Academia Sinica researchers have made several breakthroughs over the past two years, including producing proof that adult lung stem cells may have played a key role in the SARS epidemic, Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) said yesterday.
In a report to the legislature's Sci-Tech and Information Committee, Wong said that a team led by John Yu (游正博), head of the Stem Cell Program at the Genomics Research Center, made the discovery about lung stem cells.
Wong said the team's study shows that lung stem cells were an important target of the SARS virus in their "decapitation strike" attacks on the lungs.
Yu noticed a lag time between the peak virus load of SARS patients and the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), Wong said, and speculated that the lag time might reflect the duration of a stem cell's regenerative cycle to repair lung damage.
Quoting a report by Yu's team, Wong said it has been known that 90 percent of the lung cells contribute to lung tissues as bubbles for gas exchange, referred to "type I pneumocytes" which are derived from "type II pneumocytes."
Scientists have long speculated that there are adult stem cells in the lung which are responsible for making both type I & II lung cells in order to maintain the smooth running of the respiratory system. Proof was finally provided by Yu's team in the in vitro study of SARS infected lung tissues, Wong said.
He said the team had grown lung cells in vitro, and they noticed only one unique cell population was infected by the SARS virus. Through various steps of verification, they found that this specific group of cells bears the Oct. 4 and SSEA-1 markers which are also markers for embryonic stem cells. Therefore, it is very likely these cells that are targeted specifically by the SARS virus are the pulmonary stem progenitor cells.
"They could also be the left over `embryonic' stem cells hidden in the lungs," Wong quoted Yu as saying.
The study points to the possible involvement of lung stem cells in SARS-CoV infection, accounting for the continued deterioration of lung tissues and apparent loss of capacity for lung repair in the later stage of infection, Wong said.
The study results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year and have opened a door for future manipulation of lung stem cells in cellular therapy of ARDS, Wong said.
A patent application is being processed, he said.
Meanwhile, Wong claimed that Academia Sinica has led other research institutes in the country over the past 10 years in terms of the number research articles or theses cited. Each Academia Sinica article or thesis has been cited an average of 8.39 times over the past decade, compared with 6.25 times for those produced by National Taiwan University, he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the