肿瘤干细胞研究的进展及启示

肿瘤干细胞理论认为,肿瘤增长是由肿瘤中具有干细胞特性的细胞分裂增殖引起的。针对性地抑制肿瘤干细胞的增殖,能显著提高肿瘤治愈率。本文用哲学的观点对肿瘤干细胞假说的提出、验证、临床应用进行分析,对于深入认识肿瘤干细胞的本质、探索其分离方法、发现抑制其增殖的有效手段将起到积极作用。     

Towards a Global Human Embryonic Stem Cell Bank

An increasingly unbridgeable gap exists between the supply and demand of transplantable organs. Human embryonic stem cell technology could solve the organ shortage problem by restoring diseased or damaged tissue across a range of common conditions. However, such technology faces several largely ignored immunological challenges in delivering cell lines to large populations. We address some of these challenges and argue in favor of encouraging contribution or intentional creation of embryos from which widely immunocompatible stem cell lines could be derived. Further, we argue that current immunological constraints in tissue transplantation demand the creation of a global stem cell bank, which may hold particular promise for minority populations and other sub-groups currently marginalized from organ procurement and allocation systems. Finally, we conclude by offering a number of practical and ethically oriented recommendations for constructing a human embryonic stem cell bank that we hope will help solve the ongoing organ shortage problem.     

关于耳蜗传出神经系统功能研究的启示

耳蜗传出神经系统在听觉活动中的功能日益受到重视,本文以耳鼻喉专业知识为基点,查阅了近年一系列有关耳蜗传出神经系统的研究成果和趋势,从哲学层面总结出一些相关思考方式,期待运用这些思考方式与实践工作形成良好互动,指导实际的科学研究,有助于提高我们的专业思考潜力。     

血管平滑肌细胞在动脉粥样硬化发生中的哲学思维

随着对血管平滑肌细胞增殖在动脉粥样硬化中研究的不断深入,逐步意识到细胞凋亡的存在及其相互之间的矛盾关系,对动脉粥样硬化的认识亦由从形态结构和生化组成等描述病变,发展为在细胞乃至分子基因水平上的深入研究,发现血管平滑肌细胞的增殖和凋亡在动脉粥样硬化形成过程中起重要作用。从哲学角度探讨血管平滑肌细胞在动脉粥样硬化发生中的作用,有助于科学的发现疾病的本质。     

肿瘤干细胞与肿瘤治疗

肿瘤可看作是由功能异质性的细胞群体所组成的,具有不定增殖能力的异常器官。最近提出的肿瘤干细胞学说认为肿瘤起源于干细胞,肿瘤生长是肿瘤组织中极少量具有特殊细胞表面标志的肿瘤干细胞增殖的结果。因此治疗的关键应是针对肿瘤干细胞,通过靶向肿瘤干细胞及其异常调节的信号转导通路来治疗肿瘤。这对传统的治疗方式提出了巨大挑战,也为有效地根治肿瘤开辟了新的思路。     

The utilitarian fallacy

The utilitarian fallacy, most egregiously committed by J. S. Mill but perpetuated ever since, consists of supposing that pleasure, being a noun, is, in every true statement in which it occurs, the name of afeeling, and that pleasant, in any such statement, means that whatever is so described is conducive to that feeling. In fact, pleasant is more commonly used as a positive term of appraisal, indicating that the thing so described is liked, and usually liked for its own sake, and pleasure typically has a similar use. These terms thus resemble words like awful, wonderful and so on, which typically donot mean evocative of awe, wonder and so on. What follows from this is that the feeling of pleasure, while perhaps good for its own sake, is not uniquely so. Almost anything correctly described as pleasant is apt to be such. Similar observations apply to the term happiness. Therefore utilitarianism, according to which there is only one thing good as an end, or for its own sake - namely, pleasure or happiness - is false as a philosophical theory of ethics.Don't think about it,look at it!Wittgenstein     

干细胞技术应用于口腔医学的希望与困惑

骨髓干细胞、胚胎干细胞已开始应用于口腔医学领域 ,有关牙髓干细胞、牙周干细胞、牙胚干细胞等研究也取得了一系列重要的进展 ,为治疗口腔疾病开辟了一个新的途径 ,但同时也面临着需要进一步探讨的技术和伦理等方面的问题。     

真核双基因表达载体p1RES-Rb94-E1A的构建与鉴定

以pE1A质粒为模板,扩增E1A基因,然后将E1AcDNA片段插入前期已经构建好的真核表达载体pIRES-Rb94的MCSB的SalI与NotI之间,获得真核双基因表达质粒p1RES-Rb94-E1A,转染肺腺癌A549细胞后,采用RT—PCR和Westernblot方法检测Rb94和E1A在A549细胞中的表达,为研...     

Making Cells Worthwhile: Calculations of Value in a European Consortium for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Banking

The StemBANCC consortium was a large European consortium bringing together scientists from academic institutions and the pharmaceutical industry. The aim of the consortium was to produce 1500 induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from participants with a variety of common, complex diseases. These cell lines were intended to help develop iPSC as tools for screening small molecule drug candidates and modelling human diseases in vitro. The scale of investment in this and other biobanks presents iPSC as a valuable commodity. However, StemBANCC was also mandated to make its making cells and data available to European researchers on a not-for-profit basis. To understand how making this quantity of stem cells and data available is configured as a valuable and worthwhile investment for the consortium partners, research materials (project documents, scientific literature and interviews with scientists working on StemBANCC) were analysed using theoretical tools from Valuation Studies. Combining STS and economic sociology, valuation studies analyse how the worth of things, ideas and phenomena result from context-specific practices of assessment and evaluation; worth incorporates moral, financial, scientific, economic. social and cultural registers of value. In this sense, practitioners evaluate the worth of the StemBANCC cells and data at a variety of sites, from participant recruitment to online databases. This provides an alternative to biovalue and similar conceptual models for theorising the generation of value in the Life Sciences.