The mother you’ve loved your whole life stares at your face with a blank expression, unable to place it. The memories you’ve shared are now yours alone. You’ve watched her decline from robust nurturer, to occasionally forgetful “senior,” to an empty vessel living in a long-term care facility.
Forget euphemisms. Ronald Reagan’s famous “journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life” farewell does nothing to describe the pain and humiliation of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Families spend countless hours and dollars tending to their loved ones, pining for a cure that has yet to arrive.
It’s not for lack of effort.
Eva Vertes, Alzheimer’s researcher par excellence, was born in Toronto, Ontario. She is renowned for her discovery of a compound — a purine derivative known as RPI-069 — that could reduce 60 per cent of the brain-cell death associated with Alzheimer’s.
Wait, it gets better. She made that discovery when she was 15 years old.
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Eva Vertes talks about her work with Alzheimer’s disease at ideaCity04. — Photo by Mark O’Neill |
Chatting on a park bench on a warm afternoon at the University of Toronto campus, Vertes enthusiastically discusses work she did with stem cells at Stanford University during the summer. Although she was surrounded by a like-minded team of researchers, Vertes recognized that the fight for stem cell research must momentarily shift away from those suffering the horrors of disease to tackling the fears of those disputing her work.
Fear of a Cloned Planet
Coverage of embryonic stem cell research in the media has focused on cloning, with little emphasis on potential therapies for specific diseases. Fantastic claims of human cloning by cults like the Raelians and sinister-sounding pet-cloning projects have sparked an increasingly polarized debate on the subject.
The most vocal opponent of embryonic research is the powerful pro-life lobby. Harvesting stem cells from embryos, pro-lifers argue, is the equivalent of killing a fetus. They contend that stem cells found in the adult body provide more than enough material with which to drive research efforts.
Others offer a more nuanced view.
According to Dr. Brian Kwon, a Vancouver-based surgeon and clinical researcher specializing in spinal cord repair, “[Both sources of stem cells] struggle with the issues of acquisition — embryonic stem cells are in theory readily available, but societal constraints make them difficult to get, while adult stem cells are small in number and are hard to isolate and purify.”
Another disadvantage of adult stem cells is their relative inflexibility in the Petri dish when compared with their embryonic brethren.
“It is probably very advantageous,” adds Dr. Kwon, “to move forward with both lines of research, for it is quite likely there will be distinct challenges and advantages to each.”
Unfortunately, the most effective way to humanize the debate is to confront an illness in the family that could be reversed by stem cell therapies. Imagine your mother or brother had Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s and stem cells were the avenue to curing them, but their method of collection went against your morals. What would you do?
To counter accusations of embryo-killing, scientists propose to develop stem cell lines through discarded in-vitro fertilization (IVF) materials. Couples undergoing IVF frequently produce more embryos than can be safely implanted in the mother and these couples can agree to donate the leftover embryos — and their stem cells — to science rather than to the trash bin.
No Quick Remedy
Although stem cell research received a $3-billion boost from California’s Proposition 71, the threat to the supply of stem cells with which to conduct research (particularly under the Bush administration’s restrictive policies) has researchers fighting two battles: one with officials and anti-stem cell advocates regarding access, and one against the usual barriers inherent in research science.
Scientists and the pro-stem cell lobby recognize the ethical concerns surrounding their research and admit that they must be addressed openly, lest the furor around these powerful cells slow the progress made daily in labs around the world.
After all, Alzheimer’s is but one disease that could be defeated through stem cell research. The list also includes, among others: Parkinson’s, diabetes, spinal cord injury, muscular dystrophy, heart disease and loss of vision and hearing.
The body is simply not built to last. As we get older, the cells that make up our bodies deteriorate and eventually die. This process can lead to prolonged and emotionally devastating illnesses like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. While health-care professionals understand how these illnesses affect the body, finding a way to reverse their course is difficult. Once a tissue dies, there isn’t much to be done.
Or is there?
A stem cell is not like any other cell. What makes it unique is that it can, in theory, become any of the cells in the body — from the skin cells of your feet to the nerve cells in your brain. In scientific parlance, the stem cell is undifferentiated.
Stem cells play their most important role inside the embryo, where they multiply and transform themselves throughout the months of pregnancy into the developed body’s diverse collection of cells. Put simply, everything that makes up your adult body comes from a small collection of stem cells.
A small amount of stem cells are sequestered in select tissues like bone marrow and hair follicles. These matured stem cells are called into action after injury, where they then multiply and develop into replacement tissue. These stem cells are restricted to developing into the same tissue in which they are stored and not all adult tissues have this helpful reservoir.
The role of the stem cell in disease treatment is startling. If stem cells, embryonic or adult, could be introduced into areas of the adult body where none are present, there is great hope that disease in those areas could be reversed.
The Making of a Scientist
Vertes remembers the exact moment she was infected with the science bug. “I was 10,” she recalls. “I was reading a novel about the Ebola outbreak, and I knew I wanted to be a doctor.”
After her precocious first discovery, Vertes went to the McMaster University lab of Dr. Michel Rathbone and continued her Alzheimer’s experiments, completing her high school studies by correspondence. She then studied for a year in Italy before applying to three Ontario universities.
She was rejected by all three.
It wasn’t her grades, however. Vertes was a week late in meeting the application deadlines, so Canada stubbornly turned her down. But Ivy League powerhouse Princeton quickly made her an attractive scholarship offer to the tune of $33,000 (US) per year.
Vertes’s life is not all lab coats and Petri dishes, as you might expect of a science wunderkind. She also runs cross-country, sings and acts. While on vacation, she was spotted reading a medical textbook at poolside by University of Miami medical student Jason Kiner. The pair spent the whole week together — but only two hours “talking shop,” insists Kiner — and they have dated ever since. The warm beaches of South Florida provide a welcome escape from the cold New Jersey winters and the confines of the Princeton labs.
Vertes’s latest work aims to uncover the role of stem cells in cancer (which is the uncontrollable division of cells). Research suggests that many cancers begin in the stem cells of the adult body. “Cancer cells, like stem cells, are undifferentiated cells that can replicate indefinitely,” explains Vertes. She hopes to find a way to put cancer back under the body’s normal control processes without resorting to debilitating radiation and chemotherapy treatments that literally poison the body in order to kill the cancerous growth.
“I’m new to (research) and I don’t know a lot, but that shouldn’t stop me,” says Vertes. “It helps me. Sometimes naive questions are needed.”
Science is all about open, inquiring minds. The best science produces more questions than it answers, triggering new avenues of research. The popular perception of scientists as boring lab automatons is unfair; scientists are endlessly creative people because finding answers to novel questions requires as much.
Vertes and her colleagues are not baby killers. They are gifted and compassionate researchers who realize that precious stem cells hold an infinite amount of possibility within their amazingly small frames. Unlocking their potential will produce cures that could end the suffering of hundreds of millions of afflicted people around the world.
All these scientific crusaders respectfully ask for is a chance to succeed.
This article is part of Digital Journal’s national magazine edition. Pick up your copy of Digital Journal in bookstores across Canada. Or subscribe to Digital Journal now, and receive 8 issues for $19.95 + GST ($39.95 USD).
