Cord blood stem cell transplant hopes lifted

A technique which may eventually remove the need for matched bone marrow transplants has been used in humans for the first time.

It is hoped that "master cells" taken from umbilical cords could be used on any patient without rejection.

The latest advance, published in the journal Nature Medicine, greatly multiplies the tiny number of cells from the cord ready for a transplant.

UK charity Leukaemia Research said this could be the "holy grail" for doctors.

Aggressive treatment

The current system of bone marrow transplantation helps patients who have diseases, such as leukaemia, which affect the stem cells in their bone marrow where new blood cells are grown.

Their own bone marrow cells are killed off by aggressive treatment and cells from a matched donor are introduced in their place.

However, a matching donor cannot always be found, despite extensive donor registries held by organisations such as the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust and, even with a carefully matched donor, there is still a risk that the patient's body will reject the new cells.

Cells extracted from umbilical cords could overcome these problems - they do not have the characteristics which would normally trigger immune rejection, so it is likely that cells from a single baby's cord could be used in any patient, without the need for matching.

However, there is one big disadvantage - there are not enough cells in a single cord to meet the needs of an adult patient.

Scientists have been looking for ways to either combine the cells from more than one baby, or to "expand" the cell numbers in the laboratory.

The second of these options is far from straightforward - simply allowing the stem cells to divide and increase in the laboratory means that many of the resulting extra cells will be simple blood cells, which do not have the ability to produce new cells themselves.

Quick to work

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle believe they may have found a way.

They manipulated a "signalling pathway" in the stem cells to trigger an increase in numbers without losing their stem cell status.

After success in laboratory animals, these cells were used in human patients, and the researchers found that they were accepted by the body more quickly and contributed more to the rebuilding of functioning bone marrow than "non-expanded" cord blood transplants.

Dr David Grant, Scientific Director of charity Leukaemia Research said: "The holy grail is to have an 'off the peg' source of unlimited numbers of 'neutral' stem cells which can be given to any patient safe in the knowledge that they will not cause the very difficult 'graft versus host' problems that lead to rejection and often the death of the patient.

"This is a promising development towards this because the concern has been that once stem cells start 'growing' they lose their stem cell properties and progress to ordinary blood cells with a very limited lifespan."

Henny Braund, chief executive of The Anthony Nolan Trust, said the potential for umbilical cord blood was "huge", and that the charity had already imported well over 250 units of umbilical cord blood.

"Sadly in the UK, despite our scientific expertise, umbilical cord blood is still very much an untapped resource and we are only able to collect and store a tiny amount of the cords we need.

"We really need a properly resourced UK cord blood collection programme.

"Further investment is crucial if we are to capitalise on this amazing resource and save more lives."

The ice-cream parlour with 860 different flavours

You might imagine that the shop selling the largest number of ice-cream flavours in the world would be in Italy or perhaps the US, but in fact it is in the Venezuelan city of Merida, as Will Grant discovered.

After looking in the windows of a couple of ice-cream parlours but finding nothing more exciting inside than strawberry and vanilla, we eventually find Coromoto, opposite a church.

The neon sign outside, with the words "Guinness Book of Records" written in pink, is an instant give-away but, once through the doors, it becomes even clearer that this is the place.

At first glance, the counters of brightly coloured ice cream look perfectly ordinary.

Close up, the flavours are anything but.

The selection includes chilli, tomato, gherkin, onion, mushrooms in wine, garlic, and cream of crab.

Coromoto was set up in 1980 by a Portuguese immigrant, Manuel da Silva Oliveira.

The owner does not come in much any more and has left the running of the place to Jose Ramirez.

Seasonal changes

Jose is exactly what an ice-cream parlour manager should look like.

A friendly man in his 40s, his white and purple shirt is spotlessly clean, and his black moustache is perfectly groomed.

"Mr Oliveira was tired of working for the big ice-cream companies," Jose says, "and decided that he could make more interesting flavours on his own."

The first attempt was avocado.

"It's a tough one to get right because avocados are so rich," says Jose.

"Mr Oliveira wasted around 50kg of ice cream trying to perfect it."

Coromoto sells about 60 flavours on any given day, but changes the flavours according to the seasons.

On one wall, a list of its specialities is made out of engraved wooden slats.

Besides the standard options like chocolate and rum-and-raisin, there are plenty of exotic fruits: guava, papaya, mango and passion fruit.

There are several vile-sounding flavours among the 860 as well: eggs, macaroni cheese and sardines-in-brandy being a few of the more bizarre examples.

And there are a lot of oddly named ones too like British Airways, Andean Kisses and I'm Sorry, Darling.

One of them, Viagra Hope, is bright blue like the pills.

I have to ask what is in it, and am relieved to hear it is all natural: honey and pollen.

"Different people like different things," said the shop's manager.

"Personally I'm a fan of the fruit flavours but many customers prefer the alcoholic choices like Cointreau, cognac or vodka-and-pineapple.

"Of course, being Venezuela, there are plenty made with rum."

In the back room

Ushered behind the front desk, I get the chance to glimpse what most visitors to Coromoto never see: the ice cream being made.

The house special is made with several flavours including beef and cheese

As we walk behind the scenes, I imagine scenes of an ice-cream version of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, complete with a mad inventor pouring strange solutions into test tubes.

However, a bit disappointingly, I am led into an airless room where two vast ice-cream mixers are whirring away.

On one of the machines, a big tub of raisins is waiting to be added to the concoction inside.

In the other, a vanilla-coloured mixture is being turned but - as I suspected - it is not vanilla.

"Es cafe," says the girl keeping an eye on the machines - coffee flavour.

Now it is my time to try a few.

'Muy picante'

"What is the house special?" I ask Jose.

He chuckles and says "pabellon criollo" - a traditional Venezuelan meal of beef, rice, plantain, cheese and black beans, which Coromoto has replicated in ice cream.

Jose fixes me a small scoop of each flavour - and yes, they do beef-flavoured ice cream in Coromoto - topping it off with a half-scoop of chilli flavour.

"Muy picante," he warns me, but I foolishly nod... I'm sure it's not that hot... and gulp it down in one.

Once my eyes have stopped watering and I have got my breath back, I manage a smile at Jose, who is laughing and saying, "I told you so!"

Clearly Coromoto's flavours live up to their names.

To put out the fire on my tongue, I go for the plantain flavour which is incredibly realistic. As is the cheese, which I would not at all recommend.

Perhaps some things, like cheddar, should not be made into ice cream.

Finally the beef. Despite my misgivings, it is rich, sweet and meaty. I can't quite believe it, but I seem to actually like beef-flavoured ice cream.

Back on the shop floor, the customers are enjoying their choices on what is a stiflingly hot day.

"I chose a scoop of avocado and a scoop of sweetcorn," says Marjorie Castillo, who lives in Caracas.

"It's amazing. The avocado tastes just like avocado and the sweetcorn like sweetcorn."

Her 14-year-old niece, Marvery, concurs. "It's exotic, divine," she says.

"You've only got 858 flavours still to go," I tell her.

"I know," she says, giggling into her ice-cold treat. "But I'm sure I can do it. One flavour at a time!"

Alligators and birds share lung structure and ancestor

Alligators and birds share a breathing mechanism which may have helped their ancestors dominate Earth more than 200 million years ago, scientists say.

Research published in the journal Science found that like birds, in alligators air flows in one direction.

Birds' lung structure allows them to breathe when flying in low oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions.

This breathing may have helped a common ancestor of birds and alligators thrive in the hypoxic period of the Triassic.

Mammals 'hiding'

"It might explain a mystery that has been around for quite some time", Dr Colleen Farmer from the University of Utah told BBC News.

The mystery in question is why the archosaurs came to dominate Earth after the planet's worst mass extinction 251 million years ago.

Archosaurs evolved into two different branches which developed into crocodilians, dinosaurs, flying pterosaurs and eventually birds.

Synapsids, which evolved to include mammals, had been dominant in the Permian period before the mass extinction.

Some survived but were toppled from their perch by the archosaurs.

Any mammal-like synapsid survivors "were teeny liittle things hiding in cracks" said Dr Farmer. "I think it's because they couldn't compete.

"It wasn't until the die-off of the large dinosaurs 65 million years ago that mammals made a comeback and started occupying body sizes larger than an opossum."

To demonstrate alligator lung mechanisms, the scientists measured airflow in anesthetised animals, showing it flows in one direction rather than in and out of chambers.

They also pumped water containing tiny fluorescent beads into the lungs of dead alligators to observe the flow.

Studies on these alligators may explain why some animals ruled the Earth.

Puzzle solved

The researchers believe the similarity in lung structure may explain why some animals were better able to adapt after the extinction, when oxygen levels dropped.

"We know that birds are really good at breathing in hypoxic conditions. They can fly at altitudes that would kill a mammal," said Dr Farmer.

"Many archosaurs, such as pterosaurs, apparently were capable of sustaining vigorous exercise. Lung design may have played a key role in this capacity.

"That's been a puzzle, why do birds have these very different lungs? But now we can date it back to the common ancestor of birds and crocodilians.

"It implies that all dinosaurs, herbivores like Triceratops and carnivores like Tyrannosaurus, had bird-like lungs," Dr Farmer added.

China's children turn to golf in a bid to get ahead

As China's population continues to soar, wealthy parents who want their children to stand out from the crowd are having to make a special effort. Some, finds Michelle Tsai, are turning to sports that not long ago would have been seen as elitist.

Take-up of golf in China soared in line with the country's economic growth

This looked nothing like the Beijing I knew.

I was just west of Third Ring Road, one of the capital's gridlocked highways, but I could no longer hear the honking cars, rumbling buses, or the rut-tut-tut of the motorised rickshaws.

In fact, I could not even see the massive buildings that dominate this section of the city.

In front of me was one huge expanse of manicured green grass, an anomaly in this megalopolis of concrete.

The only sounds? The thwacks of golf balls being struck.

I was at a golf course in downtown Beijing, and striding toward me was Eddie Shi, who had arrived to fine-tune his long game.

He was flanked by his regular entourage: his father, his translator and his caddy, all of whom towered over him. Because Eddie is eight years old.

Competitive edge

With their wallets fattened by decades of unprecedented economic growth, wealthy Chinese parents have been trying to find new ways to give a competitive edge to their little ones.

One of the latest trends is enrolling children in sports more often associated with well-heeled Westerners, than China's new middle-classes.

Every week Eddie and his father, Shi Jian, make the three-hour drive from the nearby city of Tianjin.

They come to this course for the experienced coaching, Shi Jian, a manager at a Swiss pharmaceutical company, told me.

Here the coaches are foreign, which means Eddie can improve his English while he tinkers with his swing.

"Why would a Chinese eight-year-old like golf?" I asked.

"It's a gentleman's sport," Eddie told me, sounding more like one of those bow-tie-wearing, flannel-suited commentators from decades past.

Then he skipped off to fetch a golf ball printed with the Japanese robot cat Doraemon.

His father had these specially made as a reward, after Eddie hit a hole-in-one a few months ago.

On this Saturday, Eddie's lesson started with practice chips at the driving range.

"Aim for the marker," said his coach, a tall Australian.

I suspected that this was all too easy for Eddie, who has played golf since he was four and heads to a driving range most evenings after finishing his homework.

The previous week he hit a ball 190m with a driver.

Upward mobility

When Shi Jian was growing up, he played football with the kids in his neighbourhood.

Now, he says, there are fewer kids - the result of China's one child policy.

It's hard to get two teams together.

Eddie happens to play golf, but in today's China, cultivating your son or daughter is the true national sport.

Parents hope their daughters' musical skills will help them find a husband

The eight-year-old also takes private lessons for jazz percussion, maths and English, but his parents expect golf to make the biggest difference in his life, and help dispel the stereotype that Chinese people don't know how to have fun.

"China's future is an international one," said Shi Jian.

"If Eddie goes to the US in the future, he'll have more to talk about with his friends there."

Upward mobility doesn't come cheap though.

At this particular school, SGA Golf Academy, a 10-hour package of one-on-one sessions costs 10,000 yuan - two-thirds the average annual salary of an urban worker.

When the lesson ended, I asked Eddie what the hardest thing was about golf. He answered like a pro.

"The bunker," he said. Then he ran off to play video games, free for a little while.

For the first time that afternoon Eddie seemed like a regular kid, someone who gets silly and jokes around.

And although he appeared content during his lesson I couldn't help but wonder if Eddie wouldn't rather be less serious about the sport.

In another district, Shunyi, plots of farmland mix with international schools and gated communities. On weekends, children come here for the Equuleus International Riding Club.

The entrance sits across the road from farm stands selling fruit and vegetables, but inside it feels more like the grounds of a boarding school.

On a recent morning, I watched young equestrians on horseback in the indoor arena. Proud parents looked on from the side.

One student, a beginner, didn't appear to be doing anything. Then I realised he was so young that his lesson involved just sitting astride the horse.

Brutal cycle

I met a 12-year-old who was about to head home after her trotting lesson. This girl was the picture of a genteel sportswoman: a riding crop in one hand, her long hair tucked under her riding hat, and cheeks pink from the chilly air.

Her proud mother, government worker Su Lin, rattled off a list of her daughter's accomplishments.

She has mastered all four swimming strokes, has excellent posture, practices tai chi, and has studied books of etiquette and ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement.

These skills will help her get ahead, and maybe even secure a successful husband one day.

Su Lin acknowledged that everyone is caught in a brutal cycle here.

"There are too many people in China. There's little living space and everybody wants to move up. So everyone works harder, which just makes the competition worse," she said.

"What kind of activities did Su Lin do as a teenager?" I asked.

"None," replied the state worker. "I only studied."