel Experiments

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