Alcohol abuse and alcoholism remain a serious societal problem. In addition to better understanding the basic biobehavioral mechanisms of the disease, it is very important to begin developing clinical interventions to address issues of end-stage pathology. Long-term alcohol abuse induces a panoply of systems failure including alcoholic liver disease, cardiomyopathy, neuronal death associated with alcohol-induced dementia, and pancreatitis. One potential approach will be to develop new stem cell technologies to provide therapeutic tools to reverse these pathologies. In order to realize this goal, however, detailed knowledge will be required of host acceptance of syngeneic and allogeneic grafts, the effects of alcohol on selective stem cell differentiation, and the effects of genetic imprinting. The present application will utilize a new source of primate stem cells - derived from parthenogenetic activation of non-human primate oocytes - to examine these specific issues. The parthenote-derived stem cell represent a novel resource, created in these laboratories, for the generation of new cellular tools for correcting the pathophysiology associated with alcohol abuse.
| Hipp, Jason D; Davies, Kelvin P; Tar, Moses et al. (2007) Using gene chips to identify organ-specific, smooth muscle responses to experimental diabetes: potential applications to urological diseases. BJU Int 99:418-30 |
