20 posts · 3,092 views
I am an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). As a cell biologist and cardiologist, I direct a research laboratory that investigates the growth of blood vessels and the biology of stem and progenitor cells.
Fragments of Truth
8 posts
The Next Regeneration
12 posts
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- May 11, 2013
- 08:00 AM
- 44 views
Cellular Alchemy: Converting Fibroblasts Into Heart Cells
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Medieval alchemists devoted their lives to the pursuit of the infamous Philosopher's Stone, an elusive substance that was thought to convert base metals into valuable gold. Needless to say, nobody ever discovered the Philosopher’s Stone. Well, perhaps some alchemist did get lucky but was wise enough to keep the discovery secret. Instead of publishing the discovery and receiving the Nobel Prize for Alchemy, the lucky alchemist probably just walked around in junkyards, surreptitiously c........ Read more »
Nam, Y., Song, K., Luo, X., Daniel, E., Lambeth, K., West, K., Hill, J., DiMaio, J., Baker, L., Bassel-Duby, R.... (2013) Reprogramming of human fibroblasts toward a cardiac fate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(14), 5588-5593. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1301019110
- May 11, 2013
- 01:00 AM
- 27 views
Bone Marrow Cell Infusions Do NOT Improve Cardiac Function After Heart Attack
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
For over a decade, cardiologists have been conducting trials in patients using cells extracted from the bone marrow and infusing them into the blood vessels of the heart in patients who have suffered a heart attack. This type of a procedure is not without risks.... Read more »
Surder, D., Manka, R., Lo Cicero, V., Moccetti, T., Rufibach, K., Soncin, S., Turchetto, L., Radrizzani, M., Astori, G., Schwitter, J.... (2013) Intracoronary Injection of Bone Marrow Derived Mononuclear Cells, Early or Late after Acute Myocardial Infarction: Effects on Global Left Ventricular Function Four months results of the SWISS-AMI trial. Circulation. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.112.001035
Rehman, J. (2013) Bone Marrow Tinctures for Cardiovascular Disease: Lost in Translation. Circulation. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.113.002775
- March 5, 2013
- 12:16 PM
- 206 views
Monkeys Reject Food From People Who Are Mean To Fellow Humans
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
When we observe an interaction between two other human beings (Person A and Person B), we sometimes draw conclusions about the personality traits or character of these two individuals. For example, if we see that Person A is being rude to Person B, we may be less likely to trust Person A, even though we are merely "third-party" evaluators. i.e. not directly involved in the interaction. Multiple studies with humans have already documented such third-party social evaluation, which can ev........ Read more »
Anderson, J., Kuroshima, H., Takimoto, A., & Fujita, K. (2013) Third-party social evaluation of humans by monkeys. Nature Communications, 1561. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2495
- February 27, 2013
- 07:18 AM
- 153 views
The ENCODE Controversy And Professionalism In Science
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
The ENCODE (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) project received quite a bit of attention when its results were publicized last year. This project involved a very large consortium of scientists with the goal to identify all the functional elements in the human genome. In September 2012, 30 papers were published in a coordinated release and their extraordinary claim was that roughly 80% of the human genome was "functional". This was in direct contrast to the prevailing view among molecular bi........ Read more »
Graur D, Zheng Y, Price N, Azevedo RB, Zufall RA, & Elhaik E. (2013) On the immortality of television sets: "function" in the human genome according to the evolution-free gospel of ENCODE. Genome biology and evolution. PMID: 23431001
- February 25, 2013
- 10:50 PM
- 243 views
The Neurotransmitter Dopamine May Be A Key Mediator Of The “Superiority Illusion”
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
The concept “superiority illusion” refers to the fact that people tend to judge themselves as being superior to the average person when it comes to positive traits such as intelligence, desirability or other personality traits. This is mathematically not possible, because in a normally distributed population, most people cannot be above average. The “superiority illusion” belongs to a family of positive illusions, such as the “optimism bias”, which is characte........ Read more »
Yamada, M., Uddin, L., Takahashi, H., Kimura, Y., Takahata, K., Kousa, R., Ikoma, Y., Eguchi, Y., Takano, H., Ito, H.... (2013) Superiority illusion arises from resting-state brain networks modulated by dopamine. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1221681110
- February 19, 2013
- 02:45 PM
- 225 views
Stemming the Flow: Using Stem Cells To Treat Urinary Bladder Dysfunction
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Neurogenic bladder is a disorder which occurs in spinal cord diseases such as spina bifida and is characterized by an inability of the nervous system to properly control the urinary bladder and the muscle tissue contained in the bladder wall. This can lead to spasms and a build-up of pressure in the bladder, often resulting in urinary incontinence. Children with spina bifida and neurogenic bladder may feel urges to urinate after drinking comparatively small amounts of liquid and they can also in........ Read more »
Franck, D., Gil, E., Adam, R., Kaplan, D., Chung, Y., Estrada, C., & Mauney, J. (2013) Evaluation of Silk Biomaterials in Combination with Extracellular Matrix Coatings for Bladder Tissue Engineering with Primary and Pluripotent Cells. PLoS ONE, 8(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056237
- February 14, 2013
- 10:23 AM
- 198 views
Resisting Valentine’s Day
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
To celebrate Valentine's Day (as a geeky scientist), I decided to search the "Web of Science" database for published articles with the phrase "Valentine's Day" in the title. The article that had the most citations was "Market-resistance and Valentine's Day events" published in the Journal of Business Research in 2009, by the authors Angeline Close and George Zinkhan. I had never heard of the journal before, but the title sounded very interesting so I ........ Read more »
Close, A., & Zinkhan, G. (2009) Market-resistance and Valentine's Day events. Journal of Business Research, 62(2), 200-207. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2008.01.027
- February 12, 2013
- 09:00 PM
- 152 views
Good Can Come From Bad: Genetic Testing For The BRCA Breast Cancer Genes
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Our ability to test for the presence of genetic mutations has become extremely cost-efficient and private companies, such as 23andMe now offer genetic testing for consumers who want to find out about their predisposition for genetic diseases. The results of such tests are sent directly to the consumers, without the involvement of genetic counselors or other healthcare providers. This has lead to a growing concern about how people will respond to finding out that they are carriers of mutations th........ Read more »
Francke, U., Dijamco, C., Kiefer, A., Eriksson, N., Moiseff, B., Tung, J., & Mountain, J. (2013) Dealing with the unexpected: consumer responses to direct-access BRCA mutation testing. PeerJ. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.8
- February 11, 2013
- 10:30 PM
- 288 views
Seven Myths About Obesity And Weight Loss?
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
Whether we cruise the internet, turn on the TV or simply open up our email Inbox, we are bound to encounter advice regarding obesity and weight loss. The problem is that a lot of the circulated opinions about obesity and weight gain are only poorly supported by medical and scientific evidence. The recent paper “Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity” published in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 31, 2013 by Krista Casazza and colleagues investigates popular notion........ Read more »
Casazza K, Fontaine KR, Astrup A, Birch LL, Brown AW, Bohan Brown MM, Durant N, Dutton G, Foster EM, Heymsfield SB.... (2013) Myths, presumptions, and facts about obesity. The New England journal of medicine, 368(5), 446-54. PMID: 23363498
- January 30, 2013
- 11:15 PM
- 193 views
To Branch, Or Not To Branch – Plant Hormones Help Turn A Stem Into A Bush
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
When we hear the expression "stem cells", we tend to think of cells from animals or patients that are used to treat for diseases or promote regeneration. However, stem cells are also present in plants. The growing tips of plants are called meristems and they are reservoirs of plant stem cells. A meristem is formed at the base of each leaf and can remain dormant as a small bud or be activated and give rise to a whole new branch. Gardeners know that pruning leaves can activate the buds and help tr........ Read more »
Shinohara, N., Taylor, C., & Leyser, O. (2013) Strigolactone Can Promote or Inhibit Shoot Branching by Triggering Rapid Depletion of the Auxin Efflux Protein PIN1 from the Plasma Membrane. PLoS Biology, 11(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001474
- January 27, 2013
- 11:30 AM
- 180 views
Happier Children Earn Higher Wages When They Become Adults
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
The researchers Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Andrew Oswald decided to study the link between happiness and income from a very different angle. Instead of asking whether more money leads to more happiness, they reversed the question and asked whether more happiness leads to more money. In the paper “Estimating the influence of life satisfaction and positive affect on later income using sibling fixed effects” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, De Neve and Osw........ Read more »
De Neve JE, & Oswald AJ. (2012) Estimating the influence of life satisfaction and positive affect on later income using sibling fixed effects. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(49), 19953-8. PMID: 23169627
- January 26, 2013
- 05:27 PM
- 171 views
Degree Of Kinship Determines How Far We Are Willing To Travel To See Our Relatives
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
Maintaining regular face-to-face contact with family members can be rather challenging because nowadays families are often geographically dispersed. It takes time, money and effort to travel and visit family members. The famous British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar at Oxford University and his colleagues investigated how far people were willing to travel to see their relatives. Their results were published in the open access journal PLOS One “Going That Extra Mi........ Read more »
Pollet, T., Roberts, S., & Dunbar, R. (2013) Going That Extra Mile: Individuals Travel Further to Maintain Face-to-Face Contact with Highly Related Kin than with Less Related Kin. PLoS ONE, 8(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0053929
- January 24, 2013
- 04:40 PM
- 203 views
Flipping the Switch: Using Optogenetics to Treat Seizures
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
The recent paper "On-demand optogenetic control of spontaneous seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy" by Esther Krook-Magnuson and colleagues in Nature Communications (published online on January 22, 2013) applies the optogenetic approach to treat seizures in mice. The researchers used mice that had been genetically modified to express the inhibitory light sensitive protein halorhodopsin (normally only found in single cell organisms but not in mammals) in neurons. They placed an optical f........ Read more »
Krook-Magnuson, E., Armstrong, C., Oijala, M., & Soltesz, I. (2013) On-demand optogenetic control of spontaneous seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy. Nature Communications, 1376. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2376
- January 23, 2013
- 08:45 AM
- 127 views
Is Cannabis Usage “Related” to Strokes?
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
In summary, the paper by Wolff and colleagues does not really answer the question of whether cannabis-related stroke is myth or reality. The small sample size, the observational nature of the data, the lack of follow up imaging on all the patients and the lack of controlling for confounding risk factors such as tobacco (which has a very strong association with stroke) make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions. All we can say is that Wolff and colleagues have presented an intriguing hypoth........ Read more »
Wolff, V., Armspach, J., Lauer, V., Rouyer, O., Bataillard, M., Marescaux, C., & Geny, B. (2012) Cannabis-related Stroke: Myth or Reality?. Stroke, 44(2), 558-563. DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.112.671347
- January 22, 2013
- 08:29 AM
- 167 views
Radical Tails: Antioxidants Can Prevent Regeneration
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
One of the most important take home messages of this work is that we need get rid of the common “oxidants are bad guys and antioxidants are good guys” myth. Oxidants can be harmful in some context, but they can also serve as important regenerative signals. Indiscriminate use of antioxidants can actually impair these important endogenous signals. Instead of consuming large quantities of non-specific antioxidants, we need to use antioxidants in a very targeted, context-specific and per........ Read more »
Love, N., Chen, Y., Ishibashi, S., Kritsiligkou, P., Lea, R., Koh, Y., Gallop, J., Dorey, K., & Amaya, E. (2013) Amputation-induced reactive oxygen species are required for successful Xenopus tadpole tail regeneration. Nature Cell Biology. DOI: 10.1038/ncb2659
- January 21, 2013
- 06:45 PM
- 140 views
Somatic Mosaicism: Genetic Differences Between Individual Cells
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
On a practical level, this study suggests that it may be important to derive multiple iPSC clones from a subject's or patient's skin cells, if one wants to use the iPSCs for disease modeling. This will help control for the genetic diversity that exists among the skin cells. However, a much more profound implication of this work is that we have to think about between-cell diversity within a single organ.... Read more »
Abyzov A, Mariani J, Palejev D, Zhang Y, Haney MS, Tomasini L, Ferrandino AF, Rosenberg Belmaker LA, Szekely A, Wilson M.... (2012) Somatic copy number mosaicism in human skin revealed by induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature, 492(7429), 438-42. PMID: 23160490
- January 17, 2013
- 06:00 AM
- 120 views
Accuracy of Medical Information on the Internet
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
This study highlights the opportunities and pitfalls of using the internet to communicate medical information. The internet is providing an opportunity for patients and family members to obtain additional medical information that they did not receive from their physicians, as well as to address questions that may arise and do not warrant a visit to a physician. On the other hand, the study also demonstrates that the quality of medical information on the internet varies widely. Searches for certa........ Read more »
Chung M, Oden RP, Joyner BL, Sims A, & Moon RY. (2012) Safe infant sleep recommendations on the Internet: let's Google it. The Journal of pediatrics, 161(6), 1080-4. PMID: 22863258
- January 17, 2013
- 06:00 AM
- 143 views
Using Viagra To Burn Fat
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
The researchers treated mice with Viagra (sildenafil), a drug that is normally used for erectile dysfunction. They found that only seven days of Viagra treatment increased the levels of the brown fat protein UCP-1 and that the white fat began showing the presence of "beige" (not quite white and not fully brown) fat. The choice of Viagra was not quite arbitrary, because they also showed that cultured fat cells contain cGMP-dependent protein kinase I (PKGI), which is part of the signalin........ Read more »
Mitschke, M., Hoffmann, L., Gnad, T., Scholz, D., Kruithoff, K., Mayer, P., Haas, B., Sassmann, A., Pfeifer, A., & Kilic, A. (2013) Increased cGMP promotes healthy expansion and browning of white adipose tissue. The FASEB Journal. DOI: 10.1096/fj.12-221580
- November 16, 2012
- 06:00 AM
- 56 views
Recent Study Raises Questions About Using Adult Stem Cells for Chronic Heart Disease
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
In summary, the POSEIDON trial has shown that treating chronic heart disease patients with bone marrow derived stem cells is not yet ready for prime time. Bone marrow cells from strangers may be just as safe as one’s own cells, but if bone marrow stem cells are not very effective for treating chronic heart disease, than it may just be a moot point.... Read more »
Hare JM, Fishman JE, Gerstenblith G, Difede Velazquez DL, Zambrano JP, Suncion VY, Tracy M, Ghersin E, Johnston PV, Brinker JA.... (2012) Comparison of Allogeneic vs Autologous Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Delivered by Transendocardial Injection in Patients With Ischemic Cardiomyopathy: The POSEIDON Randomized Trial. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association, 1-11. PMID: 23117550
- November 30, 1999
- 12:00 AM
- 56 views
There Was No Couch: On Mental Illness and Creativity
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
The psychiatrist held the door open for me and my first thought as I entered the room was “Where is the couch?”. Instead of the expected leather couch, I saw a patient lying down on a flat operation table surrounded by monitors, devices, electrodes, and a team of physicians and nurses. The psychiatrist had asked me if I wanted to join him during an “ECT” for a patient with severe depression. It was the first day of my psychiatry rotation at the VA (Veterans Affairs Medical Center) in San........ Read more »
Kyaga, S., Landén, M., Boman, M., Hultman, C., Långström, N., & Lichtenstein, P. (2013) Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-Year prospective total population study. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 47(1), 83-90. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2012.09.010
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