Health Meaning

the US government renews its push to move genomics to the clinic. Today, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) announced its latest genome sequencing program of 4 years, funded at $ 416 million over 4 years. "Lighthouse" NHGRI sequencing program will extend beyond three centers "to focus more on medical applications," said NHGRI Director Eric Green in a press call today.

The big three are still in the lead: 77% of the money, about $ 319 million, will go to these existing centers. They understand the genome center at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, led by Eric Lander, which will receive $ 35.9 million in the first year; a center at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Richard Wilson, who received an initial $ 28.4 million; and Baylor College of Medicine in downtown Houston led by Richard Gibbs, who won $ 21.3 million. These centers were beasts of burden in the realization of the human genome project, and now, they will continue to sequence thousands of genomes of people. The centers are also catalog the genetic changes in human tumors in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute.

Despite still cheaper and faster sequencing technologies that now even a small laboratory in the entire sequence of the human genome, there is always a need for large centers to explore the genome biology, test new technologies and find better ways to analyze the data, say the NHGRI officials. "We believe that large scale approaches continue to offer interesting opportunities," said the Deputy Director Mark Guyer NHGRI. However, because sequencing costs continue to decline, subsidies centers will fall by 5% per year.

for the first time, the sequencing program will also fund some smaller centers. Three will hunt underlying mutations rare hereditary disease caused by a problem in a single gene. Labs that will share $ 40 million over 4 years from NHGRI (and another $ 8 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) include: a center $ 5.2 million the year at the University of Washington, directed by Deborah Nickerson and others; a center of $ 2.8 million the year at Yale University, led by Richard Lifton and others; and a common center with $ 4 million per year led by David Valle at Johns Hopkins University and James Lupski of Baylor.

These centers will follow on recent successes with the sequencing of all or part of genomes to track down the origin of genes over 6,000 so-called Mendelian disorders; less than half are known to date. The results will improve diagnosis and eventually lead to new treatments. The centers have the DNA of patients with hundreds of diseases and study "as many problems as possible," according to the technologies and how many samples they can meet, said NHGRI Director Lu Wang Mendelian center program .

another $ 40 million will go for five teams, including scientists, physicians, ethicists and multidisciplinary patient to explore using genome sequencing as part of routine medical care. They will examine issues such as how to add genomic health records, and when tell patients about genomic unexpected results are not related to the disease they are being treated for. and about not yet allocated $ 20 million will finance software to manage the genome data deluge.

Council National Science Advisory for Biosecurity (NSABB) which asked scientists and journals redact key details in two explosive influenza documents, is also considering a call for a voluntary moratorium on the wider publication of similar studies while an international discussion is held to discuss how the field should continue.

Under such a moratorium, researchers flu would agree not to publish studies on the transmissibility of the strain of avian influenza H5N1 in mammals and not to submit data on these studies at scientific meetings.

NSABB chair Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff said Science Insider he believes the gravity of the situation requires a thorough international consultation on the risks and benefits of these studies before other results are made public. "This is a moment Asilomar," he said, referring to a 1975 meeting in Asilomar, California, where, after the voluntary cessation of research, scientists have developed safety guidelines for working with the technology of the nascent recombinant DNA.

The idea of ​​a voluntary moratorium NSABB is mentioned in a policy statement that says Keim was sent to Nature and Science , where two controversial papers are being studied; he hopes that newspapers will print with the papers. Keim said he is in favor of a moratorium itself, but the board has not yet voted on it. "We try to avoid calling a moratorium, but this is what it would be," he added.

Unlike Asilomar, the moratorium would most likely on the publication of data, not the conduct of the research itself, Keim said. It would last "maybe 3 months" and would not affect other types of influenza research. Studies on the genetic changes that make it more transmissible H5N1 virus in mammals, including both documents under consideration by Nature and Scienc e-are "in a category their own, "Keim said, because of the risk of a pandemic and the H5N1 mortality rate in humans, appears to be very high.

Keim said that other research groups already conduct similar studies and other results are likely to appear soon, in fact, a paper by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, caught by surprise the panel during its deliberations when it was published online by the journal Virology ago a few weeks. (in this study, the researchers modified the H5N1 hemagglutinin gene that has made the virus easily transmissible between ferrets, but not nearly in since one of the teams that NSABB asked to redact results said he has witnessed.)

"We know there are many things out there," says Keim, "so I think it is important that we have a kind of cessation of communication in this area. "

NSABB has set up a special working group with an "aggressive program" for how to set up an international debate, which also involve the World Health Organization (WHO). "Our biggest fear is that it will be perceived as the United States tell the world what to do," he adds.

WHO would be the "only place it could find a credible home," says Edward Hammond, an activist in Austin, Texas, who has closely followed the WHO discussions on the search for smallpox and sharing of influenza strains' genetic sequences but the organization will be reluctant to take on another sensitive issue, Hammond predicted;. in the past, member countries like Brazil and Iran have strongly opposed the WHO participation . a security official participation of WHO could also take years, Hammond said, in a few months, "you can not do much more than make a group of people and make them a return."

That scientific flu accept new limits on their scientific freedom, even temporarily, remains to be seen. in recent days, the NSABB recommendations have sparked heated debate between virologists. the principal investigator on one of the teams, Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, omitted key data from its study of H5N1 when it introduced during September 1 meeting in Malta because the issue was still under discussion, but he firmly believes that in the interest of public health, information should be made public and that it will eventually flee anyway. (Fouchier could not be reached for comment today.)

"I think scientists and journals will agree" to the idea, "maybe against the heart, "Keim said." a short-term moratorium will have only a small impact on the research process, and we hope that we can develop a broad consensus on where to go-just as they did in Asilomar. "

* This article has been corrected. the story said that NSABB "called" moratorium and the call "will" in the policy statement sent to Nature and Science . After the story was published, Keim contacted Science Insider to say that the statement mentions the possibility of a moratorium, and that it is in favor of one but the full board has not made such a recommendation and will review in the coming weeks. "I'm sorry if I miscommunicated with you on that," Keim said. The story and its title was changed to reflect this information.

Drugs such as psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, play all kinds of tricks on the mind. They distort the perception of time, space, and self, and even untether way. Some researchers thought that these strange effects may result from drugs excite the brain. But the first study to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activity in people who took psilocybin estimated that the drug reduced the neural firing in key communication centers, essentially disconnecting some brain regions from each other.

In Central America and elsewhere, hallucinogenic drugs have been used for centuries in healing and religious ceremonies. Recent years have seen a renewed interest to exploit to explore the neural basis of spirituality and potentially to treat depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses. Yet neuroscientists know little about how these compounds act on the brain to cause such experiences intensely altered. hallucinogenic drugs are tightly regulated, and some previous studies have attempted to assess their effects on the human brain. A study using positron emission tomography (PET) revealed that psilocybin increases the metabolism of the brain, especially in the frontal cortex.

In the new work, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , researchers led by psychopharmacologists Robin Carhart-Harris and David Nutt of Imperial College London used a different method, fMRI to scan the brains of 30 people who were under the influence of psilocybin. Tight spaces and loud noises scanner could be scary for someone on psilocybin, said Nutt. To minimize the chances of anyone having a bad trip, the researchers recruited people who had taken hallucinogens before, and they handed intravenous drugs so that he would have a more rapid effect than short by example, eating magic mushrooms.

The researchers performed two types of MRI, which measures blood flow in the brain and determined that blood oxygenation, which neuroscientists generally assume is an indicator of neuronal activity. Contrary to the previous study, the analyzes showed that psilocybin reduces blood flow and neural activity in several brain regions, including the posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. The researchers interviewed volunteers after psilocybin was gone and found that those in which these regions have been the most inhibited tend to report more intense hallucinatory experiences. Nutt says he is not sure why the results differ from the PET study, but speculates that this could be due to the different time during the injectable drugs and his team used oral tablets used in other research .

the posterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex are hubs in the so-called default mode network, a network of interconnected brain regions that become active when people let their minds wander. Some researchers have suggested that the default mode network is crucial for the introspective thought and even to generate a sense of awareness, and Nutt thinks the finding that psilocybin inhibits this network could help explain the surreal experiences causes of drug . "What I think is happening is that this network in the brain that brings a sense of self becomes less active," he said, "and you get this fragmented or dissipated sense of being."

"It is a very interesting study which raises many new questions," says Roland Griffiths, a psychopharmacologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He said the possibility that the drugs work by interfering with the default mode network is an attractive hypothesis that deserves further investigation.

Nutt and Griffiths are interested in the therapeutic potential of hallucinogenic drugs. Griffiths is involved in a pilot study to test whether psilocybin and psychotherapy can relieve anxiety of end of life of cancer patients. the group Nutt is looking into using the drug to treat depression, and this week the British Journal of Psychiatry he and his colleagues report that psilocybin can increase neural activity in brain regions related to memory when people remember events from their past. The drug also improved the ability of people to access personal memories and associated emotions, the researchers say can be useful in psychotherapy.

Like many organizations, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will have a relatively flat budget if President Barack Obama has his way, with one notable exception. Although the amount provided to the FDA by the government will not change significantly, the administration expects a boost in the so-called "user fees" money provided by the companies whose products are approved and supervised by the FDA. These fees are an important part and growing, the FDA budget. In the draft 2013 budget, the costs would increase to $ 1.97 billion, from $ 1.33 billion in 2012, whereas the amount provided by the Administration would hold steady at $ 2.5 billion. This would bring the percentage of the FDA's budget comes from 44% usage fee.

Although these costs have become essential to maintaining FDA running, he was concerned about the years that fees put FDA in a difficult position: It makes money from the same companies whose products it approves. "The agency has become dependent for funding on the very industry over which it has regulatory authority," wrote Public Citizen, an advocacy group, in a letter to Congress in 07. At that time, about 20% of the budget the agency came from user fees.

another concern is that although more user fees give FDA what looks like a fiscal boost, they do not come with the same flexibility. "We are more concerned about the affected dollars" -the money that comes directly from the government, not businesses, said Steven Grossman, deputy executive director of the Alliance for a stronger FDA, a nonprofit group Silver Spring, Maryland, that lobbies for funding additional FDA. "User fees pay for very specific services, and they are truly additive to what the FDA is responsible and what the FDA is responsible for the execution."

In response to a press conference this afternoon to a question on the piece ever increasing budget of his agency uses these costs, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg defended. "It is not appropriate that industry help share and support these critical services that rely heavily," she said. "In these difficult economic times, it becomes even more crucial that we take advantage of resources." most new user fee funds come from new fees for the review of generic drugs and 'biosimilars', designed to be generic versions of biologic drugs.

in general, the budget request for FDA stresses many of the same programs he has emphasized in recent years, including the construction of a stronger food safety net. the FDA has also directed the money to improve science regulatory, research that will help the organization improve the way it evaluates new treatments. in 2013, the FDA said it plans to "support" its scientific program of regulation against medical measures, but no one knows if not the program will get increased funds.

"A flat budget will slow this process down, there's no question about it," says Grossman.

Few of our ancestors were so poked and prodded like Neolithic Tyrolean iceman "Ötzi," cast out on an Alpine glacier in 1991. Researchers probed his stomach and bowels for traces of its last meal and analyzed his teeth for cavities. Now, an international team has sequenced his entire genome, and it is Ötzi still has some surprises.

previous computer scans had revealed severe arteriosclerosis of Ötzi, or hardening of the arteries. But the new analysis shows that Ötzi had a genetic predisposition to the disease, despite the fact that, as a hunter-gatherer, there was nothing that we currently believe to be relevant risk factors, such as excess weight, get too little exercise, and smoking or drinking. "These new data suggest that we may be less able to prevent arteriosclerosis than we thought," says cardiologist and expert mummy Gregory Thomas of the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the new work.

the sequencing of the entire genome also reveals more about Ötzi's ancestors. previous research has analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of Ötzi, which is inherited only through the female line, but had found some known games among modern populations. Now the sequencing of its Y chromosome puts in G2A4 uncommon haplogroup, meaning that his paternal genes are linked to a population that has left the Middle East to Europe at the beginning of the era Neolithic, about 1000 years before Ötzi lived himself.

genetic profile Ötzi mark him as being most closely related to small populations now living in the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, as well as some -unes of the most remote areas of Georgia and Russia, said geneticist Angela Graefen of the Institute for mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, one of the leading researchers on the paper. This does not mean that Ötzi was Sardinian or Corsican, Graefen notes, but that these populations may be the closest living genetic matches hunter-gatherers who originally emigrated to Europe.

Genome analysis, published this week in Nature Communications , also contributes to our flesh picture of Ötzi the man, researchers now know that he had brown eyes, brown hair, blood type O, and shared lactose intolerance that was still the norm among Neolithic Europeans. It was also the first known carrier of Lyme disease: sequencing resulted in genes Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium responsible for the disease. Although scientists can not know if Lyme disease actually sick Ötzi during his life, discovering 60% of B. burgdorferi genome from a Neolithic media shows this pathogen has plagued humans for thousands of years. Until researchers compare the B. burgdorferi genome of Ötzi with the latest incarnations of the pathogen, they will not have a clear picture of how Lyme disease evolves . "But according to the research of other scientists are doing in the coming years, we may win many more ideas from the genome of Ötzi" says Graefen.

The new paper adds to our knowledge of the Neolithic life, said Frank Ruehli mummy expert from the University of Zurich in Switzerland. "of course, Ötzi is one person, but it is a very well preserved person well described, we have a lot additional information about already. So this is an important step. "

National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials faced tough questions from the House of Representatives panel today about their desire to cut a program for states with relatively little NIH funding while giving a sharp rise to a new center to accelerate drug development. The House committee also heard hitting the views of witnesses about the National Centre for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

The setting is a hearing held by the subcommittee of the House of credits on labor, health and human services, and education to discuss the proposed 2013 Budget NIH-frozen 31 billion as well as $ NCATS that Congress signed in December. Chair of the Committee Denny Rehberg (R-MT) reminded the director Francis Collins NIH Acting Director Thomas Insel NCATS that while he now supports NCATS, he was not satisfied with his hasty creation, which caused an uproar among scientists last year: "It is no secret that I do not necessarily like the way NCATS came about."

Rehberg emphasized that Congress has not given NCATS power to "compete with industry or become a drug development organization." He also expressed concern about the abandonment of basic research, now about 55% of the NIH budget. Collins assured him that he does not expect this to change.

Several panel members also noted that the NIH wants to increase the NCATS budget of $ 64 million ($ 639 million), while reducing $ 51 million Institutional Development Awards (IDEA) to help States become stronger competitors for NIH research grants. Collins explained that Congress gave IDeA an extra $ 50 million this year, an increase that the views of NIH as "a great need for a boost of time." The agency wants to use this money in 2013 other priorities

Rehberg disagreed. "We suggest ... that they are 1 year of funding," said he, and he and several other legislators in IDeA states suggested. cut the money seems to go IDeA NCATS "He cut one place and add another," said Cynthia Lummis Representative (R-WY) Collins objected... " These are not the same dollars that just moved from one box to another This is part of a larger overall plan for where the scientific opportunities are greatest, "he said.

Only a few panelists discussed the overall picture of the budget for NIH; adjusted for inflation, was flat for a decade. Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) listened to the late 190s, when Congress decided to double the NIH budget over 5 years. "This should be our goal again," she said. Representative Nita Lowey and (D-NY) said she pushed for $ 32 billion for NIH in 2013. DeLauro also asked what would happen in the worst case scenario, if Congress fails to agree on a plan to reduce the federal deficit and NIH is hit with a mandatory budget reduction of $ 2.5 billion. "It would be devastating," said Collins.

Later in the hearing, several witnesses explained their views on NCATS. Roy Vagelos, a former Merck CEO and President of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, argued that what the industry needs the NIH is not new, but basic research. Although some things NCATS wants to do, such as improved toxicology tests could be "useful", they "are not issues limitation in the development of new drugs, "he said. He would prefer new money for NCATS go to young scientists. 17% success rate, they now face in search of their first research grant is "is a direction for disaster," said Vagelos, who was also his appearance as an advisor to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

But two other witnesses have welcomed the creation of NCATS. Scott Koenig, CEO of biotech Macrogenetics who spoke of the biotechnology Industry Organization, said NCATS could "fill gaps "in areas that are not priorities for the industry, such as predictive toxicology and find new biomarkers of disease. and Todd Scherer, CEO of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson research said NIH could help industry by focusing on new targets.

another controversial proposal in 2013 the budget of the NIH, a change in the design and 15% for cutting 193 million national study of $ children went up only in the introductory remarks Rehberg. "Transparent Discussion is necessary to ensure that the proposed changes do not undermine the scientific value of the study," he said.

Gary Gibbons, a cardiologist and researcher at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, was today appointed director of the National Heart , Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

A Morehouse, Gibbons, 55, founder and director of cardiovascular research institute that focuses on areas such as basic science and ethnic disparities in health. own laboratory studies Gibbons how genetic variation affects the vascular biology and cardiovascular disease. In an announcement, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins praised the "extraordinary scientific skills, tremendous energy and a bold vision." From NIH Gibbons He will join this summer.

With a budget of $ 3.1 billion, NHLBI is the third largest of 27 NIH institutes and centers. The Institute has not had a permanent director since Elizabeth Nabel left in late 09 to head Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Gibbons will bring to four the number of NIH institutes of directors (all men) who are African American.

Gibbons said Science Insider that he was interested in the job because of his familiarity "intimate" with NHLBI he is a longtime dealer and advisor and commitment to be " sure NHLBI continues its legacy of doing science discovery that advances public health. " He would revisit the strategic vision of the institute "with a renewed look that is faster and more contemporary."

Although NHLBI was in good hands under Acting Director Susan Shurin (who will return to his position of deputy director), the absence of a permanent director slowed decisions like committing to large clinical trials, costly, said Leslee Shaw, a researcher results of health at Emory University and a member of the NHLBI Advisory Board. The set of skills Gibbons is "a kind of unique. It will be able to slide up and down the interests of NHLBI and offer extensive experience, "says Shaw. She also praises his leadership style. "It's very thoughtful" and a "good listener"

One reason it may have taken so long to find a new director NHLBI is that clinicians often take a . pay cut when they move to the NIH candidates for senior positions NIH could also be put off by money problems: the NIH budget has not increased in a decade and could face cuts

In a decision that has already provoked a reaction, an American expert group ransacked today a popular blood test for risk prostate cancer, saying its use is doing more harm than good.

the healthy men need not be examined by measuring the levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA) outstanding concludes Preventive Services Task Force of the United States, an independent group that advises the United States government. Men can pass the test, according to the panel because it is unreliable: Based on the trial data, it prevented some deaths at best potentially 1 in 1,000 screened men. Yet the working group estimated that for every 1,000 men screened, further medical treatment leaves with a blood clot, two with heart attacks related to the treatment and up to 40 with impotence or urinary incontinence. Overall, the working group does not think that the benefits of PSA screening are worth supporting.

The final recommendations are a great change from the previous position of the working group in 08. At the time, the group held an equivocal view, saying that although the men over 75 years should Skip the PSA screening, the benefits for the young men were "uncertain". After reviewing recent clinical trials, however, the working group scrapped its language covered and approved a negative light. He now says he "recommends PSA screening for prostate cancer," regardless of age. The working group notes that this notice does not apply to men who have been diagnosed with or are being treated for cancer; the working group explained that it did not examine PSA monitoring for these patients

the urology specialists were prepared for these new and secured with an angry response "L.. American Urological Association (AUA) is outraged by [the task force’s] no change recommendations "published last year in draft form, the association said in a statement released today by the President Sushil S. Lacy, professor . of urology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha He called today's announcement a "disservice to the American people":

It is inappropriate and irresponsible to publish a declaration of coverage against PSA testing, particularly for at-risk populations, such as African-American men. Men who are healthy and have more of a life expectancy of 10-15 years should have the choice to be tested and not discouraged from doing so. There is strong evidence that PSA testing saves lives. ... Instead of loading the primary care physicians to discourage men to have a PSA test, the Working Group should focus instead on how to counsel patients about their risk of prostate cancer.

The chairman of the working group, pediatrician Virginia Moyer at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, acknowledged in a prepared statement that "there is a critical need for better [prostate cancer] test-one that leads to the early detection of cancers that threaten men's health, but minimizes unnecessary, testing and risky treatments that do not lead to more or healthier life. "In a commentary published with the recommendations in Annals of Internal Medicine , it calls for more research on ways to distinguish slow cancer progression in those rapidly fatal and potentially find best ways to alter PSA test used to reduce the high number of false positive results.

the controversy over PSA tests reflects some of the same concerns about government oversight of medical practice that arose in 09 when the same workgroup (but with members) lowered the value of mammography as a means of preventing breast cancer death. as these guidelines, the prostate cancer guidelines can be debated in Congress. already the Urological Research Foundation, whose medical director, William Catalona of medical school at Northwestern University, opposed the recommendations of the working group, is to tell readers of his website: "It is very important that you let your representatives in Congress know how you feel about these recommendations. "

The Senate Finance Committee yesterday approved a modest increase of $ 100 million for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fiscal 2013, which begins October 1. The 0.3% bump for a total of $ 30.723 billion is slightly better than the president's request for no increase, but it is disappointing to the research community.

NIH funding bill provides $ 40 million for the Cures Acceleration Network, four times its current budget (but $ 10 million below the President's request). But he rejects a proposal of the President to cut $ 50 million Institutional Development Scholarship Program (IDeA), which aims to give institutions in the poorest countries a better chance of NIH funding. Instead, the Committee to maintain funding at about $ 276 million. "The Committee believes that the IDEA program has made a significant contribution to biomedical research and the creation of a skilled workforce," he noted in a report accompanying the bill. It also urges NIH to expand the number eligible schools in the program.

the committee made a $ 28 million return garnish requested $ 165 million for the study of the National Children (NCS), an ambitious but troubled federal plan to follow the health of 100,000 children from birth through 21 years the panel hopes that the 15% cut "is a positive sign that the NIH intends to lower the costs of NCS under control and move its appropriation more efficiently, "he writes in the report." the Committee is disturbed that after the appropriation near [$1 billion] for the NCS since the first work on it began in the year 00, only a few thousand children were registered and fundamental questions about the implementation of the project remain, particularly regarding the methods that will be used to recruit participants. "The panel also wants the National Academy of Sciences to examine the statistical sampling strategy NCS and NIH to" improve the level of communication with the research community about future changes to the project. "

about Alzheimer's disease, the panel reprimanded the officials for NIH plans to boost research in the field by the snags $ 80 million of a fund for prevention and health public (PPH) $ 500 million established by legislation to reform health care. "Research of the NIH is not an appropriate use of the PPH Fund," he wrote. "In addition, the Committee believes that it would be a dangerous precedent to provide specific amounts of NIH funding for individual diseases. The Committee notes that he took the same position in 2010, when the administration has proposed allocating specific funding levels for research on cancer and autism. "

The bill must still be approved by the Senate. The House appropriations panel has yet to introduce its version of the bill.

last Thursday, we organized a science Live Chat on "Science Olympics" in which we asked the researchers for their views on new scientific innovations planned to enter the Olympic stadium in London this week. We intended to discuss dentures and performance-enhancing drugs, but unfortunately our expert blood-doping, Don Catlin, was unable to join us. Catlin is an expert on drug use in sport and professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He founded the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, a national site drug testing of improving performance and is used by the NCAA, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the Olympic Committee of the United States.

After the chat we sent him questions about the use of athletes agents such as erythropoietin (EPO), which produces additional cells of red blood cells, and the human growth hormone ( HGH), which increases strength. He also discussed epitestosterone, a hormone that is nearly identical to testosterone but does not improve athletic ability. It is used to mask a high level of testosterone. Readers also asked about the implications of biological passports that individual athletes record results doping test and the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) scandal high profile, which outed several prominent professional athletes for using enhancing drugs performance. Here are his answers.

Q: What new methods of doping are you more concerned about

DC: My main concern is the attempts to thwart tests current using mini-doses of EPO and EPO-like drugs and HGH. There are people looking for ways to use doping agents and not get caught. They conduct clandestine clinical research, but they do not have the approval of the ethics committee, and of course they do not file reports on their studies. Nevertheless, the "subjects" provide details to each other describing their doses, dates of tests and test results. In a sense, their model is powerful because it is based on the doses and the results of human tests. However, it lacks control and many features of legitimate pharmacology protocols. We do not know how many people are involved, but there is evidence that EPO mini-doses may be avoided positive results. Finally, a low dose does not provide effective for participants.

Q: Do you feel the biological passport system holds up as a way to catch doping athletes

DC the theory behind the passport program is very solid, and all doctors can relate to it because they use every day in their work. In practice, passports are very difficult to prove the use of the drug. They can not rely on legitimate clinical studies. They rely on huge databases, but outliers can be complicated. The body's response range of relevant variables is huge. At that time, I would have expected more cases were published. People who take decisions must be very careful, which is probably why there are not so many cases. The data are not available for review. I gave from my own studies, but not from studies conducted by the University of California, Irvine. I think in time, the passports will mean more defensible case of doping. It is one more tool in the arsenal of antidopers.

Q: Did the BALCO files provide new information regarding the use of steroids and HGH

DC: He provided no new information for me. I expected this kind of doping for several years; However, when I spoke at conferences about the possibility that it was difficult to generate interest in a theoretical possibility. The BALCO case was extremely important because it proved, without a doubt, that brand-name drugs, epitestosterone ratio to normalize the testosterone-epitestosterone, etc., was actually in progress. What bothered me then and now is that Victor Conte, president of BALCO, was able to use a legitimate commercial laboratory to work on the pharmacokinetics of testosterone and epitestosterone. The laboratory should have alerted the authorities that one of their customers was involved in using doping efforts.

I doubt that Patrick Arnold [the chemist who created the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone] knew derivatized THG would break into the injection port of the gas phase mass spectrometer chromatography (GC-MS) instrument. This was probably beyond his chemical knowledge, but it did extend our studies of THG. Finally, it took a major change in the way we select for anabolic steroids. Now we use liquid chromatography mass spectrometers in phase, since it does not require derivatization.

Q: Do you agree that certain compounds / drugs / chemicals / vitamins should be considered illegal for competition? Why?

D.C..:. Yes. I think we should continue to use urine tests to enforce doping. I thought of other ways to do this, but none work. If we abandon the tests and allow all medicines, we will virtually compel athletes to dope because the drugs do not improve performance. If there is no test all athletes are equal again, but all will be on drugs. Some will push the envelope and take high doses so that there will be many side effects. We must recognize that there are difficulties with urine tests. It is not the "perfect" solution, but on balance, it is useful and better than the alternative without test. I think they should do as much as possible to enhance the control of doping. There are probably alternative programs as a voluntary program doping control. I also believe that the [World Anti-Doping Agency] WADA list could be reduced a little.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) defends his decision three months ago to award a research grant from Charles Nemeroff, the former psychiatrist at Emory University who got into trouble if not his university around at least $ 1.2 million in consulting revenues of pharmaceutical companies.

After Emory was forbidden to receive grants for 2 years in December 08, Nemeroff went to the University of Miami. In May, he won 5-year grant, $ 401,675 per year to study post-traumatic stress disorder. As reported today by the blog Pharmalot, NIH wrote Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) on August 3, in response to a question on the issue. One question is why Grassley NIH had awarded the grant even if Nemeroff was investigated by the Ministry of Health and the Office of Human Services Inspector General (OIG) and the Department of Justice.

In a letter to Grassley on August 3, Deputy NIH Director Lawrence Tabak explains that the OIG investigation and justice are confidential and peer reviewers were not informed about the review. "In the absence of a finding by the OIG or other reasons feasible right now to exclude Dr. Nemeroff, NIH has followed standard procedures," the letter said.

Tabak also explained that the proposal of Nemeroff crossed usual comments for the scientific value and public health and that the NIH has asked the University of Miami on potential conflicts of interest involving research. The letter notes that the study does not involve testing drugs. He also says Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which has historic ties to Nemeroff, challenged the review. "I want to assure you that all procedures were followed carefully in the allocation process of this specific grant to the University of Miami," says Tabak.

In the documents it gave Grassley, NIH included a "talking points" memo indicating that NIH was open to criticism. the note describes that officials must answer questions about the grant and includes information similar to that of the letter to Grassley. He says also that the total grant is $ 60,000 per year for 5 years for a study of two sites-the University of Miami and Emory

11:40, August 14 due to concerns about possible misuse, the image of a handwritten signature on the letter of Lawrence Tabak was obscured.

the largest cancer center in the country, the University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, unveiled today ' hui what he called a plan "moon shot" to significantly improve survival for several types of cancer over the next decade. Some outside researchers are cringing at the idea that cancer can be defeated by an institute.

Behind the plane is colored president of MD Anderson, Ronald DePinho, who came to the center a year ago of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. DePinho compares the program to speech 50 years of President John F. Kennedy in Houston announced a goal of sending Americans to the moon. At this stage of space exploration, "We had a solid knowledge and we also had the maturation of technologies to start," said DePinho at a press conference today. The field of cancer, he said, is also seeing "a confluence of technological advances are changing the that allow us to understand the fundamental underpinnings of this disease."

The Moon Shots program aims to "significantly increase the survival of patients" over the next decade to form large teams of researchers and clinicians who will focus on specific cancers. Cancers are the acute myeloid leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, melanoma, lung cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer known as triple negative cancer and ovarian cancer.

DePinho said the program will involve basic and applied research, such as the sequencing of the genome of the tumor, as well as efforts to put existing knowledge in practice, such as studies suggesting that screening heavy smokers for lung cancer with a new type of x-ray imaging saves lives one website describes the objectives such as:. "Integrating molecular profiling in an early stage and locally advanced lung cancer to increase the number of patients cured 10-20 %. "the program will also include public awareness campaigns to discourage smoking, for example.

The institute has "tens of millions" to start, and plans to spend up to $ 3 billion over 10 years on the program, drawing on funding from public and private sources, DePinho said. It will not disturb the research program of $ 700 million per year larger MD Anderson, he added.

The moon shot metaphor brings to mind previous targets for cancer, as the war of 1971 Richard Nixon on cancer. Another example is the goal of the former National Cancer Institute Director Andrew von Eschenbach to eliminate suffering and death from cancer in 2015. Some researchers say such attempts to reduce cancer to an engineering problem ignore the complexity of the disease and the unpredictability of science.

"The problem is not only an engineering task, it is a hundred different scientific problems we are making steady progress, but to say that we will eliminate suffering and even prevent death faces to many. trouble, "said Bruce Chabner of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Chabner also stresses that push the cancer is more of an institution job." We'll have all the talent in the world. "

Lung cancer researcher John Minna of UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas likes the idea of ​​"everyone uniting as a team," but he also wonders whether "this is the right of an institution." Some researchers suggest that the program is actually a public relations effort to raise funds at a time when federal grants are rare.

the announcement follows a first chaotic year for DePinho at MD Anderson. last spring, he and his wife, researcher Lynda Chin, came under surveillance after cancer prevention and the Texas research Institute (CPRIT) has awarded a grant of $ 20 million incubator at MD Anderson and Rice University after examining 3 weeks funded by the state. CPRIT Scientific Director, Nobel laureate Alfred Gilman prices, resigned in part on the subsidy, which has been withdrawn and will be resubmitted again for further examination. Questions have also been raised about the links DePinho businesses.

Despite the problems DePinho, MD Anderson has attracted some big names in the past year, including the genomics researcher Andy Futreal of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK. Another rookie James Allison Cancer Center Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, who had developed a new drug immunotherapeutic widely announced for melanoma.

One of the most famous and difficult to treat in humans bacteria was found in wildlife, according to a new study in the Journal of Wildlife diseases . The researchers isolated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in both rabbits and shore birds. Wild animals may act as an environmental reservoir for the disease that humans could be infected.

S. aureus can cause skin infections or, if it enters the bloodstream, a deadly disease. Most infections are easily managed with antibiotics penicillin and related, but MRSA, the resistant variety, is rising; also known as a "superbug", it kills about 18,000 Americans a year. In most cases, people contract the bacteria from a hospital stay. Hospitals are grounds for organisms resistant to antibiotics reproduction, because patients are treated with a variety of antimicrobial drugs, prompting the pathogens to develop defenses.

It is clear for more than a decade, however, that people can catch MRSA strains outside of the hospital as well; researchers call these strains "community partners." For example, pigs in farms were found harboring the bug, probably because farmers give antibiotics to animals as they grow up, another way to encourage resistance to change. Other studies have found MRSA in pets and zoo animals; they may have been infected by human keepers.

Now it seems that even the animals in the wild may be infected with MRSA. Researchers led by epidemiologist Tara Smith of the University of Iowa College of Public Health at Iowa City took samples from 114 animals that came into the clinical care of wildlife, which rehabilitates injured and orphaned animals at Iowa State University in Ames. Seven of the animals, or 6.1%, driven S. aureus who was sensitive to methicillin; these included owls, pigeons, beaver, heron and a squirrel. Three Animals, or 2.6%, MRSA carried: two cottontail rabbits East and a little knight, a migratory shorebirds. (For comparison reasons. It is estimated that 1.5% of Americans carry MRSA in their nose)

A big question is how these species came to carry MRSA. "This is really, really difficult to understand the source, especially with something like migratory birds," said Jorge Ferreira, a veterinarian and epidemiologist working as a consultant in Switzerland, who studied the presence of MRSA in humans and their pets. We can assume that the infected animals have never received antibiotics, he notes, so they must have picked up the bugs directly from their environment.

molecular typing of the isolates showed that the shorebird conducted a hospital-acquired strain of MRSA while rabbits had community-associated strains. MRSA Bunnies was also resistant to tetracycline, which Smith said is common in farm animals.

Maybe most troubling of all was that one of the pigeons was a Staphylococcus bacteria, while remaining sensitive to methicillin, was resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin. "Vancomycin is used as a last resort in MRSA infections," says co-author Shylo Wardyn, a research assistant in the laboratory of Smith, and staphylococci strains resistant to vancomycin are rare in humans.

What wild animals are a reservoir of MRSA in the environment that is if they can spread superbugs to other animals and humans, is an open question, said Smith. infections could be "events overflow "of man, caused by hospital waste, waste water, and agriculture, which have no wider threat. It is also unclear whether animals can get rid of the infection, if they can be infected several times, or if they have already spent their infection back to man.

Ferreira's work suggests that dogs and their owners can pass MRSA back and forth, and wildlife is a well known source other human infections, such as deer and Lyme disease and mouse and hantaviruses. If such evidence is suggestive, there is much more work to do to demonstrate whether humans can be infected with MRSA wildlife.

An unlikely decadelong journey that began with the discovery of a rapidly aging mice has led scientists to a protein that appears to protect animals against cancer and other scourges of old age without apparent disadvantages. There are still many mysteries about the protein, called BubR1, but the work offers clues on how the protective chromosomes can improve health.

Cancer biologist Jan van Deursen at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues were initially interested in studying a common feature of cancer, called aneuploidy. aneuploid cells have too few or too many chromosomes. Almost all cancer cells fall into this category, but it is unclear whether aneuploidy actually causes cancer. van Deursen, with a student can graduate, Darren Baker, engineered mice to produce less BubR1, a protein that helps cells separate from their chromosomes when they divide. When BubR1 is reduced, the chromosomes can not properly divide into identical daughter cells, leaving some girls with the wrong number of chromosomes. van Deursen, Baker, and colleagues wanted to see if these mice would develop cancer.

To their surprise, instead of the tumor-filled mice, they rolled with animals that aged very quickly. "These mice were clearly very, very different than normal mice," says Baker, who now studies the biology of aging at the Mayo Clinic. Last year they reported that the removal of old cells which, cells with a genetic marker indicating senescence of these mice could help them stay healthy longer. Adding the plot is a rare human condition caused by mutations in the gene BubR1. patients with the disease, aneuploidy syndrome variegated mosaic, age prematurely and are at high risk of cancer. Too little BubR1 seems to be bad news.

Too, on the other hand, maybe a good thing. in a work published today in Nature Cell Biology , biologists report that genetically modified mice that additional BubR1 are less prone to cancer. for example, they found that when they exposed normal mice to a product chemical that causes lung and skin tumors, all obtained cancer. But only 33% of overexpressing BubR1 to high levels did. They also found that the animals developed fatal cancers much later the mice-normal after about two years, only 15% of the mice developed cancer had died, compared with about 40% of normal mice.

The animals that overexpressed BubR1 at high levels also lived 15% longer than controls, on average. And the mouse was truly Olympian air on a treadmill, running twice as far, 0 meters instead of 100 meters, than the control animals. All that remains Baker, van Deursen and colleagues believe that the effects of BubR1 prolong life are not due only to its ability to prevent cancer, although it is not yet certain.

The big question now is why have your chromosomes out of order could accelerate aging, said Dai Wei, a cell biologist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, who is based in Tuxedo, New York. Although aneuploidy seems less desirable, the studies are not uniform about its effects on animals. "We found that when the level of aneuploidy has become weak" -As in healthy mice- van Deursen "you had more tumorigenesis," no less, said Cristina Montagna, a molecular geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York . She and her colleague January Vijg collaborate with van Deursen to study the brain of its BubR1 mouse. One possibility is that both very low and very high aneuploidy may protect against cancer, perhaps because the highly aneuploid cells are so damaged that they lack the ability to divide rapidly.

Yet there is hope that the van Deursen group may have identified a new therapeutic target to slow aging. "He [are] no negative consequences it has identified" to have more BubR1 says Paul Hasty, who studies aging and DNA repair at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "You need to understand exactly what BubR1 done to achieve this desired effect," he adds, but this could be the first step on a long way toward new treatments that delay the aging of cancer and perhaps avoid.

Health officials in Egypt and around the world are scrambling to prevent a polio outbreak after poliovirus from Pakistan has been found in samples of wastewater collected at two sites in Cairo in December.

Genetic analysis just completed has linked the virus to Egyptian one that was last seen in Pakistan in September 2012. How he arrived in Cairo remains unclear, but genetic evidence suggests that the virus made the long journey in the course of the past 3 months. Egypt has been polio-free since 04.

So far, no cases of polio have been found in Cairo, and there is no evidence that the virus itself has established and begun to circulate widely. But there is a real risk, said Bruce Aylward, who heads the global initiative to eradicate poliomyelitis (GPEI) of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland.

"The last thing anyone wants is for Eqypt to reinfected," says Aylward. That is why the countries and international organizations who advise the deal positive samples as a fulfilling epidemic, "We are very, very aggressive," Aylward said.

The importation of the virus in Egypt is another setback for the global program, which was finally made significant progress over the past two years, with only three cornered polio in endemic countries. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria (India is now past 2 years without a single case of polio.) of the three, Pakistan has done particularly well in knocking out the virus, but the program has recently been disrupted by the targeted killing of nine polio workers in December and early January. These killings, widely convicted, have fueled fears that the virus will regain strength in Pakistan, then reinfect polio-free countries. "This is a positive proof of import long distance from Pakistan, and it may be more," says Aylward .

This is only the second time poliovirus from Pakistan has infected other countries neighboring Afghanistan; the first was China, where the virus Pakistan triggered an epidemic in 2011. The new import puts more pressure on Pakistan to eradicate the virus within its borders.

The wild poliovirus was detected in the untreated wastewater collected on 2 and 6 December in routine sampling in areas under Al Salam and Al Haggana in Cairo. Once they were considered positive, samples were shipped to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta for genetic sequencing. The analysis, completed Jan. 18, showed that viruses of the two sites are closely related to each other, and both could be attributed to a virus for the last time in September in environmental samples in Sukkur in northern Sindh province in Pakistan.

The presence of the virus in untreated sewage mean a person or several people, perhaps a family conducted from Pakistan and are now excrete in their feces. No cases of polio have been found so far; in general, polio causes paralysis in about one in 100 people it infects. The two samples are from the same tributary wastewater, said Sona Bari, a WHO spokesman.

Alerted Friday night (18 January), WHO, CDC, and other partners of the global initiative immediately sent teams to help the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population to investigate and to plan a response. The intensified environmental monitoring and are actively looking for all cases of paralysis that may have been missed. Planning is underway for an emergency campaign to immunize children in both areas of Cairo, as soon as possible, to be followed by one in the Cairo metropolitan area in mid-February, then national campaigns.

Egypt had two other poliovirus importations known since 04, but neither caused disease. A key variable in determining how widely the virus spreads is the level of population immunity. The poliovirus can not take off if immunity is high and few children are sensitive, as is generally the case in Egypt. But experts are worried, Bari said, because Egypt has reduced its national immunization campaigns against polio for two to once a year during the turmoil of the revolution. And even in the best case, Aylward said, there are still children who do not receive immunization against polio, mostly in poor populations living in slums with poor sanitation.

The events come in the WHO Executive Board meets week in Geneva to discuss, among other things, progress and threats to the effort to long-term polio eradication, originally scheduled for completion in 00. "first and foremost on everyone's mind is Pakistan," said Alyward. a question that he expects to be on the table is travel restrictions. the independent monitoring Board overseeing the GPEI recommended in a November 2012 report that, under the International health Regulations, the three endemic countries introduce measures to ensure that no one can leave the country without proof of vaccination against polio.

already, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, focal point of the Pakistani Prime Minister to eradicate polio, advised all the provincial and federal governments to establish permanent booths at international airports to vaccinate all children under 5 years against polio before leaving the country.

ATLANTA -A baby in rural Mississippi seems to have been cured of HIV infection, probably because doctors began treatment 30 hours after birth. This is "the first documented case" of its kind, says pediatrician Deborah Persaud at a press conference held at the beginning of the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections here. Persaud, who works at the Johns Hopkins School Bloomberg public health in Baltimore, Maryland, has not treated the child herself, but made intensive studies of blood samples that she and her colleagues were led to conclude that the unusually early treatment may have set the stage for 2 and half years rural Mississippi whose sex and guardians are not identified for privacy reasons to erase a robust infection.

As explained Persaud, the child is born in July 2010 in a rural hospital after 35 weeks gestation, and only learned doctors of HIV from the mother infection from a rapid test given to her when she was at work. due to the premature birth the doctors decided to move the baby to the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson. UMMC conducted separate tests on 2-day-old infant and found both RNA and DNA of HIV. Doctors decided to start a cocktail of AZT and two other anti-HIV medicines 31 hours after birth. Generally, Persaud noted, up to 6 weeks may pass before the laboratories perform both tests needed to determine whether a newborn has an HIV infection, but this baby's hospitalization led to testing and more aggressive treatment.

Laboratory tests at 6, 12, and 20 days confirmed the baby had HIV in plasma. But in 29 days, the virus became undetectable on standard tests, as often happens with effective cocktail of antiretroviral drugs. For unknown reasons, the child's guardian decided to stop treatment at 18 months. In the fall of 2012, when the baby was 21 months old and returned to care, UMMC Hannah Gay pediatrician could not find the HIV virus or antibodies on standard tests. Gay then contacted Katherine Luzuriaga at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester for help, who in turn asked Persaud Hopkins group to traverse the blood samples for evidence of the persistence of HIV.

The team Persaud, who has ongoing studies of babies who start treatment early and uses a range of utlrasensistive tests to screen blood for HIV, first tested the baby's blood 24 months after birth. The researchers found that only one copy of HIV RNA in plasma. These genetic evidence is often defective versions of the virus that can not be copied. To determine if the baby was home "replication competent" HIV, they mixed the baby's blood with the main target CD4 cells HIV uninfected see if they produce new viruses. They do not have. Other tests at 26 months yet found tiny genetic traces of the virus, but it does not seem to have integrated with cells, it needs to do to copy. "We are very happy and planning new studies to assess this," said pediatrician Lynne Mofenson, head of maternal and pediatric infectious disease branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the United States.

Persaud, who plans to present its findings in its entirety at a conference session tomorrow suspect early treatment prevented the establishment of a pool of long life CD4 cells that harbor infections latent HIV; these CD4 immune avoid detection and are impervious to antiretroviral drugs because they do not actively produce new viruses. These tanks are a major reason why the virus persists even after decades of antiretroviral treatment.

In the history of the AIDS epidemic, researchers reported one case convince a person infected with HIV, Timothy Brown, treatment is stopped and has not had the return of virus. "We think this is our case Timothy Brown to stimulate interest in research and lead us on the road to recovery for children infected with HIV," said Persaud. It recognizes that, like Brown, this is n = 1 conclusion, and said that the child may still harbor an infection, which is why they refer to the case as a "functional cure" rather than the complete eradication of HIV, called a cure "sterilization". "This is a case and we certainly need to have more, and we hope that we can have more," she said.

Effective antiretroviral treatment for pregnant women has HIV to infants rare wherever it is used. But Mofenson, who gave a presentation on transmission from mother to child during the opening session of the meeting, noted that worldwide, 330,000 new pediatric infections occurred in 2011. Even in the States STATES, where fewer than 0 babies infected with HIV are born each year, the mother-child transmission occurs too often because treatment guidelines are not followed. Indeed, in this case the rural hospital in Mississippi who diagnosed the mother with a rapid test during labor does provide antiretroviral drugs, and had no syrups AZT and nevirapine on hand which are given to infants at birth in a last attempt to prevent transmission -ditch. "This is unacceptable," said Mofenson.

Persaud is confident that early treatment will lead to functional recovery of other children. "We think we should be able to replicate it," she said. "This has very important implications for HIV infection in children and the possibility of obtaining healing." Mofenson agrees, but warns that it will be much easier to quickly diagnose HIV infection early and treat in rich places like the United States. "It will be very difficult to actually take it and implement in developing countries," said Mofenson. "The key to the elimination of pediatric HIV is to prevent infection in the first place"

Fixed March 4. Due to the premature birth, doctors decided to move the baby to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, which was initially reported that the University of Mississippi Medical School.

to neuroscientist Rafael Yuste, sitting in a room of the White House decorated yesterday listening to President Barack Obama heaps of praise and some 100 million on $ brain mapping initiative that helped the outbreak was a "light" experience. "I felt like the story," says the researcher, who works at Columbia University.

"There is this huge mystery waiting to be unlocked," Obama told the crowd packed East Room with leaders of the American neuroscience in a 12--Minute paean to research brain (probably the largest yet issued by a US president). By "giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action," he said, the new initiative will help scientists find a cure for the complex processes of the brain, such as traumatic brain injury and Parkinson's disease, and create jobs that "we have not even imagined yet. "

For high rhetoric, however, the White House has not provided many details on how the brain (Brain Research through the advancement Innovative neurotechnologies) initiative will accomplish its mission . and the lack of detail is worrying not only skeptics who claim that BRAIN target the wrong purpose and could undermine other efforts, but research also even some ardent defenders such as Yuste. the way the White House has packed and plans to fund and coordinate the initiative, they say, creates some discomfort.

"As the current proposal, it is still awfully vague, so it is difficult not to have some reserves, "said biophysicist Jeremy Berg of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, who is a former director of the National Institute of General medical sciences at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Several years Yuste and other scientists originally pitched BRAIN to US government officials that the activity of the brain map, 10 years, $ 3 billion to develop tools nanotechnology, optogenetics, and synthetic biology that could measure "each peak of each neuron" in a neural circuit. in an article in 2012 in neuron , on the basis of meetings organized by the California company Oxnard, Kavli Foundation, Yuste and his colleagues have developed a plan to gradually progress to map the brain activity of simple model organisms such as fruit flies to map the brains of creatures which contain about 1 million neurons, such as the Etruscan shrew. human applications formulated as the ultimate goal, but not an immediate objective.

Since the idea was adopted by the White House, however, has changed considerably. The plan that Obama unveiled yesterday called BRAIN fund by three federal agencies and private foundations. Officials say the year 2014 at the request of the president's budget, which will be published on April 10, ask about:

• $ 40 million to the model of the NIH for research in neuroscience, a project that includes 15 institutes and centers

• $ 50 million to the Agency Defense Advanced research Projects for research that could improve treatment and diagnose combat-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, brain damage and memory loss

• $ 20 million for the National science Foundation (NSF ), to support research in the development of nanoscale sensors to record the activity of neural networks; information processing technology that can handle the flood of data generated by brain research; and a better understanding of the neural representation of thoughts, emotions, actions and memories

Four groups-private Allen Brain Science Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Kavli Foundation and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say that they will support the project by funding BRAIN related research institutions. (See this infographic for details.)

The initiative will be led by an NIH working group supported 15 neuroscientists, co-chaired by Cornelia Bargmann of Rockefeller University in New York and William Newsome of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Although this group will not release a detailed research spending plan later this year, BRAIN should put more emphasis on human applications than its original planners envisioned, says neuroscientist John Donoghue Brown University, one of two researchers at the Kavli-led effort that has been appointed to the Executive Committee BRAIN (neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute are the others) .Human and animal research applications are now thinking as "rather a parallel series that effort, "said he, and the NIH Director Francis Collins confirms that human applications are of great interest." We do not want to waste time traveling to the science that has direct human applications, "he said at a press conference yesterday

This. change has created some problems. Yuste, for example, says that maintaining human benefits in mind is important, but wondered if original sharpness of the project on the development of the tool can be diluted if the NIH advisory panel is dominated by traditional neuroscientists, rather than a more interdisciplinary mixture of scientists, including nanoscience, optogeneticists and synthetic biologists. "Neither Bargmann or Newsome are tool builders, so it is a concern they pack the committee with users, rather than the tool builders," says Yuste, adding that he and some allies asking NIH to add members to the panel. "We ask for more technologists."

only 2 months, Bargmann was skeptical about the project. "based on my conversations, there is great concern in the community neuroscience that sounds like a great project of central planning that will have resources outside the creative work, "she wrote in February 1 email to Science . "The project needs to make sense to those who care deeply about neurological disease and neuroscience, and we have not seen the leaders in these areas still involved." ( Science Insider has not been able to reach Bargmann for comment since she was appointed co-chair of the working group.)

Although Berg Pittsburgh was skeptical 10 years, $ 3 billion proposal brain Activity Map, "now that it has been somewhat reduced and focused on the development of technology, I feel much more comfortable with the project," he said. based on his experience at NIH, Berg said that emphasis on the development of technology is "a very good thing," because groups within the agency tend to fight with the development of new technologies "because they are" focused on this problem, they are trying to solve rather than the development of the technology itself. "

allows the system to be flexible and adapt over time is essential, he said. Bargmann and that Newsome is on the advisory group, "adds a lot of comfort for me." Although both are "spectacular contributors" to neuroscience, Berg said, they also have an overview of how to manage both small and large scientific projects.

Like any large project, the brain's success will ultimately depend on his leadership, Donoghue confirmed: "There are many people involved in this who have built careers running independent laboratories themselves. ... The question is whether they will all pull together in the same direction. "

Still unclear is whether the financing BRAIN will suck money out of other research efforts and if the $ 100 million will be followed by other investments coming years. "I understand that it comes from new money" not already allocated to research in neuroscience, said Donoghue. the first reaction Yuste to face was that it was "far too low" to achieve the original objectives of the project.

But "the money should be considered as something that can be built around, from which you can build forward" said Alan Leshner, CEO of AAAS (publisher of science Insider). "a time when funding is so tight in government," the support of the white House to research neuroscience is a "major opportunity" says Leshner, a former director of the NIH National Institute on drug abuse and Acting Director of the National Institute of mental health. " If the scientific community does not rise yet, shame on us. "

Although there is no predicting whether Congress approves the president's request," it has always been and there seems to be today the interest of both parties in this kind of innovative products research, "said white House Jay Carney yesterday during his daily briefing.

A top Republican leader in Congress has already expressed its support." the human brain mapping is exactly the type of research we should be funding, "said representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), the majority leader of the uS House of representatives, in a statement." It is great scientist. "

(Obama, meanwhile, joked in his speech that "without doubt my life would be easier" if scientists could map the brain. "It could explain all kinds of things going on in Washington. We could prescribe something . ")

despite their concerns, many scholars who laid the foundation of BRAIN are just happy to see at least part of their idea in progress. The evening before the president's announcement, Yuste and more than a dozen other colleagues involved in the effort met for dinner in downtown Washington, for what they described jokingly as their "Last Supper ". The sense of accomplishment was "bittersweet," said Yuste. They were happy that the Obama administration has adopted the project, he said, but now "it's out of our hands."

Known for his painful skin infections as well as its namesake resistance methicillin, MRSA is a scary germ in a world where older antibiotics do not always work. But now researchers have managed to make the MRSA methicillin sensitive again by combining the drug with a protein complex first discovered in breast milk. In an article published today in PLOS ONE , the researchers show that the complex, known as HAMLET (for lethal human alpha-lactalbumin made for cells tumorales- it is versatile) helped methicillin kill MRSA in the nose of the mice at a dose of 10 micrograms, while antibiotic alone was ineffective even at 10 times this level. HAMLET also makes ordinary bacteria more susceptible to antibiotics, so that only a fraction of the drug is necessary. This image shows a Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterial healthy cell (left) next to a blown apart with the help of HAMLET (right). Bacteria seem to have a difficult time developing resistance to HAMLET, and the complex has no toxic side effects because therapeutic doses are not more than the baby drank the milk. This means HAMLET antibiotic cocktail and could be the following approach to scary superbugs.

See Science Shots

scientists are-Dutch hampering the fight against a new lethal coronavirus by patenting the virus and make it unnecessarily difficult for web other scientists to study? Accusations to this effect were flying last week at the World Health Assembly (WHA), the annual meeting of health ministers of the world in Geneva, Switzerland. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), has used strong words in an apparent attack on virologist Ron Fouchier and his colleagues at Erasmus MC Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

But there is nothing unusual about the arrangement under which Fouchier shared samples of the virus, several scientists and an expert in intellectual property say Science Insider . And so far, nobody has offered concrete examples of how legal provisions have slowed research. Criticism is "totally unjustified," said Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn in Germany, which has developed diagnostic tests for the virus. "Nothing has been blocked."

Fouchier group identified the virus, now called Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), in June last year after receiving a sample of Ali Zaki, an Egyptian doctor working in hospital Dr. Soliman Fakeeh in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. MERS has sickened 49 people from five other cases were reported today by the Saudi government and killed 24, raising fears that it could begin to spread throughout the world, as its distant cousin of SARS was in 03.

the debate last week began with a story May 20 CBC citing Frank Plummer, head of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, saying that the group had to Rotterdam made it difficult for others to use the virus. "[T] here was a lot of negotiation and many lawyers involved with both us and the Americans and others around the world," said Plummer, "which slowed things a bit."

on 23 May, Saudi Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish intervened to WHA, complaining that intellectual property considerations slowed the development of diagnostic tests. "We are still dealing with the diagnosis and the reason is the virus was patented by scientists and can not be used for investigations by other scientists, "Memish was quoted by the French news agency AFP. According to the report, he continued to insist that the contracts had been signed with vaccines and pharmaceutical companies, which he must approve each time another laboratory wants to use the virus.

Chan seemed to endorse the comments after Memish. "Why your scientists would send samples to other laboratories on a bilateral and allow other people to take intellectual property right way on the new disease?" She asked, according to AFP, who said she added , to thunderous applause: "No IP (intellectual property) should stand in the way of you, the countries of the world, to protect your people."

Erasmus MC denied the allegations in a press release issued Friday. "Rumors that the Viroscience department of Erasmus MC hinder research into MERS coronavirus are clearly erroneous and not based on facts," the statement read. Virologist Ab Osterhaus, who heads the department, said he does not understand controversy. "We have given the virus to almost any laboratory that asked," says Osterhaus.

The debate was confusing in part because commentators have confused two different things: first patents and so-called material transfer agreement, or MTA, on the other.

Erasmus MC has applied for a patent on "the use of sequence data receiver and host" because without patents, companies would never invest to diagnosis, vaccines or antiviral drugs for MERS says Osterhaus. But demand is still pending, and it may take months before the patent authorities rule on it and the patent becomes public. Erasmus MC has not yet measured the commercial interest Osterhaus said - let alone companies control data on who can get their hands on the virus, as Memish of Saudi Arabia claimed.

The question now is the MTA, a document that most biomedical laboratories regularly use when exchanging cell samples or pathogens. It governs, among other things, that the receiving laboratories can do with the virus. The MTA for the MERS virus, which was obtained by Science Insider, states that the viral material still belongs to the original supplier (in this case Erasmus MC) and the recipient can not give it to other laboratories. It also requests the written consent of Erasmus for the use of viruses for commercial purposes.

While Erasmus MTA does not claim ownership of the virus in countries where it exists or has been isolated, it protects its legal ownership of virus samples it shared with other agencies, said David Fidler, a lawyer at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, who studied international sharing of pathogens. "The press release and the MTA preserve the rights of Erasmus to obtain intellectual property rights for vaccines and drugs-related research on the virus sample from Saudi Arabia," he said. But MTA Erasmus is "a fairly standard agreement," Fidler said. "There's nothing here that suggests to me that it needs a huge amount of negotiation ... anything where I thought it unusual or very restrictive . "

Other scientists agree. Matthew Frieman, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, said he ordered the virus as soon as he heard. It took a few weeks to get the paperwork done, he said, "but there was nothing unique in this process." Drosten, which has developed a diagnostic test using the Erasmus MC virus, said that "everyone can use [the virus] free." "What really shocks me is that the WHO seems to buy in "complaints, he said.

WHO spokesman Gregory Härtl refused to answer questions about Chan's comments. a spokesman Plummer said he was available for an interview to clarify its complaint; instead, the spokesman sent a written statement confirming that there had been "delays and restrictions on [lab] in getting this virus."

Memish, in an interview with Science Insider yesterday said he did not see the MTA itself. "I have spoken to many scientists who said they are not willing to take the virus because the MTA was too restrictive," says Memish, but he did not give specific examples. "I was doing my comments on this assumption, "he said. But Memish said the matter did not stop the search in Saudi Arabia itself, where most cases of the virus have been found.

Even if the MTA does not mind sharing the virus, questions on intellectual property rights might surface in the future. Memish said his main complaint is that Zaki sent a virus sample taken from a patient in Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam first and Erasmus MC has been able to apply for patents as a result. "The samples were shipped out of the country ... without the knowledge or permission of the Department of Health and I can not believe that all countries on this planet would that happen," says Memish.

Zaki said he gave a sample of the same patient at the Saudi Ministry of Health. "They tested for swine flu and will not continue," he said Science Insider yesterday . only then reach out to Fouchier "We have the right to confirm the results around the world," he said Memish said it simply not true.. his ministry was never informed of new disease in hospital Jeddah, he said, and learned from him three months after the patient's death, when Zaki sent information about it to ProMED, a list of e-mail for disease outbreaks. "For [Zaki], a Science or Nature paper seems to be more important than human lives," says Memish. Zaki, who now works in Egypt, said he was not only forced to resign but that "they closed the lab [in Jeddah] and asked all the material to be destroyed."

Whoever is right, all parties agree that the virus was originally isolated in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the real issue behind the discussions is whether Saudi Arabia should benefit in some way from anything out research on the virus, said Fidler.

The global health community has debated similar issues before. In 07, Indonesia has triggered a crisis when it stopped sharing samples from people infected with the strain of H5N1 flu, over concerns they would be used to develop vaccines against the pandemic that the country would unable to pay. This issue was finally resolved in 2011 through a sharing system called if Preparedness Framework Pandemic Influenza, which rewards countries to share viruses.

The agreement concerns only the influenza virus and coronavirus not like MERS. Yet now, "the sharing of virus and benefit sharing are related to global health," said Fidler. "Despite stressing that it is for Global Health, Erasmus does not mention benefit sharing issue in the press release." But Osterhaus, who wrote a letter to Chan clarify his position, said that Zaki's is the first name on the patent. "We intend to share from the beginning, and we do not first understand that there were problems between Zaki and the Saudi government," he said.

The dispute can not be resolved anytime soon, said Fidler. "She sufficiently key hot spots that have not gone further than that may persist even if we have all the facts on the table and nobody is to blame in particular," he said. "This is unfortunate, because it seems that this is a dangerous virus and we should be able to do better."