Abdurezak Abdulahi Hashi

The potential of 3-dimensional construct engineered from poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)/fibrin hybrid scaffold seeded with bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells for in vitro cartilage tissue engineering.

Articular cartilage is well known for its simple uniqueness of avascular and aneural structure that has limited capacity to heal itself when injured. The use of three dimensional construct in tissue engineering holds great potential in regenerating cartilage defects. This study evaluated the in vitro cartilaginous tissue formation using rabbits bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs)-seeded onto poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) PLGA/fibrin and PLGA scaffolds. The in vitro cartilaginous engineered constructs were evaluated by gross inspection, histology, cell proliferation, gene expression and sulphated glycosaminoglycan (sGAG) production at week 1, 2 and 3. After 3 weeks of culture, the PLGA/fibrin construct demonstrated gross features similar to the native tissue with smooth, firm and glistening appearance, superior histoarchitectural and better cartilaginous extracellular matrix compound in concert with the positive glycosaminoglycan accumulation on Alcian blue. Significantly higher cell proliferation in PLGA/fibrin construct was noted at day-7, day-14 and day-21 (p<0.05 respectively). Both constructs expressed the accumulation of collagen type II, collagen type IX, aggrecan and sox9, showed down-regulation of collagen type I as well as produced relative sGAG content with PLGA/fibrin construct exhibited better gene expression in all profiles and showed significantly higher relative sGAG content at each time point (p<0.05). This study suggested that with optimum in vitro manipulation, PLGA/fibrin when seeded with pluripotent non-committed BMSCs has the capability to differentiate into chondrogenic lineage and may serve as a prospective construct to be developed as functional tissue engineered cartilage.

Religious Extremism Versus Extremes of Desacralisation: Rethinking the Status of Religious Education

Religion has been part and parcel of human history and heritage. It has served as a useful companion to man in the journey of intellectual growth, which has in most of the cases, helped humanity to answer, in various forms, the basic questions of life. Though religion has been a useful companion to man, yet religious thought has never been without challenges. There have been instances in which religion is challenged by strong tendencies of secularism and the process desacralisation of politics, ethics and values, in which traditional territories of religion in life are rolled back. On the contrary, religious extremism has been another challenge of religious life, in which violent act were committed in the name of religion. Modern proponents of extreme secularism have equated religion to infantile and childish expressions of man which functions as obstacle to the scientific mind of man, therefore they say in the age of science; religion should disappear once for all. However, contemporary religious extremists exhibit the behavior of imposing their religious thoughts violently; they do so by demonize other religious faiths as well as ideologies and philosophies other than their own, and thus feel justified to use violent behavior against those who hold different beliefs and ideas. The question is, other than denying “the value of religion in life†or “demonizing other faiths†, can there be other intellectual positions towards religion? This paper uses analytical method to address common trends of intellectual extremism for or against religious education; be it in the form of secular or religious thought. It re-examines the status of religious education in modern times, and the challenges posed by intellectual extremisms against the function and the role of religious education in life.

Breakthroughs in Biosciences and the Question of Morality: Interactions Between Ethics and Bioscience Practices

In the last four decades, scientific discoveries in the field of biosciences exhibited a progress that is remarkably ascending and covers issues which were traditionally not in the domains of ordinary medical science, including stem cell research, tissue engineering, surrogate motherhood, artificial insemination and test-tube babies as well as the mass scale production of genetically modified food. Nevertheless, as recent scientific breakthroughs involve critical issues related to human biology and health sciences, as well as to the sustainability of the natural environment, the place of moral values in modern breakthroughs and practices of biosciences emerge as matters of concern among scientists and scholars of ethics. One of the primary questions of this concern is related to whether or not scientific progress ought to be guided by what man ought to do, rather than what man can do. Similar issues are raised about the relationship between the applications of scientific discoveries and moral values. This research uses an analytical method and aims to present a comparative account of the bioethical discussions on the interactions between moral values and scientific discoveries in the field of bioscience.