Health Meaning

In a report published today, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee of the UK decided that homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo and should not be provided by the National health Service, as it has been since its establishment in 1948. the group also recommended that medicines and healthcare products Agency regulation of UK safety guard dog drug license should stop over-the-counter homeopathic medicines that have not proven effective in randomized controlled trials (ie all of them).

These verdicts are not a complete shock since the Committee of Science and common technology includes members of Parliament who have chosen to serve on a committee established to oversee the basis of scientific evidence of government policy . The panel even went so far as to reject calls for more research, concluding that "there has been enough testing of homeopathy and plenty of evidence showing that it is not effective."

In addition, the report accuses the British Homeopathic Association (BHA), who presented evidence to the panel of cherry picking, and even, in one case actively misrepresenting the research on treatment (a famous study which concluded its findings were "consistent with the notion that the clinical effects of homeopathy are placebo effects" was cited by the BHA as evidence of the effectiveness of treatment.) MPs conclude that "defenders of homeopathy ... choose to rely on, and promulgate, selective approaches for the treatment of the evidence base. "

The Israeli government passed a $ 350 million plan to attract new scientific working abroad, Israeli media reported yesterday. According to Haaretz , the system will create 30 academic centers of excellence to attract scientists currently working abroad. The government will provide a third of the money; the rest must come from the academic and philanthropic institutions. The universities will compete to host the centers.

said the document:

A pilot program of five Centres of Excellence will begin during the next academic year. Sources close to the Higher Education Council stated that the first centers to open would focus on the economy and IT, two areas in which Israeli scientists have made particularly important contributions to research international.

"There is certainly a step in the right direction," Eytan Abraham, an Israeli researcher at the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Biomedical Engineering Center, said Science insider. Abraham is the representative of MIT BioAbroad, a group that seeks to facilitate the return of biomedical scientists, entrepreneurs and doctors in Israel, for example, by putting them in contact with companies there and travel funding for interviews job.

Many Israeli scientist expatriates want to go back, said Abraham; ie, more than 100 showed to Boston for a meeting on January 2 on the subject with the Israeli Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz. The small number of scientists available positions in Israeli universities is a major obstacle, Abraham said. But he warns that it remains to be seen whether academic institutions and private donors will come through their share of the money. He also noted that the program is only for academic positions; a similar initiative should be to open up jobs in Israel's industry, said Abraham.

All drugs against cancer share a problem: They penetrate only a few cells in the tumor. Now a team of biologists has identified a molecule that helps cancer treatments deep into tumors, at least in mice. The approach has yet to be tested in people, but if it pans, it will bypass one of the biggest challenges in the field. "This has huge implications for the treatment of cancer," says David Cheresh, a biologist from the tumor and vascular at the University of California (UC), San Diego, who was not involved in the work.

tumors keep drugs away in two ways. first, their vessels are leaky enough to allow drugs inside. and secondly, they have a high hydrostatic pressure. This means that the fluid has tends to flow from tumors, not to them, and that "any drug must swim upstream, if you will," said Erkki Ruoslahti, a cell biologist and tumor at the Institute of medical research Sanford- Burnham in Santa Barbara, California. Last year Ruoslahti and two scientists in his laboratory, Kazuki Sugahara and Tambet Teesalu, reported on a new peptide, a small molecule called iRGD, which seemed to do a good job of getting inside tumors when it was anchored a drug against cancer.

Now the three, along with several colleagues, tested iRGD with a variety of treatments against cancer in mice. The researchers found that administering iRGD and several common drugs against cancer has significantly increased the amount of each drug went into a tumor, between seven and 40 times without the peptide. He also helped to reduce the dose of medication: about a third as much medicine to give necessary to be effective. This is important because toxicity often makes it difficult to administer high doses of chemotherapy that might help. The group focused on human breast, pancreatic, and prostate tumors grafted into mice.

Ruoslahti think iRGD can treat both the tight blood vessels and the high fluid pressure. The peptide apparently handles this first coupling to receptors on the blood vessels of a tumor, it binds to another receptor on tumor cells which controls the permeability of their vasculature. In a paper published last year, researchers demonstrated that iRGD needed to be chemically linked to any cancer therapy decision because it is much harder to develop it as a drug. In the new work, published online today in Science Express, the researchers report that the peptide can simply be given at the same time the drug.

fault drugs from entering the tumor "is a huge problem for cancer in general," especially when the disease occurs in the brain, which is even less accessible, says Zena Werb, a biologist cell at UC San Francisco. Werb warns, however, that "it is early" to say how promising is iRGD. Cheresh emphasizes that one of the risks is that the peptide could cause new metastases by opening the blood vessels of the tumor and helping . cancer cells to slip Yet they agree that, if the safety and efficacy of iRGD pan out, it could revolutionize cancer treatment for patients with all kinds of tumors Ruoslahti pushes forward;. he and his colleagues filed patent applications on the peptide and are now in discussions with pharmaceutical companies about to test in humans.

A hard takedown of a popular type of the study of human genetics in the pages of Cell has generated reviews online chatter, and at least one researcher plans to submit a response to the review. Jon McClellan psychiatrist and geneticist Mary-Claire King, both of the University of Washington, Seattle, wrote earlier this month that the genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which scan large areas of hundreds of genomes people for common drive variants common gene diseases, receive us very far. "It is now clear that the common risk variants fail to explain the vast majority of genetic heritability for human disease," they wrote in an essay arguing that several hundreds of GWAS findings to date "come from factors other than a true association with disease risk." in other words, they are not transporting anything about his risk of developing diseases such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer.

both contained a number of reasons for this, but said that ultimately it boils down to biology. They believe that common variants simply do not have much to do with most diseases studied in GWAS. instead, McClellan and King think we should pay more attention to rare variants that arise in our genomes relatively recently. (King is famous for the discovery of such a Alternatively, the breast cancer gene BRCA1 ).

"While I fully agree that rare variants are important in human disease, I also think that the section on GWAS reflects misunderstanding of the concept of GWAS, ignorance practices standard in GWAS, misinterpretation of published primary research data, and therefore is misinforming the general readership of cell , "wrote Kai Wang, a postdoc at the Hospital of Philadelphia children whose papers were cited in the cell article. Like many others, he believes that GWAS have had a major impact on our understanding of the human genome, and plans to send comments to Cell .

Others in the community buzzing on paper here, here, and here.

oxymoron Talk: A snail on speed. No, the researchers were not trying to make gastropods glide faster, they have tried to improve their memories. When the great snail pond ( Lymnaea stagnalis ) wades through the water poor in oxygen, it extends a special tube to the surface breathing. A team of researchers trained snails not to repeatedly pushing their breathing tubes when the snails have tried to expand. Two days later, the team again placed the snails in the water poor in oxygen. Snails formed in normal water had already forgotten their training, and they extended their breathing tubes twice as often as snails trained in meth-laced water, the researchers report tomorrow The Journal of Experimental Biology . The results suggest that methamphetamine improves memory, something that has already been observed in creatures with large complex brains like rats and humans. But since the snails store their memories in a single network, three neurons, the team hopes that the study of the effect of methamphetamine in these gastropods will identify how the drug expansion memory powers working.

See science Shots .

Many of us carry genes for diseases that we will never get. Take Crohn's disease, an autoimmune disease that attacks the digestive system: Well over half of the population holds at least a genetic variant linked to Crohn's disease, but only a fraction of them presently there . Scientists have long known that environmental triggers contribute to explain this discrepancy, but they do not know exactly how. Now, an incidental finding in mice shows that when animals with particular Crohn gene are exposed to a specific virus, they develop characteristics similar to those of individuals with time of scientific disease first noted that genes and environmental intersected in this manner in Crohn's disease. Scientists hope the finding is just the beginning of many that will show how genes and the environment combine specifically to produce all kinds of chronic diseases.

The conclusion was a fluke. Thaddeus Stappenbeck immunologist and virologist Herbert School of Medicine in St. Louis Virgin University of Washington were moving their mouse colony for a superclean facility to keep animals free of viruses that often plague laboratory mice. The duo and his colleagues worked with mice carrying a gene called ATG16L1 , which increases the risk of Crohn's disease in people. When the mice were moved, they showed more abnormalities in their intestinal cells. "There must be an environmental trigger present in a system, but not the other," Virgin said he thought at the time.

The researchers immediately hosted on suspects: a virus that Virgin was discovered and reported in Nature ago 7 years called murine norovirus. Noroviruses are common among people, too, for which they cause gastrointestinal disorders. One of the most famous is the Norwalk virus, which often sickens people in close quarters, such as on cruise ships. For years, gastroenterologists have noticed that patients who come to them with newly diagnosed Crohn's disease often have suffered some kind of stomach virus recently.

To test whether murine norovirus, which was not present in the plant "clean" might explain the difference in their mice, the researchers infected mice ATG16L1 with particular strain of murine norovirus, named MNV CR6. After 7 days, the inflammation showed a type of intestinal cell called the most germs home loaded cells Paneth the same abnormalities the mice had done in their earlier ,. Inflammation is very similar to what is observed in patients with Crohn's disease in these same cells. Another strain of norovirus has not had this, and mice ATG16L1 remained healthy.

Scientists have long believed that, in addition to genetic and viral exposure, Crohn's disease is driven in part by an abnormal balance of bacteria in the gut. Virgin, Stappenbeck and colleagues estimated taking ATG16L1 mice that had been exposed to norovirus they were destined to suffer bowel problems and fed them a solution that hurts the intestines further. In healthy mice, the solution induced ulcers, was expected. In affected mice, injection led to even more features resembling Crohn's disease, including inflammation through the colon wall, reports the team in issue tomorrow Cell .

R. Balfour Sartor, a gastroenterologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Senior Medical Advisor for Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America in New York, says the work could help to explain why the majority of people who have Crohn's genes don 't develop the disease. It shows that many factors are required to induce Crohn's disease, he said, but not one sufficient to itself.

However, much work remains to be done to determine how to apply the results to people, said Sartor. He also whether other viruses in the presence of ATG16L1 , may have the same effects, and whether other genes combined with Crohn this norovirus do, too.

Stappenbeck said that another great mystery how exactly is the mechanism that norovirus is combined with this particular gene to produce abnormalities in the intestine. He and Virgin also plans to start looking at the human suffering of Crohn's disease virus to see what they were exposed to.

Two days of complex statistical and sometimes convoluted debate on the drug against diabetes Avandia ended today, but left his ultimate fate uncertain. A joint committee of endocrinology, drug safety, and diabetes experts advising the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) divided its vote today on whether to recommend the removal of the drug from the US market. The final decision will be made by the FDA at a later date, although the future of Avandia seems unclear, it could remain on the market in a limited capacity.

The drug, whose generic name is rosiglitazone, has been under surveillance since 07 to possibly increase the risk of heart attacks. The increased risks were relatively low, and many people on the committee of 33 reviews have criticized the quality of contradictory and obscure data they had to base their decision. However, a plurality of members, 12 voted that the FDA should remove the drug.

The committee members also had the opportunity to vote to keep Avandia on the market and change the warning label, and 17 members voted to do so. But their votes were divided among the proposals to change the warning label in various ways: seven people wanted to extend the warnings on the label, and 10 wanted to expand the warning and also limit the use of drugs in particular cases.

Three members voted to leave the label as it is. One member abstained. No members voted for the most favorable option for the drug, keeping Avandia on the market and removing the warning of increased cardiac risk.

Many expected FDA eliminate the drug market after the agency has published more than 700 pages of documents Friday that raised safety issues and criticized the conduct of the company that makes Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK). Particularly noteworthy was the criticism of the FDA a trial undertaken by GSK, called RECORD, often cited by the company to justify keeping Avandia on the market. But some members thought that the low RECORD criticism; they argued that no one could really take the risk of Avandia without a retrial, scientifically rigorous.

Of the 20 submissions, hundreds of slides, and thousands of pages of testimony yesterday and today, the Committee has many questions to consider about the evidence for the safety of Avandia . First, they debated whether Avandia caused more heart problems compared to the general treatment of diabetes compared to a similar drug, pioglitazone. Second, the committee had to decide whether Avandia has caused more deaths than any of these options. Significantly, the committee voted that Avandia caused more heart problems than either alternative. But members wavered on the second question, suggesting that they were of two minds about ultimate evil of drugs.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, GSK agreed yesterday to pay $ 460 million to settle approximately 10,000 lawsuits alleging that the drug caused heart attacks.

In addition, India announced that it ordered GSK to stop a large-scale study of Avandia, known as TIDE name within its borders. TIDE, which is taking place in the world, was designed to provide a rigorous proof of the safety of the drug, and the designers of the study had plans to enroll up to 15,000 other patients with diabetes. Some members argued today that nobody will ever know the true risk of Avandia without such a study, but others fear that large scope of the test and measure long it will run for eight years-could putting more patients at risk. In the final vote of the day, 20 members voted, if Avandia remains on the US market, the TIDE trial should continue.

A wide research coalition officially weighed on the case of stem cells, urging the judge Royce Lamberth chief of suspend the injunction last week to stop research on human embryonic stem cells. Lamberth faces a Tuesday deadline to make his decision after the Department of Justice (DOJ) on August 31 asked for an emergency stay. In the late afternoon, with a long weekend looming, the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR), an advocacy group that comprises about 100 patient organizations, scientific societies and foundations, filed a 11-page amicus curiae hoping to tip the judge in that direction.

The CAMR brief focuses on two elements, he said, need to be taken into account in evaluating the injunction, the public interest in the case and the impact of the stay on the patients. The coalition argues that if the injunction the judge to stop the current search, "the result would be an immediate and devastating impact on ongoing research," in part because researchers "have no way of knowing whether these activities can resume. " Because it takes so long already to transform basic scientific discoveries into actual treatments, delay "inevitably harm patients," the coalition argued.

See our full coverage of this issue.

The United States and Europe are both greatly restrict the use of the drug against the Avandia diabetes, culminating several years of concern the drug increases the risk of heart problems. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) taking Avandia from the market, while the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is placing the drug in a special high-risk category that is likely to significantly reduce its use.

The two organizations had access to the same data of Avandia, which was compelling but incomplete. The conclusion that Avandia causes heart attacks and other heart problems came to combine data from many different clinical trials, a method that is statistically less powerful than individual trials designed to answer these questions. "My job would be infinitely easier if we had consensus and scientific clarity on this issue," said Margaret Hamburg, FDA commissioner, at a press conference this morning. But she found the evidence warrants significant restrictions.

most frustrating for regulators, a large clinical trial specifically requested by European regulators to address risks, called RECORD, is under fire for not properly assessing cardiac events. officials FDA said today that the next step will be to have the company that makes Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline, established an independent review committee to reassess all potential heart problems that have emerged in RECORD patients.

Meanwhile, Avandia will become much more difficult to obtain. FDA under a special program it runs called risk assessment and mitigation strategies. REMS is designed to ensure that the benefits of potentially dangerous drugs continue to outweigh the risks for each patient taking them. The program currently includes drugs such as Accutane medication against acne, which causes birth defects. The FDA also arrested a Glaxo trial which compared Avandia with another drug used by people with diabetes, Actos, which is considered safer. FDA suspended the trial in the summer.

In the case of Avandia, patients who wish to continue using it will have to sign a document acknowledging that they understand the risks of the drug. New patients will be eligible to take if doctors certify that other treatments have failed to provide blood sugar of patients under control and they can not take Actos for medical reasons. "We believe that this action will significantly limit the number of people who are on [Avandia]," said Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for evaluation and Drug Research in Silver Spring, Maryland.

for European regulators, which limits the use Avandia was considered inadequate, and in a few months Avandia will not be available in most European countries. "the accumulated data support an increased cardiovascular risk rosiglizatone," the generic name for Avandia, EMA said in a statement. "the benefits of rosiglitazone no longer outweigh its risks." But Woodcock noted that there was still "a lot of uncertainty about the extent and existence of this cardiovascular risk." She hopes that will help revaluing RECORD.

There are five years after a scandal erupted on employees who consulted for drug companies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) banned most of these relationships by scientists internally. A new study mixed effects. The rules do not appear to have hampered scientific productivity, the survey found. But a whopping 80% of NIH scientists find overly restrictive rules, and many say they have hampered the ability of the agency to recruit new faculty members.

NIH banned most industry consultants by his staff after a newspaper investigation found that some senior researchers earned large sums of money from companies. scientists warned that the strict rules intramural lead staff on. Darren Zinner of Brandeis University, Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital, and his colleagues published the first study peer reviewed the impact of the rules. It is based on a survey of October 08 to January 09 sent to 00 senior managers and investigators; 70% responded.

Unsurprisingly, industrial relations are now less only about 33% reported an industry relationship, down about half before the rules of 05. This has not affected production the average researcher documents and patent applications, the survey found. And almost half of respondents say that the new rules have improved the public image of the NIH. But 80% say that the rules are too strict, 77% think it is now more difficult to accomplish the mission of NIH, and 66% are less satisfied with their jobs.

More than half of the researchers and 78% of directors said that the rules have made it more difficult to recruit new faculty members. Although the NIH has perhaps gained public credibility, the rules "also made it more difficult for the organization to fulfill its mission," the authors of the study conclude in the November issue of Academic Medicine .

NIH officials put a positive slant on the study in an accompanying comment. Interactions with industry "continued relatively unaffected," wrote Michael Gottesman, NIH Deputy Director for intramural research, and NIH ethics officer Holli Beckerman Jaffe. They highlight trends in the new cooperation agreements between researchers and NIH companies (called CRADA), which, after falling in 06, reached record levels of more than 30 per year. Yet the rules, they admit, "challenged the NIH's ability to attract and retain some of the most qualified scientists."

NIH is now preparing to tighten the rules for extramural scientists as well, looking outpatient, in particular, although mainly by asking researchers to more information at the NIH and institutions. The planned changes would not limit what the grant beneficiaries may be as long as potential conflicts of interest are examined and managed. Interestingly, despite their dissatisfaction with much stricter rules at NIH, two thirds of NIH researchers interviewed intramural think that the same rules should be applied to their peers in NIH-funded academic institutions.

AMSTERDAM -The Dutch government failed to mount a robust response to face the worst epidemic of Q fever in the world, a disease transmitted by animals from the farm to the man, according to a group of experts presented its report on Monday. More than 4,000 people have fallen ill since the beginning of the epidemic in 07, and 14 have died.

Q fever, caused by the bacterium Coxiella burnetii , is primarily an infection of cattle, goats and sheep. It sickens humans occasionally, usually after they breathe in air contaminated with the bacteria, which are present in the billions in the amniotic fluid and placenta of infected females and in aborted fetuses. While most people have little or no symptoms, others develop fever, pneumonia, severe headache, coughing, muscle and joint pain, or fatigue.

During the early years of the epidemic, which earned the Netherlands a warning Travel the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the government seemed to have a wait and see, the panel said, chaired by agricultural economist Gert van Dijk of the Nyenrode Business University. It took too long, for example, to establish that the goat farms were the main source of the epidemic and to adopt measures to contain the risk. Alarmed responsible for regional public health in North Brabant, the most affected province, struggled to be heard by the national government in The Hague, according to the report, which is in Dutch.

"lost"; only in 09, when the crisis had degenerated also was a robust monitoring program launched, including mandatory vaccination of goats and sheep and slaughter of 62,500 pregnant animals on infected farms.

A cause of the delays, the report said, was that the issue was handled by two departments are not always communicate well. The Ministry of Agriculture feared that aggressive control measures, if backed by solid science, lead to prosecution of farmers; the Ministry of Health did not push hard enough, and did not have formal powers to ensure that public health has prevailed. In future outbreaks of zoonoses, diseases transmitted from animals to humans, the health ministry should have the advantage, said the panel.

Numbers released earlier this month by the National Institute of Public Health and the issue of the environment that the control strategy has paid off: So far, only 382 people became ill with Q fever in 2010, against over 2,300 in 09.

LONDON -A new rapid test for tuberculosis (TB) has received a major thumbs-up world Health Organization (wHO), a measure which should lead to deployment in the world in the coming years. The new test, in which a device the size of a luggage bag to air for bacterial DNA in a person's sputum is cheaper, faster and more accurate than standard TB tests used in developed and developing countries, representatives of WHO said yesterday at a press conference here.

"This system allows doctors to test the patient while the patient is sitting there [in the waiting room]", said Marieke van der Werf, director of research at the KNCV Foundation Tuberculosis in the Netherlands, a member a group that has examined the evidence for the accuracy of the test. the panel released its report in the New England Journal of Medicine in September.

the difference with tests existing is huge, said Van der Werf. most of the current tuberculosis screening methods are based on a centuries-old technique in which sputum samples were cultured for 4-6 weeks and then examined under a microscope for the presence of disease causing Mycobacterium tuberculosis . This long delay is particularly problematic for people who are immunocompromised and who can not wait for two months before going on treatment.

In 09, 9.4 million new cases of tuberculosis were recorded worldwide. TB can be treated with a course of 6 to 12 months to four different medications, but many patients in developing countries have no access to medicine or medical care too late. Untreated, the disease can be fatal. WHO estimates that there are about 1.7 million TB-related deaths each year worldwide.

New TB test was developed by Cepheid, a company in Sunnyvale, California, in partnership with the Foundation for Innovation New Diagnostics (FIND) and the University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey. It is a "fully automated" system, which even the health workers in developing countries can operate after minimal training, said FIND Chief Giorgio Roscigno.

At the press conference yesterday, FIND staff demonstrated the machine using a water sample. They put the liquid in a beaker and add a reagent, which would neutralize all the TB germs in the sputum infected by breaking their cell walls; then the sample was injected into a closed cartridge and jumped into the machine. The test, which takes only 0 minutes, would detect the TB bacteria by looking for genetic signatures characteristic, called PCR amplified in a process.

The test can also detect whether the microbes carrying a gene that confers resistance to rifampicin, a drug commonly used to treat tuberculosis. This is an important piece of information for doctors; if the patient is also resistant to a second drug called isoniazid it takes a separate test for know-strain is regarded as multi-drug resistant (MDR), and you have another cocktail of drugs to treat. WHO estimates that there were 440,000 new MDR-TB cases in 08. It also expects the new test to yield twice as tuberculosis diagnoses in people infected with HIV; about 12% of people with the disease are also HIV positive.

For non-governmental organizations and low- and middle-income, the cost per test is $ 16, a price should fall to $ 14 a year and $ 10 within 2 years . The machine costs $ 17,000; that is after a decline of 75% of the original price of Cepheid negotiated by FIND. The price is a fraction of what it would cost to build and staff a laboratory that performs standard microscopy test sputum smear, Roscigno said.

WHO convened a global meeting last week in Geneva to draw up plans on how the new test based on PCR can be made available as many countries around the world the quickly as possible. The agency has produced a roadmap that places 116 low- and middle-income first in line to receive cheap machines.

South Africa, India, Uganda and several other countries are considering deploying the test immediately. A crucial question is how it plays in the field, where tropical temperatures and the lack of electricity and Internet access - which the machine needs to signal that needs maintenance - could pose problems. A test version of the running machine on the batteries is already underway in India and Pakistan, among other countries, and the results are expected next year.

The new diagnostic tool raises new questions, however. Even if countries can detect MDR patients, most are not prepared to handle a large number of them, said Van der Werf. An effort led by WHO should be in place to get treatment to those in need, she said.

The world is mired in a recession, the US biomedical research budgets are stagnant and could slip, and senior faculty stick around campus instead of retiring. But despite the gloomy situation in employment for future academic researchers, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should maintain or even increase the number of students and postdocs it supports graduates.

This is the conclusion of a new report from the National Research Council (NRC) which examined the main program of the NIH training, the National Prize Research Service (NRSA), which supports about 20% more than 60,000 students and postdocs American graduates in biomedical research. (The rest is mainly funded by research grants R01 NIH, but the NRSA program sets standards for these positions.) It is the 13th such report in accordance with a request of Congress when it created the NRSA program in 1973 program review every few years NRC.

The latest report notes that prospects for academic positions has not improved since the crisis first struck in late 190. "The situation of the already tight job for postdocs seeking positions university teaching or research is probably worse, "concluded the report, published just before Christmas. But it points to a silver lining that justifies the current size of the program. the system has been" incredibly successful "in providing" the dynamism, creativity and absolute leading biomedical research effort, "the report said, while urging students to" be creative "and find alternative careers in fields such as industry, law and the 'secondary education.

Young scientists "are looking for other positions, get-go," said the president of Roger Chalkley committee of the School of Medicine of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He told Science Insider that he disagrees with the recent suggestions that there is an "excess" of postdocs. "I do not like using the word glut," he said. However, he stressed that "NIH needs to be creative in providing [postdocs] with the support of developing various careers."

the report predicts "substantial growth" opportunities for biomedical scientists, although the two models, it is used to assess the projected demand does not agree. at the same time, the Committee fears that the flow foreign postdocs from China, India and other countries, now more than 50% of workforce- postdoc "could well dry up." If this happens, the report warns, the impact on research US "could be profound."

So what should NIH do? the report recommends keeping the number of NRSA posts for basic biomedical research at the 08 level or more. he said a cut "would also be appropriate" if the budget for extramural NIH down.

Other key recommendations:

• NIH should increase from allowances for postdocs to $ 45,000 ($ 37,740 they are now) and then keep pace with the cost of life and give comparable increases for graduate students;

• NIH should expand its medical scientist training program that introduces physicians to research, at least 20%;

• The number of NRSA courses in the behavioral sciences, which have fallen about 30% since 04, should return to that level;

• NIH should consider increasing the overhead rate of 8% in training grants now paid for research grants, now about 40% to 50%. It would cost more than $ 500 million.

Chalkley stresses that the overall offer of trainees is determined not by size but by the NRSA program budget for extramural NIH. But Howard Garrison of Experimental Biology Federation of American Societies (FASEB) in Bethesda, Maryland, (noting that he worked on previous reports as a member of the NRC staff) said that some of the recommendations "will be incremental to adjust the system. "

For example, Garrison said, if NIH follows allowances that amount, which could increase the salaries of trainees on R01 grants and thus push the lead researchers to hire fewer interns and rely more on scientific and technical personnel. Furthermore, Garrison said FASEB opposes an increase in indirect cost rate because the money would have to come out of research programs.

The report can not be the final word on the matter. Last month, the NIH director Francis Collins asked Princeton University president Shirley Tilghman, Collins member of the advisory board, headed another look at the future needs biomedical workforce. Tilghman chaired a report from the NRC in 1998, urged universities to train fewer graduate students in the life sciences. But the report appeared at the beginning of the doubling of the budget for 5 years from the NIH, and the advice was mostly ignored.

The revolt spreads against a plan by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins to create a new center on medicine translational by reallocating bits of the existing $ 31 billion agency.

Today, the top advisory body to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), the component must inherit many of these parts, has agreed to write a letter expressing his displeasure with the plan Collins, who bust up the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) as part of the creation of the National Center for the advancement of translational sciences (NCATS). And NIGMS Director Jeremy Berg, who opposed the new center when an NIH's management board recommended last month, explained in more detail why he thinks disintegrates NCRR is a bad idea.

"I've never understood how to dismantle NCRR solves more problems than it creates," Berg told members of NIGMS council at its meeting on the campus of Bethesda, Maryland, NIH. Berg NCRR compared to the public works department of the city, calling entity familiar with the operation of large facilities for the common good, and said it helps researchers from all disciplines. Folding its major programs in NIGMS "would be a great management challenge, "said Berg, who is leaving NIGMS in June as the" joint flight ", as his wife takes a position at the University of Pittsburgh.

Collins said NCATS will help stimulate the development of drugs and other treatments by industry. But the discussion board of NIGMS clearly, there is no consensus on where the NIH must draw the line between funding basic research to improve understanding of potential targets and help the private sector grow these objectives through the drug development pipeline. "If the reason [to create NCATS] is derisk opportunities for the industry, I think it is quite odd and contrary to the spirit of enterprise," said Yale University professor Scott Miller chemistry. James Stevens, senior researcher at Lilly Research Laboratories in Indianapolis, also questioned the rationale of the new center: "If there is an organization that is slower and less agile than the industry, it is the government federal."

Leaving aside that debate, the big problem facing the NIH and the biomedical community is whether the Collins plan is the best use of high but still finished the budget of the NIH and the possible threat to the existing research activities supported by NCRR affecting the rest of the 27 institutes and centers. "Is there a management logic to separate?" Board member asked Howard Garrison, who runs the store policy for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland. "It seems unnecessary and destructive without a vision of reason."

Garrison volunteer to write a letter outlining the concerns of the board on how NIGMS would be affected. It would be sent to Collins and the NIH management board and the head of Collins, Health and Human Services US Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and congressional panels that attach the NIH budget. A panel of expenditure House of Representatives has already requested information on the proposed changes, which come into force within 180 days unless Congress intervenes.

The purse strings are tightening in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which already seen the budget decreased in recent years. discretionary budget request for the agency in 2012 will dip to $ 5.89 billion, down from $ 6.47 billion in 2010. As other agencies, CDC plans to shave costs while trying to avoid duplications and more efficient operation. For example, several centers for various chronic diseases will be drawn under a common umbrella called the comprehensive chronic disease prevention program. At a press conference this afternoon, CDC Director Thomas Frieden's said the agency would also save $ 100 million in administrative costs, in part by reducing travel and promoting more videoconferencing.

But CDC aims to offset part of the loss of more support from a trust fund called the Prevention Fund established by the draft law on the care of health recently adopted (now a subject of fierce dispute). This fund could provide CDC with $ 753 million, some of which would go to research and other discretionary activities. The fund is "not a substitute for a" what loses CDC, Frieden said, but it should certainly help. CDC is to spend more money on polio eradication, which was awfully close for some time, as well as the prevention and control of infectious diseases, HIV / AIDS and chronic diseases.

much of the money prevention Fund will go to state and local governments, Frieden said, and it was agreed that the budget of the CDC this year, like many other organizations, "complex", with increases and significant decreases.

The researchers genetically engineered a fungus that attacks the malaria parasite in the mosquito. They hope the fungus spores, applied to the walls of houses or traps mosquitoes could help stop the spread of the disease in a manner respectful of the environment.

The fungi that attack insects are present in soils around the world and are used in gardens, greenhouses and open fields to control agricultural pests. In 05, scientists showed that stem from two different fungi, Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae could attack the mosquitoes that spread malaria. When fungal spores come in contact with the exoskeleton of the mosquito, they bore their way into the equivalent of the hemolymph of the insect-Blood, where they grow, eventually killing the mosquito.

But fungi take about 2 weeks to kill insects. "They want to kill slowly, extracting as much nutrients as possible so they can produce more spores," says Raymond St. Leger, an entomologist at the University of Maryland, College Park. Because it takes only 12 to 14 days for the malaria parasite to mature into its infectious form in the mosquito, an insect often has time to spread the parasite before fungal infection has killed everything, especially if the mosquito is exposed to the fungus several days after he picks up parasite.

St. Leger and his colleagues originally created a genetically modified version of the fungus M. anisopliae that through the insertion of a specific neurotoxin to insects, kills mosquitoes quickly but a quick death is also a disadvantage. it can lead to mosquitoes that are resistant to the fungus, because the resistant insects are the only surviving long enough to reproduce

strains. now St. Leger and his colleagues designed M. anisopliae to block the malaria parasite from developing inside the infected mosquito. online today Science They describe the insertion of different combinations of three different genes in the fungus to block the malaria parasite from entering the salivary glands of the mosquito. (Parasites from the salivary glands to infect new hosts when an infected mosquito bites a new victim.) A gene codes for a peptide of a short piece of a protein called SM1 that resembles the parasite parasite protein used to penetrate the salivary glands. Copies of SM1 produced by the fungus block the path of the parasite in. Another gene code added to a portion of a human antibody that binds to parasites and causes them to regroup. A third is an antimicrobial protein called scorpine, it has been found in scorpions that kills the malaria parasite.

When the researchers sprayed the strains of fungi spores genetically modified mosquitoes in the lab, the spores will not kill insects faster than the normal fungus has. But they will significantly reduce the number of parasites in the salivary glands of mosquitoes: Six days after receiving the spores of genetically modified strains, mosquitoes had 98% fewer parasites in their salivary glands than for those treated with the normal fungus .

And genetically modified fungus acts quickly. After giving mosquitoes a blood meal infected with malaria, the researchers waited 11 days before spraying some with normal fungal spores and other improved with spores. Two days later, 86% of fungus without mosquitoes could transmit malaria, could 72% of insects infected with the normal fungus, but only 20% of mosquitoes exposed to transgenic fungus could.

The results are impressive, says Marit Farenhorst who studies fungi insect attacking In2Care, a start-up in Wageningen, The Netherlands. "If you're a little late to get the infected mosquito in the field, you can still be in time to influence the transmission of malaria," she said. "It's like the vaccination of the mosquito." The main drawback of the approach, said Farenhorst, is that fungal spores survive only a few months when applied on walls or other surfaces. It is currently impractical and expensive to have to keep reapplying spores. But several teams are working on better ways to apply the spores and keep them alive, she said.

Although St. Leger acknowledges that the widespread suspicion of genetically modified organisms could make it harder to persuade people to apply the fungus in their homes, he said the approach is extremely low risk: The strain of fungus modified scientists only infects mosquitoes, genes that they recognize human malaria inserted, and the genes are only activated once the fungus is within the mosquito. None of the genes give the fungus a survival advantage on wild strains that are common in soil, he said. Yet St. Leger said, the completion of the relevant safety tests take several years.

With mounting fears over the spread of radiation from nuclear power plants damaged by Japan, the most at risk are those try the more difficult to contain.

The New York Times called the skeleton crews of workers and soldiers inside plants "may be the last chance of Japan to prevent a wider nuclear disaster . " But those who study radiation treatment and mitigation say there are not many of these workers can do to protect themselves. "There is no proven radioprotective [for workers] at this stage", although some are being studied in animals, said David Weinstock, a bone marrow transplant physician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston . Weinstock is part of a group called Radiation Injury Treatment Network (RITN).

Although widely spoken of potassium iodide tablets are most useful for children and nursing mothers trying to prevent the intake of radioactive iodine, which is mostly taken up by drinking contaminated milk or eating dairy products. that's what happened after Chernobyl. A drug intravenous amifostine could theoretically help, Nelson said Chao, also a member of RITN and chief of the division of the cell therapy and bone marrow transplant at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. It was developed to protect cancer patients during treatments radiotherapy and is now rarely used. But Chao says. "There is no data on how" could be proposed, particularly because it can not be taken by mouth

The best protection is to minimize the dose of radiation and limiting the exposure time as much as possible. Wear protective clothing and masks or respirators, Japanese workers are doing, can help to prevent particles or radioactive dust, Norman said Kleiman, a radiobiologist who studies radiation exposure at Columbia University.

But the speed necessary to maintain really remote radiation is not practical. "You literally have to be dressed head to toe lead to avoid exposure, and that is simply not possible, "says Weinstock.

Much research has been made in helping people who have been exposed. High levels of radiation target rapidly dividing cells in the body, especially the skin, blood, and intestines - like chemotherapy for cancer (which is why many people in the field of care also for cancer patients). So exposure to radiation can kill blood cells, leaving people without a functioning immune system, and cause diarrhea and severe burns. After Chernobyl, doctors have experimented perform bone marrow transplants, but they are not particularly effective, probably because of protocol or because someone who was so sick they needed a transplant had also suffered irreparable damage to other organ systems, Chao said. Since Chernobyl, there are new treatments that stimulate the production of blood cells after cancer treatment. But their value for people exposed to radiation is an open question.

Meanwhile, details are sketchy on the level of risk within the nuclear power plants in Japan. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) information shared by the Japanese authorities today that 17 workers "have suffered deposition of radioactive material in their faces," but at low doses. Another worker "suffered significant exposure" and was taken to a central offsite. Firefighters have also been exposed to radiation.

"The workers accept the risk by the nature of their work they accept willingly and hopefully they are paid for it, "said Steven Simon, a health physicist at the National cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland." You do not have the same opportunities to the [as the general public] protect because they agreed to go to a high-risk area. "

Several Japanese medical experts want blood stem cell bank workers at the nuclear plant of Fukushima Daiichi in trouble. The cells would be used as a treatment in case of high radiation exposure makes a sick worker. But the proposal raises eyebrows among American experts, who say it probably would not save many lives.

In a letter today The Lancet Tetsuya Tanimoto of the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research and four others noted that the introduction of nuclear power radiation leak under control could last for months or years, and some workers could be accidentally exposed to high levels of radiation. While high doses of radiation can possibly cause cancer, the immediate health effect is to destroy dividing cells, including blood cells that the immune system clears. The authors point out that some workers after bone marrow transplantation 1986 Chernobyl disaster received given, and two Japanese nuclear workers were given stem cell transplants after an accident 1999.

Stem experts transplant cells in Japan and Europe have approved the bank workers stem cell Fukushima, and medical workers in Japan and Europe are there to help. (The cells would be obtained by giving workers a medicament which pushes stem cells from bone marrow blood in the bloodstream and then hang them to a machine that filters stem cells.)

Other questions the rationale. It is not known if a transplant of donor stem cells have helped some Chernobyl workers survive; they received several different types of cells, and there was no control group, bone marrow transplant expert David Weinstock of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The two Japanese nuclear workers, they eventually die of organ failure caused by radiation anyway, notes radiologist Fred Mettler, of the University of New Mexico.

Moreover, giving Fukushima workers their own stem cells should work better than the donor cells because the patients own cells will not be rejected by the immune system. Experience with patients with lymphoma who receive a transplant of their own blood cells or bone after radiation therapy to clear their cancer, showed "there is no doubt that it helps," says expert in bone marrow transplant Nelson Chao of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

But a stem cell transplant would only allow a worker has received a dose of about 5 to 10 gray grays of radiation, Chao said. (Below patients survive with other treatments, above, they were going to die anyway damage to the intestines and lungs.) Workers would also have had their whole body exposed to radiation. If workers are partially protected, as the three who entered the radioactive water last month, affected their bone marrow will restore the destroyed cells.

The number of the 800 workers of the Fukushima plant could receive radiation in the narrow range of dose "would be quite limited," said Chao. A scenario that might make more sense, Chao said, is whether stem cells have been reserved for a subset of some 100 workers who were sent only in high-radiation areas.

Chao he said "a lot of emails circulating" in response to The Lancet letter, and he expects a US group that he and Weinstock are a part of, radiation injury treatment system (of RITN) may post a reply. Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan also opposed the plan because experts and public disagreements, including a concern that it could give workers a false assurance and make them less careful to take risks.

Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman, who, as we wrote last week is co-chairing a review of the biomedical workforce research for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), decides on the subject in an interview in the May newsletter of the Howard Hughes medical Institute. As stated on the website Science Careers, Tilghman said that "changes must be made if we are to maintain the momentum of the US biomedical workforce" The post continues.

"the root of the problem" is the overproduction of Ph.Ds, she continues, and if nothing changes, the situation will worsen in the coming years. But, she adds, helpful "changes could be made to typical biomedical research laboratory structure. "specifically, it suggests reducing the number of trainees who outnumber technicians currently 10 to 1, and increasing the number of" permanent employees .... We we need to explore these options. "

the smallpox virus in the death row for decades, was given another stay of execution. The World Health Assembly (WHA), an annual meeting of health ministers in Geneva today decided to postpone the debate on the destruction of the remaining virus stocks until 2014.

opposition against the maintenance of the pathogen has been built in recent years, but the United States, which is still conducting research with the virus, has lobbied hard in recent months to keep the remaining smallpox stocks and allow further education. Again, he managed to avoid a firm deadline.

"In my opinion, this is regrettable, but perhaps not surprising," given the past 2 decades, said Donald Henderson, who led the global campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s . "There is just a determination to keep the virus," said Henderson, currently a researcher in residence at the Center for biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh medical Center in Pennsylvania.

After the world was officially declared free of smallpox in 1980, countries have destroyed their stockpiles of smallpox or sent to two laboratories authorized to keep them, one in the United States and Russia. Since then, there has been a debate between self -called destructionists, who argue that the world will be safer with the latest virus disappeared, and so-called retentionist, who argue that more research on vaccines, therapies and diagnostics is necessary because bioterrorist might one day get their hands stashes of hidden virus.

So far retentionist won. The deadlines for destruction have been postponed several times since the early 190s, while a wide through research program. The issue was on the agenda this year after two panels had completed a review of research carried out to date and the need to keep the virus ( Science , 28 January, p. 389).

In recent weeks, the United States engaged in "a lot of arm twisting" to get other countries for its part, says specialist Jonathan Tucker biosecurity of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC Health and Human services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius drove home the importance of the issue to the US during a last week press conference in Geneva.

However, a US resolution supported by Russia to allow the search to continue for at least five years longer met considerable opposition yesterday when the issue was discussed in a WHA committee says Edward Hammond an activist for the destruction that followed closely the discussions and reported on them through his
supply Twitter. Opponents of the resolution of the United States included the 22 countries of the region of the Eastern Mediterranean of the World Health Organization, led by Iran, says Hammond, and the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, China, Thailand, Peru, Bangladesh and Indonesia. = "#% 21>

But nothing set against a resolution-for a time on the table, and many other countries, including Canada, Australia, and those of European Union, supported the US-Russian position. (Hammond also co-wrote a long article on the deliberations.)

the Chairman of the Committee decided to convene a working group of 50 countries informal try to forge a consensus behind closed doors yesterday afternoon. When this attempt failed, the issue came to the full committee, which eventually supported a Swiss proposal to postpone the issue until 2014 WHA.

"Three years is a reasonable period of time in terms of the next review," the head of the US delegation to the meeting was quoted as saying today by the Associated Press. "Obviously during this period, we expect there will be significant progress in research on antivirals and vaccines and diagnostics."

Hammond, who is a consultant to a group of pressure Malaysia-based Third World Network called, says he is "quite happy" with the result as well. the United States has not obtained a new explicit mandate for research, he says, and he has not get the stay of 5 years, he was looking for. in addition, wHO Director-General Margaret Chan said today that it will keep up the new Advisory Group of independent experts (AGIES), which indicated the year last that there was no need to keep the virus much longer. AGIES said Tucker, will provide a "counterweight" against the wHO Advisory Committee on variola virus Research, which has more of smallpox among virologists its members and has long been on the side of more research.

But Henderson is disappointed. The review showed that AGIES recent research has already led to a new generation smallpox vaccine safer, two antiviral compounds, the most important objectives of the research program. "What do they want?" Henderson said. "The reason does not prevail."

revolving door to the world of vaccine took a quick tour today as the head of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise has announced his retirement and a new foundation for vaccine research was born.

Alan Bernstein, who took the reins at the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise based in New York in 08, has contributed to the nascent organization to join researchers, funders and advocates. Under his leadership, the company has formed a secretariat published a strategic plan to guide the field and launched a program for young researchers. "I feel like I accomplished much of what I set out to do," said Bernstein Science Insider. "It's time for a new direction, and I am a strong supporter of pass the torch. "

Bernstein, who previously headed the Canadian health research Institutes, consider taking a few months off before exploring new employment opportunities. José Esparza, Senior advisor on vaccines against HIV at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will serve as interim president until the board selects a new one.

Meanwhile, scientists and advocates of all research vaccine launched still another effort to increase funding and coordination. the Foundation for vaccine research, based in Washington, DC, has recruited a board stacked with several researchers on HIV / AIDS to the forefront, including Ronald Desrosiers of the New England Primate Research Center, Simon Wain-Hobson from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and Robin Weiss of University College London.

Peter Hale, an advertising specialist who has long worked with researchers on HIV / AIDS, started the foundation. "Nobody has been campaigning or lobbying for any vaccine research, and it desperately needs," said Hale. "Science and technology are there, but the resources are not." It plans to organize telethons to raise money, which he said, will be awarded to grants that review committees evaluate quickly. "There are teams of scientists out there crying for money, and we only had two main sources of funds, the US National Institutes of Health and the Gates Foundation," says Hale.

The foundation also wants to deal with the prevalence of misinformation about vaccines that convinced thousands of new parents to abandon the vaccine for their babies. "It is a huge problem, and someone has to take over," said Hale. "No one, except a few brave individuals like Paul Offitt-who is on our board of directors, has yet."

PARIS- say he hopes to avoid a repeat of the scandal Mediator, the French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand today unveiled what he described as the biggest overhaul to the drug regulatory system ever undertaken in the country. Bertrand was referring to benfluorex, a drug against diabetes who stayed on the market here for 33 years *, long after other countries had rejected or withdrawn it. The drug is estimated by various studies have caused 500 to 2,000 deaths in France, mainly against damage of the heart valve. The oral drug, marketed as a mediator by Servier Laboratories, was taken by some 5 million people in France and was often prescribed for weight loss until it was removed by France in November 09 the new research has revealed the extent of valvular problem.

The drug regulatory reform will focus on the prevention of conflicts of interest at all levels of the health service of the Ministry down, increasing transparency in drug approvals, ensuring that all drugs offer real benefits, improved training for taking professional decisions of health, and better information for professionals and the public. The measures include a "Sunshine Act" French where pharmaceutical companies will be fined if they do not declare all agreements with outside groups, stricter controls on prescription drugs for unauthorized uses, changes in methods drug marketing, and a ban on the funding of student medical services by pharmaceutical companies. New drugs are compared to those that already exist, not just placebos. The Agency for the Safety of Health Products (AFSSAPS), the regulator which was severely criticized in his role in the affair Mediator will also renamed the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM).

Bertrand said he expects a bill will be adopted by the Cabinet before the end of July and presented to parliament in the autumn. The whole package will be reviewed two years after its entry into force, when "there will be [more] heading changes," said Bertrand. Without waiting for the law, work will begin on the 19,000 currently reassessing medicines authorized in France, including 12 000 are on the market. "Many of them will be abandoned," predicts Bertrand. "A drug must show that it is at least as effective as other available if they are to be repaid." The French system, he added, must be able to react as quickly as the Food and Drug Administration of the United States, citing an example in which the FDA added a cons-indication to another drug against diabetes, pioglitazone (Actos), 48 hours after being suspended from the French market.

Although Bertrand acknowledged "serious shortcomings in the functioning of our drug system," he said he was "no question" that France and its taxpayers, rather than the drug manufacturer Servier would compensate the victims. Maraninchi Dominique, who replaced Jean Marimbert as head AFSSAPS in February, called Bertrand reform plan "fantastic" but says Science Insider that the newly appointed agency would need an increase of 20% of its € 115m annual budget to implement "the first step."

the case generated a series Picks reports in what did not, and others are yet to come. All have criticized the drug system present in France, with varying degrees of virulence, and offered an avalanche of proposals to remedy the situation , many in the prescribing Bertrand. "This is a major reform [and comes] only a year after the publication of (pulmonologist) Book Irene Frachon Mediator 150 mg: How many deaths " Socialist parliamentarian said and cardiologist Gérard Bapt, which was a leading activist for change in the drug system and led the ad hoc committee of the national Assembly on the mediator.

the drug scandal has captivated the media here for months and raised questions about the proximity of the French pharmaceutical industry in the political and regulatory agencies. Almost every week there seems to be a new twist in the saga, including a large number of trial, raids on offices Servier and home of the founder and owner Jacques Servier. ultimately, it is up to the courts to answer crucial questions, said Jean-Pierre Door, a member of the national Assembly and the parliamentary ruling UMP. These include whether the benfluorex was actually an amphetamine; why the drug was withdrawn from Italy, Spain and Switzerland years before France; why 17 of side effects warnings were ignored; and why the European Medicines Agency itself has taken no action until December 09, when it recommended the withdrawal of the drug.

Fixed :. The drug was on the market in France for 33 years, and not 35 as originally reported

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND -An advisory committee to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sided with this afternoon the organization, agreeing in a unanimous vote, 6-0, the drug Avastin should not be approved for breast cancer. Although the FDA has not at one with its advisory committee, in this case, it is likely to do so because it has taken a similar decision in December. Agency officials reiterated their case against Avastin yesterday.

Those who said the panel should reject Avastin cited several reasons, including insufficient evidence that the benefits of the drug in breast cancer outweigh the risks of toxicity. Furthermore, it does not help women live longer and have a better quality of life. Avastin was approved for breast cancer in 08 to prolong "progression-free survival," or living with tumors that are not growing.

"There is nothing we can hang our hats in these studies that would make me feel comfortable exposing patients to risk without proven benefit," said committee member FDA Mikkael Sekeres, a hematologist-oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Genentech, which makes Avastin, tried in vain today to convince the advisory committee of six members (five of which had already recommended that Avastin is not approved for breast cancer) for reframe the discussion. Company officials, who requested the hearing, said the debate about whether the benefits of Avastin has exceeded its risk was due to a difference in "the interpretation and communication." With 127 slides, they tried to build a case for Avastin in breast cancer, but failed.

Some members of the Advisory Committee emphasized a disadvantage in today's decision to strip the drug's label breast cancer: This could undermine the accelerated approval process under which Avastin has first obtained the FDA's blessing accelerated approval is a way to get drugs to the sickest patients faster, with clinical data. less. It is virtually unheard of for the FDA to reverse such approval. in this case, the FDA fact, agency officials said, after further study showed that the benefit was much less than originally thought.

Avastin will remain on the market; it is approved for several other cancers. But if the FDA follows the recommendation of the panel, insurance companies and Medicare would be much less likely to cover the high cost for breast cancer.

"I thirst for this drug," said Patricia Howard breast cancer patients who took Avastin and spoke at the hearing. She hopes to appeal to the FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg before the final decision is taken. "[I really thought] we were [win]."

The authors of a controversial genetic article published last year in Science published a retraction today, recognizing "technical errors" in their investigation gene strategy. The work, led by Paola Sebastiani and Thomas Perls of Boston University, claimed to have found a "signature" of 150 genetic variants that together could help predict whether a person could live to 100.

But in the days of the appearance of paper, critics charge that the authors had not taken into account the intrinsic defects microarray gene they used to find these variants, among other problems. Last July, Perls and Sebastiani said Science they were not aware of problems in microarrays and have worked hard to check their results.

In the withdrawal of today, the authors do not reveal how severely their initial findings were affected by errors. "We believe that the main scientific findings remain supported," they write, but "the specific details of the new analysis change substantially from those originally published." In an exchange e-mail, Perls wrote that researchers "are very eager to get our adjusted results outside the scientific literature," and so far, can not say more about what they are.

Scientists have long wanted to produce sperm and eggs in the laboratory to not only better understand this process of fundamental reproduction, but also to discover new ways to help infertile couples conceive. Using embryonic stem (ES) cells, which in theory can produce all types of body cells, several teams have made progress in recent years but have been unable to produce sperm or viable eggs. Now a group of Kyoto University has found a way to turn mouse ES cells into sperm precursor cells and use the resulting sperm to produce normal mouse pups. Such research may eventually lead to treatments for human male infertility. But it will require the resolution of several technical and ethical problems "very difficult," says stem cell biologist Mitinori Saitou, leader of the Kyoto team.

The sperm and eggs develop from what is called primordial germ cells. These germ cells are produced in the early stage embryos in a mass of cells called epiblast. There several years, researchers have learned to take epiblast cells from a mouse embryo and create epiblast stem cells that could regenerate in a dish for long periods of time. The researchers hope that these epiblast stem cells could be used to produce primordial germ cells and eventually fertile sperm and eggs. But despite years of attempts, nobody succeeds. The Kyoto group concluded that when stem cells created epiblast laboratory gained their ability to grow in flat, they lost their ability to form germ cells.

So taking a different approach, scientists mouse ES cells cultured in a cocktail of growth factors and proteins to produce cells similar epliblast they could keep that alive for several days. They discovered that they could use the cells 2 days of age to generate similar cells with primordial germ cells. When injected into the mouse testes are unable to produce their own sperm, these primordial germ cells matured into sperm that were able to fertilize eggs in vitro. The researchers implanted the embryos resulting in surrogate mothers, which produced normal offspring. These mice then produced their own offspring. Saitou and colleagues report their work online today Cell .

"All I can say is wow! It's a breakthrough," said Orly Lacham-Kaplan, a reproduction biologist at Monash University in Australia. The work provides evidence "that ES cells derived from primordial germ cells can generate functional germinal cells," says Amander Clark, a biologist stem cells at the University of California, Los Angeles, who calls the work "a crucial advance our basic understanding of the principles of germ cell development. "

Saitou said there are many hurdles to clear. They would learn to develop completely sperm in the laboratory instead of the injection of cells similar to primordial germ cells in the testes to mature. They also want to generate in vitro eggs, both to understand the process and ultimately try to help infertile women. Saitou also said that extending the work at the clinic, it will determine if the same recipe they understood to mouse cells works for human cells.

Researchers may have found a way to get inside of head cancer or at least his body. The cancer cell has long been considered impervious to antibodies that could target for destruction. But a new study suggests that some antibodies may pass after all, which could open a vast new range of cancer treatments.

When a foreign virus or bacteria enters the body, immune cells start cranking out antibodies, which latch onto the invaders, signaling the immune system of the ship. The antibodies may also be used to treat cancer, for example, the drug Herceptin against breast cancer is an antibody that targets the HER2 receptor, a protein on the surface of breast tumor cells stimulates the growth of cells. However, researchers have not tried to develop drugs against cancer proteins in cells because they thought that the antibodies were too large to pass through the membrane of most cell types.

The new study challenges conventional wisdom. Cancer biologist Qi Zeng of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Cell Singapore and colleagues first injected mice with cancer cells so that tumors began to form. Two days later they started to inject the mice twice per week with antibody to one of the two proteins present in cancer cells: PRL-3 or mT. Over 17 days, the mice treated with the antibody lost weight more slowly and has developed metastatic tumors less than control mice.

The Singapore team also tried a different strategy: Before the mouse cancer, they injected either PRL-3 mT or so that their immune systems would make its own antibodies against these proteins . This style vaccine treatment has slowed the spread of cancer and, in one experiment, extended the life span of mice by 20%, the team published today in Science Translational Medicine .

Using antibodies to target cancer intracellular proteins could "expand the scope to tailor cancer therapy, as well as the advent of a new era of vaccines against the custom cancer," says Zeng. his team recognizes, however, that he did not understand how the treatment works. It is possible that some of the target proteins in cancer cells are somehow transported to the cell surface, and, as with Herceptin, the latch and trigger the immune system to kill cancer cells antibodies. Or antibodies could enter cancer cells and cause them to self-destruction, as has been observed with certain autoimmune diseases.

immunologist Mark Smyth from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, is skeptical that the antibodies are really slipped inside the cancer cells. the results "are quite heretical in terms of what we know about the immunology, "he said. Yet cancer researcher Michel Tremblay of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who studies PRL-3 and related proteins, said the study shows promise. The work is "exciting" because it suggests a more specific way of targeting these internal cell proteins that supposedly small molecule drugs, he said, not well so far.

Last year, a man from Berlin, Timothy Brown, became world famous as the first and so far only person to have been apparently cured of his HIV infection. Brown HIV disappeared after developing leukemia and doctors gave him repeated blood transfusions from a donor who harbored a mutated version of a receiver virus uses to enter cells. Now, researchers are reporting promising results from two smaller gene therapy studies that mimic this strategy, hinting that the field can move closer to a cure that works for the masses.

At the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago, Illinois, this weekend, researchers reported preliminary results of the tests of a new treatment in 15 people infected with HIV developed to free them from the need to take antiretroviral drugs. The studies, conducted separately on the East and West coasts of the United States, trying to make the immune system resistant to HIV by paralyzing a receptor called CCR5 on T cells that the virus uses during the infection process. The man who donated blood for transfusions Timothy Brown had naturally defective CCR5 receptor.

The trial participants had T cells taken from their blood and then modified in the laboratory with a design by Sangamo BioSciences enzyme designed in Richmond, California. The enzyme known as a zinc finger nuclease, the clips of the gene encoding the CCR5 receptor and off. Ten billion modified cells were then injected back into the body of the participants, and the new data show that about 25% of cells had the mutant CCR5s. Studies have shown that modified T cells persisted for more than 6 months in several patients.

In a provocative case reported in Chicago yesterday, a patient who received gene therapy, then stopped taking antiretroviral drugs had back HIV in a month, as usually happens when people stop treatment . But a few weeks later, the virus began to decline, and it fell to undetectable levels together with proof that gene therapy has changed its T cell "These kinetics are very different from what I saw in the treatment interruption studies, and we did a lot, "said Pablo Tebas, a clinical infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania, who is leading the study of the East coast of six participants." the patient goes to down, down. "

Tebas acknowledges that his study is uncontrolled and they saw the response in one patient. in addition, the patient already had a natural advantage because it has a gene paralyzed CCR5 in one of the two copies he inherited. Tebas suspect gene therapy associated with its natural CCR5 mutation combined to lead to spectacular results. "This is a very small experience, and I do not think it's a cure by any means, but the Berlin patient is a single patient, and changed research priorities, "said Tebas. "This shows that there is a correlation between the antiviral activity and the proportion of modified cells. It shows the way forward."

Although researchers do not provide gene therapy to completely clear HIV from the body, they hope to create a "functional cure", that contain the virus to such a powerful extent that people no longer need antiretrovirals.

virologist David Margolis, which conducts its own HIV cure studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said many questions remain about the impact of this gene therapy, however. "These data are interesting and encouraging, but still incomplete," he said. Still, Margolis is "impressed" by the percentage of cells that were artificially modified CCR5 gene.

Even if this gene therapy is revealed, the challenge of cost and technical intervention means that it will probably unlikely to be used outdoors in rich countries. But Tebas noted that the cost of antiretrovirals is also high and that any calculation would balance against each other.

Connecticut offers pony up $ 291 million to help open a new branch of The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), an institute more known genetic research as the primary mouse breeder to scientific research. Today, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy announced collaboration, which aims to Farmington a hub of personalized genetic "personalized medicine".

JAX an independent non-profit headquartered in Bar Harbor, Maine, had hoped that Florida would provide funds for start -up such a facility there. But he fell in June this offer as a result of Florida's budget problems. The following month, the Connecticut came calling, whether JAX would be interested in the creation of the new research center as part of the Bioscience Connecticut Malloy initiative, which calls for spending $ 850 million to build the biomedical industry of State. State lawmakers approved the initiative earlier this year to create jobs and attract new investment.

"The state has a compelling argument," said Edison Liu, JAX President and CEO. He calls the site within a short drive of the centers of biological sciences at Boston, New York City, and New Haven- "ideal".

the agreement calls for the construction of 16,000 square meters of new lab space for 30 top scientists on the University campus Connecticut, Farmington, just outside of Hartford. Planners forecast that the research center, which will be called the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, employ a total of 300 people during the first 10 years and 0 employees in 20 years through an additional 7,000 square meters of laboratory space. in addition to research, it is planned for the center to dedicate space and staff to translating discoveries into commercial products and services, with the hope that it will also spin off companies that create more jobs.

Before ground can be broken, however, the Connecticut legislature to sign bonds to float the project, a review should begin next month. Overall, the state promises to contribute $ 291 million to support over 10 years for construction, equipment and operations. JAX estimates it will add another $ 809 million of federal research grants, philanthropic donations and income from the sale of other products and mouse to operate the facility over the next 20 years.

If you started to pack on the pounds, your doctor may recommend you to get up and move. But a new study suggests that there is not that your body you should be moving. The researchers found that the movement of people out of poor neighborhoods can be as effective as drugs to reduce their chances of becoming obese and developing diabetes.

The idea that neighborhoods have subtle but powerful effects on our health back at least to the 1920s, said Jens Ludwig, a sociologist at the University of Chicago Law School. "This question is one that I am personally very interested in a long time, partly because I live here on the South Side of Chicago [where] there are huge disparities in people results from life and well be. "But how unravel the causes?

" Consider two low African American income 50 years, women in Chicago, "said Ludwig." We live in Hyde Park, "a middle-class neighborhood integrated "and the other lives in Washington Park," a nearby neighborhood, but extremely poor and racial segregation. "We see that the woman living in Hyde Park has better health," Ludwig said, but is it because of districts themselves or some difference between women that led them to choose where to live? The only way to resolve the cause and effect is to do a randomized, moving people around between neighborhoods and monitor their health for many years.

This is what the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) did, and a team led by Ludwig analyzed the results. In an attempt to suss out a link between education, employment and neighborhoods, HUD has recruited 4498 volunteers from 1994 to 1998 living in public housing in cities across the country and randomly assigned them to one the three groups. The first group received rent vouchers that allowed them to move to defined-quarters of the middle class as having less than 10% of residents with incomes below the poverty line. The second group received the same good to help with rent, but stayed in the same neighborhoods. And the third group was a control that has not been good and stayed put. The researchers checked the health of everyone at the beginning of the experiment and again between 08 and 2010, measuring data such as height, weight and the amount of hemoglobin in the blood bound to molecules sugar, which is an indicator of diabetes.

Areas of importance, Ludwig team found. The health of people who received rent subsidies but do not move showed no significant improvement. But people who moved to the middle-class neighborhoods were about 5% less likely to be signs of obesity and diabetes show that those were the people in the control group, today reports team in the New England Journal of Medicine . "These are pretty big effect," Ludwig said, "comparable in size to the long-term effects on diabetes, we see targeted lifestyle interventions or provide people with drugs that can prevent the onset of diabetes. "

experience clearly shows that the bystander effect is real, says Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston who studies the effect of social relationships on health, but the mechanisms remain dark . are the shops and restaurants, parks and pools, he wonders, "or people in a neighborhood that affect you the most?" For example, Christakis said, people who have moved may have lost weight because safer streets and open spaces "allowed them to walk out more, or because they saw thinner people around them, or both."