Month: June 2009

Decellularisation! Organ scaffolds!

via jwz:

Hybrid hearts could solve transplant shortage

"It’s amazing, absolutely beautiful," says Doris Taylor, describing the latest addition to an array of tiny thumping hearts that sit in her lab, hooked up to an artificial blood supply. The rat hearts beat just as if there were inside a live animal, but even more remarkable is how each one has been made: by coating the stripped-down "scaffolding" of one rat’s heart with tissue grown from another rat’s stem cells.

The idea is fairly simple: take an organ from a human donor or animal, and use a mild detergent to strip away flesh, cells and DNA so that all is left is the inner "scaffold" of collagen, an "immunologically inert" protein. Add stem cells from the relevant patient to this naked shell of an organ and they will differentiate into all the cells the organ needs to function without inducing an immune response after transplant, or any new infections.

Although Taylor only added stem cells to the hearts, these cells differentiated into many different cells, in all the correct places, which is the best part of using decellularised scaffolds. The stem cells transformed into endothelial cells in the ventricles and atria, for example, and into vascular and smooth-muscle cells in the spaces for blood vessels, just as in a natural heart. Taylor thinks this happened because she pumped blood and nutrients through the organ, producing pressure in each zone which helps to determine how cells differentiate there.

But chemical, as well as mechanical, cues seem to have guided differentiation. Taylor has evidence that growth factors and peptides remained anchored to the scaffold even after the flesh was washed off. These chemicals likely signalled to the stem cells, indicating how many should migrate to which areas and what to change into in each zone. "Our mantra is to give nature the tools and get out of the way," she says.

Also: Stem cells used to restore sight

The idea to team stem cells with contact lenses came from an observation that stem cells from the cornea stick to contact lenses. To obtain the stem cells, Dr Watson took less than a millimeter of tissue from the side of each patients’ cornea. Working with colleagues at POWH and UNSW, he cultured stem cells from the tissue in extended wear contact lenses.

Within 10 to 14 days the stem cells began to attach to the cornea, replenishing damaged cells. Satisfied that the stem cells were doing their job, Dr Watson removed the lenses and the patients have been seeing with new eyes for the last 18 months.

going across the border without proper ID

My weekends out of town have pushed me out of the habit of writing. Potential words are constantly spilling from my mouth and mind, but not landing where they’ll stain page or paper and stick around awhile and have a drink. Instead I find myself busy and busier, living a pace just this side of insane, and never in front of a computer when I need it most, but wrapped instead around chocolate curls and blonde exhaustion, tangled in too many things to set out straight.

The best I can do is point form after-the-fact, small glimpses into moments that stuck, like snapshots taken from a moving car, anecdotes I tell over tea or as we walk, hands carving out the expressions in our bodies as we did this or that, laughter infectious, haltered to speech.

Memories of the Mercury, wrapped in cigarette smoke and surrounded by black, dancing with Dee like the first time we really met, physical strangers in L.A., when he was still from London, and we had never lived in Montreal. Of Tony curled in my lap, days later, slightly drunk at Grahame and Becca’s, explaining ‘performing’ as my partner in front of my mother at Gasworks park, “See my patience!” He says, “how clever and kind a teacher I am! How carefully I’m showing Nick how to spin these poi, how I’m responsible, understanding. Look how perfect I am for your daughter, because I’m AWESOME!” Of Folklife and music and Richard’s music just for us, letting us play, the video we took, the glitchy, delightful beat. I think of Rafael dipping me in time to marimba music, all wrapped in tie-dye and a purple skirt, and Tony on the ground leaning forward to kiss me precisely on the lips, as if the entire moment had been perfectly rehearsed. I think of standing in front of the Circus Contraption audience, faking desire, shuddering with it, breaking my plastic glass with the heated deep breaths of my theatrical orgasm, ready to beat the band. The warmth and depth of my smile. Of flying my pocket Pirate kite, of limping gladly, of free hug signs and breakfast and pliers and giving a necklace away. Of sound effects and posed photographs and doing the tango with only my hand, two fingers for legs, stepping along the ground so prettily it was like we could see the invisible held-in-teeth roses glowing alive in our love.

tossing it out to the animators

via Sean:

Illustration by Roy Husada

Vancouver Opera announces OPERABOT, an animation contest for our Golden Anniversary Season. Animators are challenged to create animated shorts of one of the four productions of the Golden Anniversary Season.

The contest is found here: http://www.youtube.com/group/vancouveropera

Anyone 18+ can enter and submit a 4 min or less short that tells the story of one of the four operas of the Golden Anniversary Season. Upload them to our YouTube contest group. Everyone is encouraged to vote for their favorites!

“With the long-running success of our manga series by Roy Husada, we thought this was the logical next step,” said General Director Jim Wright. “We can’t wait to see what people come up with!”

Four winners — chosen by the public and a panel of judges from Vancouver-area animation studios Pixar, EA, Rainmaker, Bardel, and Rival Schools – will win a host of prizes including animation hardware, gaming packages, and digital cameras.

The contest runs June 1, 2009 to Nov 1, 2009 and is open to all residents of the US and Canada. Official rules can be found at www.vancouveropera.ca Everyone who enters will receive tickets to the opera so everyone is a winner!

The contest was inspired by the active animation industry in Vancouver and a similar contest run by Chicago Opera Theater in 2008.

Vancouver Opera is a leader in social media initiative, including the Operalive.ca multimedia site, “Blogger Night At the Opera”, “Operaninja” a live backstage Twitterer, and “Operagator” an opera news aggregator. A leader in Web 2.0 initiatives including an active blog, facebook, flickr, Twitter and YouTube channel, Vancouver Opera is committed to reaching the next generation of opera lovers using the media of the times. Vancouver Opera is also a leader in using pop visual arts as a medium for opera, including a long running Opera Manga series by Roy Husada and Fiona Meng, and commissioning of award-winning visual artists like Edel Rodriguez and Michael Abraham to create original artwork for VO season productions.

Vancouver Opera’s extensive network of Web 2.0 and social media sites as well as official contest rules can be found on our homepage at http://www.vancouveropera.ca.