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Getting Closer© John McManamy
"A Nobel Prize is virtually waiting
for the right person or team to cry out, Eureka!"
We may be a long way from finding the elusive gene or genes for depression or bipolar, much less an actual cure, but the quest is by no means hopeless. Three different cases involving three different disorders illustrate how far we've come and how far we have to go. Last month, a team at Rutgers University announced that it had narrowed the search for a schizophrenia gene or genes along a strand of DNA known as Chromosome 1, and confirmed previous findings that also linked areas of Chromosome 13 to the disorder. Their study tracked 22 Canadian families with the illness and 288 people across several generations. Evidence from the study is "100 times stronger" than any previous study of a genetic link. In a best case scenario, the team would hit paydirt by the end of the year. Not long after, a blood test to screen for schizophrenia could be on the cards, a breakthrough that would silence those who claim that mental illness is all in the mind. Meanwhile, French gene therapy researchers have successfully treated three infants suffering from a disease that shuts down children's immune systems and forces them to live in airtight bubbles. In what is being hailed as a milestone of gene therapy, doctors removed bone marrow from the infants, isolated stem cells from the marrow, grew the cells in a lab, treated the cells with a virus that carried the gene for a missing protein, and returned the cells to the infants' bodies. These cells multiplied in the boys' bodies, outproducing the cells with the defective gene. Today, the children have fully functioning immune systems, and two have lived normal lives for a year. Finally, a study done in monkeys suggests the possibility of a genetic cure for Alzheimer's. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego were able to restore deteriorating nerve connections in the brains of monkeys by transplanting brain cells genetically programmed to release a protein called "nerve growth factor." The next steps would be to determine whether nerve growth factor gene therapy actually improves mental function in aged monkeys and to proceed with clinical trials to determine if this therapy is safe and effective in humans with Alzheimer's. Dare we hope that similar advances in depression or bipolar be far behind? The science seems tantalizingly close. A Nobel Prize is virtually waiting for the right person or team to cry out, Eureka! Then again, depression or bipolar could turn out to be to genetics what HIV has proved to be for Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Getting Closer in Depression is owned by Kathy Brewis. Permission to republish Getting Closer in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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