Health Meaning

A week after J. Craig Venter announced the successful synthesis of a genome and use it to control a cell self- replication, it was on the microphone again, this time to appear before the Committee of the US House energy and commerce. With two other experts in synthetic biology, a bioethicist and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Venter sailed a generally favorable round to questions about the benefits and potential risks of synthetic biology. And Fauci said the government is moving quickly to bring synthetic biology to the study of two existing panels that have done a good job of monitoring advanced research in the past.

Fauci stressed the historical record. Decades of work on the genetic code and methods of manipulation, he said, allowed Venter and his colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California, to create a genome from scratch and use it to transform a bacterial cell. In the 1970s, caused by the invention of recombinant DNA technology, the scientific community has taken steps to police. Consequently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established the Advisory Committee of the recombinant DNA, which oversees genetic engineering. And in the middle of the 1980s, the US government decided the products of genetic engineering could be handled without additional regulator. In 03, in response to concerns about biological research that could be used for civilian or military purposes, NIH established the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity face dual use such technology.

Although both councils have no authority on synthetic biology, soon they will be, Fauci told the committee. NIH is reviewing the public comments collected last fall on guidelines for synthetic biology. It provides that the new rules are in June. These rules will include a voluntary program for companies that make the DNA to analyze the controls for all the sequences that could belong to smallpox or other selective agents that could be used for bioterrorism. He did not think additional regulations would be more effective to discourage activities "harmful".

"The guidelines come a big step" to encourage responsible behavior in synthetic biology, Venter said. He also stressed that researchers have been putting genes in and out of organizations without security problems for almost 40 years and that he and others are able to build new organisms that can not survive outside a special environment and therefore would not be a natural threat.

Gregory Kaebnick, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center in Washington, DC, also testified. It is halfway through a 2-year project looking at the ethical implications of synthetic biology. He called for further analysis of whether current and future regulations would be sufficient. "We must guard against overconfidence that we understand the risks," he told the committee.

Written testimony accepted in the back of a coalition of three groups of supervision was even more cautious. ETC Group, the International Center for Technology Assessment, and Friends of the Earth has asked Congress to ban the release of synthetic organisms into the environment and their use in commercial environments. "The time has come for governments to regulate fully all biology and synthetic products," they wrote.

Fixed :. Venter did not draw a self-replicating synthetic cell as this article has already said, but a synthetic genome that was used to control a self-replicating cell

SAN FRANCISCO, California- Clinical peddling unproven treatments stem cells are on the warnings of the International Society for research on stem cells (ISSCR). The company has talked for years against the purveyors of dubious therapies that have a scientific basis with little or no. Now they go a little further. This month, the company launched a new website for patients considering such treatments, which clinics around the world claim can treat tens of lupus paralysis conditions. Clinics that do not meet the minimum standards for independent monitoring of patient safety will soon appear on a blacklist, warning potential patients away.

At the annual meeting of the company here last week, President ISSCR Irving Weissman, a researcher on stem cells at Stanford University, said such clinics prey on vulnerable, often terminally ill patients, taking their money and precious time to their family and loved ones. "And they use us," he told the meeting delegates, when they try to enjoy the legitimate excitement surrounding research on stem cells. He also issued a warning to members of the society: "Some in this audience," he said, lent their names as scientific advisors to some of the clinics in question. Later, at a press conference, he told reporters that the company has sent letters to several members, warning them to dissociate clinics. Those who do not comply will face sanctions or possible expulsion from society, he said.

The website, entitled "Focus on the stem cell treatments," has a comprehensive list of questions for patients and their caregivers to ask about potential treatments and a copy of the Patient Handbook society on stem cell therapies in English, French, German and Italian. It also lists the Top 10 things to know about stem cell treatments, including why and how unproven treatments may be worse than no treatment at all. patients are encouraged to submit the names of clinics, individuals or organizations that provide treatment for the company's experts to review. ISSCR ask the supplier if its treatments have been approved by an independent ethics committee review and if it has the approval of the relevant legal authority, such as the US Food and drug Administration or the European medicines Agency. the clinics that provide sufficient documentation in a few months will be on a list indicating they have appropriate oversight and protection of patients in place. Those who do not appear on a second list of clinics that have failed the exam. The company has received dozens of requests within 2 weeks since the website launched, Weissman said. The examinations will be at least several months, he said, so that the first lists of clinics should appear this fall.

Scientists have been working for decades to develop a vaccine against malaria but the Plasmodium parasite is a formidable enemy. Although a promising vaccine finally reached clinical trials terminal, it provides only partial protection against the disease, which kills up to one million people per year. Now a team of scientists came to what might be relatively simple alternative: two antibiotics widely used already can act as a kind of vaccine against malaria in mice. If the discovery holds in humans, it could be a low-cost and relatively safe tool to help control the disease, they say.

people living in areas where malaria is common to develop a natural immunity, and many scientists have tried to mimic this effect by creating a vaccine using whole parasites, or damaged or killed. Although small human trials have shown good results, production and delivery of such a vaccine will not be cheap. Steffen Borrmann from the School of the University of Heidelberg Medical in Germany and the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kilifi and his colleagues wondered whether the administration of certain antimalarial drugs to people at high risk of infection could a similar effect.

Drugs scientists had studied are antibiotics that attack a subunit of the malaria parasite called apicoplast, which has some similarities with bacteria. Previous studies had shown that apicoplast-targeting drugs have a delayed death effect: They enable the parasite to grow and replicate in the liver, where the immune system can develop antibodies against invaders. But they block the multiplication of the parasite in the bloodstream, which is where Plasmodium causes symptoms of malaria, including anemia, high fever, and convulsions. The researchers wondered if the treatment of the aggressive malaria with such drugs could be a safe way to allow people to develop a natural immunity. (The drugs are not yet widely used against malaria.)

The researchers tested two of these antibiotics clindamycin and azithromycin, which are used against a range of bacterial infections, a model mouse malaria. They gave the mice a dose of one of the drugs at the same time as they are inoculated with malaria parasites. Parasites infected livers of animals, but none of the mice developed symptoms of malaria. A month later, after all traces of the drug have disappeared from the flow of blood of animals, the animals were still free from the disease: They showed no symptoms after receiving a dose of parasites gave control animals cerebral malaria the most deadly form of the disease. As controls, mice that received only the drug but not parasites in the original protocol also got sick of the challenge dose of Plasmodium , the team announced today online science Translational Medicine .

Azithromycin has a particularly secure balance in infants and pregnant women, the two most vulnerable groups, Borrmann note. He said the combination of azithromycin and chloroquine (a drug against the common malaria), currently approved to treat pregnant women in areas at high risk of malaria would be easy enough to test in an initial human trial. The idea will not work in all areas prone to malaria, he warns. A fairly heavy dose of parasites seems to be necessary to ask a strong immunity, so he said the areas where malaria hits hard during one season would be the best places to try the approach. People could receive a drug dose at the start of the rainy season, which would not prevent infection, but prevent them from developing malaria symptoms. Asymptomatic infection and allow them to develop immunity to the rest of the malaria season. Although the general treatment still carries a risk of emerging resistance to drugs, Borrmann said azithromycin was used in mass campaigns against trachoma without losing its power.

The studies support the idea of ​​using natural exposure in combination with drugs against malaria fighting to help people build up protection against the disease, said the vaccine against malaria researcher Robert Sauerwein medical Center Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. "It leaves the natural route of infection intact, and may also neutralize the immune evasion strategies used by the parasite."

The H1N1 pandemic that began in the spring of 09 is now officially over, says the World health Organization (WHO). Speaking of Hong Kong on a conference call this afternoon, WHO Director Margaret Chan said "we are now entering the post-pandemic period. The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course. "

The decision reflects the unanimous recommendation of the appointed WHO Emergency Committee, which based its conclusion on recent epidemiological and virological information, especially the southern hemisphere, where flu season is in full swing.

Although the new H1N1 virus is still there and will continue to cause illness, it has become much like any other strain flu, Chan said, not causing most cases of flu, or the outbreak of epidemics during the summer. most experts predict the virus will continue to circulate as an annual strain, and another influenza a strain called H3N2 and influenza B.

on the recommendation of the emergency Committee, WHO officially declared the pandemic 11 June 09, some 3 months after it is believed to have the virus claimed its first victims in Mexico. Since then, there have been some 18,500 laboratory confirmed deaths from the virus, flu expert Keiji Fukuda of the WHO told reporters today in Geneva. The actual toll is believed to be higher; Studies are underway to estimate the total number of excess deaths caused by the virus.

Chan again defended the decision of his agency against accusations that WHO had overreacted and publicized the threat. WHO has always stressed that the pandemic was of "moderate severity," she said, while warning that the virus caused a particularly serious disease in some pregnant women and young adults.

Asked about his feelings now that the episode is over, Chan said: "Do I feel happy that I feel tired, I feel at the time?". She warned that countries must remain vigilant, however, and monitor any unusual behavior by the virus.

The WHO has also been criticized for keeping secret the names of its Emergency Committee, a measure to shield those experts of the excessive pressure. Chan said the names will be published today, but so far they have not appeared on the WHO H1N1 website

The cells of blood coagulation called platelets are generally good, stanching wounds so that we not bleed to death. But for people with lupus, the cells are wicked that aggravate the disease, according to a new study. The work also suggests that a commonly prescribed anticoagulant medication for patients with heart disease could ease the symptoms of lupus.

In lupus, the immune system produces antibodies that target the patient's own cells, which causes joint pain, skin lesions, fatigue, and other symptoms. The blood of lupus is often prone to clotting, and they are more susceptible to heart attack and stroke. These symptoms indicate that platelets play a role in the disease.

immunologist Patrick Blanco of the University of Bordeaux in France and his colleagues wondered if another link platelet could come from a rare breed of warrior immune system known as dendritic cell plasmacytoid name (pDCs). In the bloodstream, pDCs release chemical messengers called type I interferons that rev up the immune system. the lupus patients are too interferon type I, which stimulates the production of auto-antibodies attack causing symptoms. Platelets, in turn, the production of a protein called CD154 that turns on pDCs, and so they could indirectly increase interferon type I output.

To determine if platelets exacerbate lupus pDCs by triggering the immune system to overactivate, Blanco and colleagues from healthy people with blood platelets of patients with lupus mixed. Small balls of antibodies present in the blood of lupus glommed on platelets and on. Activated platelets are CD154, the researchers found, and turn on pDCs, causing them to pump four times the normal amount of a type I interferon In a lupus patient, which could cause the immune system to ramp up his attacks on the body's cells. The team reports its findings online today in Science Translational Medicine .

If switched on platelets worsen lupus, closed cells could alleviate the symptoms of the disease. Thus, researchers dosed mice with lupus imitating clopidogrel (Plavix), a drug that counteracts clotting by preventing platelet activation. In a strain of mice, the clopidogrel curbed the amount of damage to the kidneys, a common consequence and sometimes fatal disease. The compound has also boosted the survival in this strain and another variety of mouse lupus imitating. Blanco said that the platelets are doubly destructive in lupus, the rise of autoimmune attacks and produce potentially fatal clots. So, clopidogrel could be doubly beneficial, he said. His group plans to launch a drug test, which was approved for use in people for more than a decade, patients with lupus.

Mary Crow, an immunologist and rheumatologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York accepts the results. "I think all that platelets play a role" in promoting lupus symptoms, she said. But the work does not convince rheumatologist Lars R ö nnblom of Uppsala University Sweden. He notes, for example, that clopidogrel helped a type of lupus mice mimicking even if the animals are not high levels of type I interferons This suggests that platelets do not necessarily have worse by lupus pDCs prodding, he says, but it does not exempt.

Four scientists have won a Lasker prize for work that includes the discovery of a hormone appetite mediation and discover a protein that stimulates the growth of blood vessels. The Laskers are generally considered the most prestigious award in the US for biomedical research.

Douglas Coleman, who retired from the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, after a career studying diabetes and obesity, and Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at the University Rockefeller in New York, will share the Albert Lasker award for basic medical research for their discovery of the hormone leptin. Fat cells release leptin in the blood and helps control appetite.

An intriguing discovery Coleman described in the late 1960s opened the way for the discovery: It was found that the blood flows sewing together of two mice, one with a disease like diabetes and healthy, caused the healthy animal to begin to reject food. Coleman was assumed that the mouse diabeticlike had released a substance into healthy animals which dampened his appetite. Nearly 30 years later, Friedman identified the protein responsible for what he called leptin after the Greek word "leptos" to "thin." Since the late 190s, there was a huge interest in the operation of leptin as a weight loss drug, but so far, it is proven effective for a small number of people who have a mutation in the receiver of the leptin gene. Yet the discovery of leptin has led to an explosion of interest and new knowledge in appetite and obesity in which the hormone has a central role. "I would not dream leptin so important," said Coleman in an interview.

Clinically, Napoleone Ferrara of Genentech (now owned by the pharmaceutical company Roche), South San Francisco, California, won the award for clinical medical research Lasker ~ DeBakey for 25 years work on angiogenesis, the process by which the body develops new blood vessels. He began the research while a postdoc at the University of California, San Francisco; in 1989, shortly after moving Genentech, he discovers the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein essential for the growth of blood vessels. "I'm actually committed to do something different," said Ferrara in an interview, but it "had discretion" to continue its work on the side of angiogenesis. Ferrara and his colleagues in academia and Genentech then developed a drug that treats macular degeneration by inhibiting VEGF and prevention of abnormal blood vessels form in the retina. This treatment, ranibizumab (trade name Lucentis) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 06. Genentech has also developed a closely related drug, bevacizumab (Avastin brand name) that fight against cancer stifling tumor blood supply. "I feel very fortunate to have been able to follow this story all the way from the beginning," said Ferrara.

The Lasker ~ Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science went to David Weatherall of Oxford University in the UK for decades of work, from the 1950s on thalassemia hereditary disease blood.

Each prize comes with $ 250,000, and winners will be honored at a ceremony next Friday. More information on this year's winners can be found here.

The number of people who die each year of malaria in India may be 13 times higher than currently estimated, according to a study published online today in The Lancet . As with all estimates of malaria deaths, however, some researchers are skeptical that the new number is valid.

The report, part of the study of death Million Indian government estimates that some 205,000 Indians under age 70 die each year from the disease. Previous World Health Organization (WHO) reports put the figure at 15,000. But many believe that the WHO number is a gross underestimate because it relies primarily on government and health records. Many malaria deaths occur outside hospitals and are therefore not easily registered. And unlike more prolonged diseases, malaria can strike quickly, which makes it even more difficult to follow.

"Something like malaria, which within 48 hours of a patient can actually be in a coma and on their way, they are much more likely to have missed," said Bob Snow, tropical health researcher Kenya medical research Institute, who was not part of the study.

to try to get a better solution to the balance sheet of malaria, the authors of a team of scientists from India, Canada, the UK and sent surveyors selected Favourite States Random regions in India to collect information on deaths that took place there between 01 and 03. As part of these so-called verbal autopsy, investigators asked families and other witnesses to describe what happened victim. They asked if they had suffered a fever, what kind of fever and other issues that could make the switch off malaria. A total of 130 doctors examined the reports, with two each looking.

When the results came back, 3.6% to 75 000 deaths were attributed to malaria. This translates into 205,000 malaria deaths nationwide each year, according to the study, led by Neeraj Dhingra of the national fight against AIDS organization in New Delhi. Ninety percent occurred in rural areas, and 86% occurred outside of any kind of health facility.

But the new figures could be largely exaggerated, said Robert Newman, director of the Global Malaria Programme of WHO, which notes that the use of oral accounts for diagnosing a disease like malaria is incredibly risk. "For a disease that has achieved something that is very distinctive, say a very distinctive rash or paralysis associated with it, you can make a fairly accurate diagnosis through verbal autopsy," he said. "The problem with malaria are the symptoms associated with malaria, especially fever, are very non-specific. So many deaths had fever associated with are not necessarily malaria."

According to Newman, WHO has tested the accuracy of this verbal autopsy in India before. Just 4% of those who claimed to diagnose malaria actually did. "Malaria remains a major public health problem in India," he said, "but I do not think we're talking about a difference of magnitude."

Although verbal autopsies are "a blunt tool," Snow said he still believes The Lancet The paper estimate is legitimate. This is partly because many deaths from slipping through the cracks of the health information systems of India and partly because, at least in terms of geography, the study of statistics correspond to deaths malaria reported by the State. There is also the fact that India is so huge. "A state in India is several African countries," he said.

Snow said a study like this could force scientists to rethink WHO global statistics of malaria, especially in more heavily populated remote regions such as Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Newman said the WHO will continue to work with officials of Indian health and examine their data, but stresses that these are things they do regularly.

Meanwhile, snow hope the Indian government will fight against malaria even greater priority, although the fact that the disease is largely concentrated in rural states may attract less attention she.

In an ironic twist, the institute which employs James Sherley, one of two scientists who pursued to block research on stem cells financed by the federal government, is weighing on the other side. Today the Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) requested to support the call for a preliminary injunction on August 23 that temporarily closed National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs ) of the government.

CSEC wants to join an amicus curiae (friend of the court) previously filed by the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, the State of Wisconsin, and genetic Policy Institute. In a move of 3 pages, the institute, which has 25 principal investigators, said it wants to expand its regenerative biology program funded by the NIH using human adult stem cells to hESCs include "but is limited by the injunction to do. CSEC is severely limited in the development of potential treatments for human disease. " In addition, the research center of muscular dystrophy NIH-funded Institute would like to study hESC with mutations of this disease, but notes that it did not accept an offer of such cells because of the injunction .

This supports "the perspective of the parties amicus they provided the Court with regard to the severe negative impact of the preliminary injunction on patients who should benefit from advances in medical science. .. and the strong public interest in the continued funding of [hESC] research, "says BBRI motion, filed in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

Sherley and another scientist argue in their suit that the NIH hESC policy is illegal and harms their chances of winning funding to study adult stem cells.

the Appeals court will hear oral arguments on December 6. Meanwhile, Royce Lamberth chief judge of the US district court in Washington, DC, could decide on the underlying case and issue a permanent injunction. Any decision is subject to appeal.

Eight bioethicists at the University of Minnesota are charging their own institution committed an "alarming series of ethical violations" in a clinical trial where a young man committed suicide in 04. the eight, including nearly half of the faculty members of the university basic Bioethics, yesterday issued a letter to the Board of regents of the University, asking the board implement an external investigation into the death of Daniel Markingson. He committed suicide violently while enrolled in a trial of antipsychotic drugs through the University Department of Psychiatry. The letter says that his death has not been adequately studied earlier.

"bioethicists should not ignore the catastrophe in their own backyard," said Mary Faith Marshall, one of the signatories. Marshall came to the University of Minnesota in 05 after serving in the political arena of federal bioethics. Among other things, she chaired a committee investigating the death of 19-year-old Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 in a gene therapy experiment at the University of Pennsylvania.

the letter has bioethicists was conducted by Carl Elliott, a permanent faculty member in the department who studies conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry. Elliott wrote a scathing article on the case in Mother Jones magazine this fall . Since there is documented Markingson was included in a clinical trial all seriously mentally ill and against the will of his mother, he also alleges that the university's psychiatry department was to gain financially by registering and remember in the trial. In a survey after the death of Markingson, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized the university of any wrongdoing and said there was no evidence that Markingson could not voluntarily consent to the study.

This has not assuaged Elliott. "For me, the main motivation is personal shame. I feel embarrassed to work at a university that would treat humans and their families in this way, "he said.

After Elliott started talking about the case in the fall, the Advocate General of the University, Mark Rotenberg, issued a statement claiming the university side of the history. The death Markingson was reviewed to varying degrees by outside investigators, he noted. "No complaints with the faculty involved, and none found no causal link" between the study and Markingson suicide.

But eight bioethicists wrote in their letter to the university that the piece Mother Jones and a 08 series in a local newspaper, the Pioneer Press " raise troubling questions that to date has not been addressed in the response of the University of the death of Mr. Markingson ".

Asked whether the university had a response to the letter, spokesman Daniel Wolter wrote in an email: "There is no additional information at this stage because it is not really something new beyond Professor Elliott repackage its position in new and different formats. "Advocate General University was not available to discuss the matter before Science Deadline Insider

After hearing the comment Wolter, Marshall said.: "I always say, when a research subject dies in one of your studies, the public and the private message should be," We're really sorry about this and we are going to do everything we can do to ensure that it never happens again. ""

Wherever he is buried in the body, illness leaves traces in the blood, or so the thinking goes. But finding these biomarkers, which can help catch the disease early on, was a futile exercise, with a promising candidate after another lose its luster once it receives scrutiny. A team of chemists and other researchers now offer a new way to pick up the biomarkers with a blood test: the detection of antibodies the body makes in response to specific diseases. So far, the group has reported results for only a small number of patients with Alzheimer's disease. But they hope the approach will and could be used for everything from lupus to cancer.

There are two common strategies to find biomarkers in blood or elsewhere in the body. The first is to focus on what is known about a disease for example, looking for the deterioration of certain areas of the brain in Alzheimer's disease. The second is essentially a fishing expedition in which researchers compare, for example, protein patterns from patients who have a particular disease with patterns of people who do not. Both methods have encountered roadblocks. In the case of Alzheimer's disease, PET, MRI, spinal taps and remove some of the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord have had some success in the early diagnosis, but they are expensive or invasive. Although there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease, researchers are eager to find easy to use and reliable biomarkers, which would ensure that people in clinical trials of Alzheimer's disease really have the disease and make early treatment possible if it eventually becomes available.

chemist Thomas Kodadek of the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, and his then-postdoc, M. Muralidhar Reddy, considered biomarkers that exploit a classic feature of the biology of the disease: antibodies, proteins that the immune system churns in the presence of invaders. Scientists do not know that each disease causes antibodies, but certainly some diseases do. "Antibodies are proteins rocks the world," not easily damaged when studied in the laboratory, said Kodadek. This has made the idea of ​​measuring the blood attractive.

Many other researchers have examined the value of antibodies as biomarkers, but they were thwarted by the common strategy used to test for them. To know which antibodies to search, you need to determine what molecules stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. This requires "a phenomenal understanding of the progression of the disease early," said Kodadek, something we do not have for most diseases.

Kodadek, Reddy and colleagues took a different approach . They have turned to "libraries" of thousands of peptoids, molecules that are developed in drugs that have a myriad different structures. the idea was that some peptoids, by chance, would bind to all that the antibodies could be there even a few thousands of randomly selected shoes could fit your feet-allowing researchers to determine whether people with a disease had an abundance of certain antibodies that healthy people were missing. at mice with a version of multiple sclerosis, a library of 4,0 peptoid identified three antibodies, the team used to diagnose the disease in other mice.

Six people with Alzheimer's disease, the same strategy, using 15,000 peptoids, picked up two antibodies found at high levels. The antibodies are also abundant in the blood of an additional 16 Alzheimer's patients. But these were rare proteins in the blood of a handful of people with the disease or lupus Parkinson.

The antibodies are also prevalent in two of 16 healthy controls. Their presence may indicate that the biological markers are not specific to Alzheimer's disease. Or it might suggest that these two women, aged 75 and 65, have early Alzheimer's disease. "We support this hypothesis, but it can not be concluded with certainty," the authors report in the January 7 issue of cell .

"There is a new idea," says Norman Relkin, a neurologist and neuroscientist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. "You are looking for immune responses that may be specific to the disease." However, Relkin said that for Alzheimer's disease at least, it will take much more work to do reliable test, especially because even with healthy aging, "the immune system tends to produce antibodies more dysfunctional."

Although the results need to be replicated and more people to ensure that the antibodies are specific to Alzheimer's disease, the paper "looks like a very thorough job," says Kaj Blennow, neurochemist to Sahlgrenska university hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. a blood test would have great advantages over current Alzheimer's diagnosis, he says

Kodadek, Reddy, and others formed a company, Opko Health Inc. to further develop the technology. Reddy is the Chief scientific Officer. "as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about it," said Kodadek. But he tries to keep his enthusiasm in check. "There is a long history of biomarkers hit the cemetery," and although he is hopeful that will not happen here, "the point is, you never know."

in November when the researchers revealed positive results of the first large-scale trial of anti-HIV drugs to prevent the sexual transmission of virus, a barrage of questions immediately surfaced on how best to use what is called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the first recommendations to health care providers about PrEP. Although the "interim guidance" a few surprises and is only a temporary solution until the US Public Health Service issues more formal recommendations, clinicians are welcoming the entry. "It is an important step in the development of recommendations," said Robert Grant, a virologist with the J. Gladstone Institutes of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), who led the positive PrEP trial.

the study, reported online November 23 in the New England Journal of medicine , found that daily use of two anti-HIV drugs combined into one pill called Truvada reduced the risk of transmission in men and uninfected women transgender who have sex with men 44%. the efficiency jumped to 73% in a subset of participants who reported taking their pills every day at least 0 % of the time, indicating that prevention was closely linked to the respect of the testing protocol. the results received reports of widespread media and have been recognized by scientists worldwide as a significant advance in the field of prevention HIV tired failure.

Grant and his colleagues pointed out at the outset that the results apply only to this population, and interim CDC guidance repeats this warning. It also recommends that clinicians carefully test patients for HIV infection before prescribing Truvada as a preventive and follow up with tests every 2 to 3 months. CDC suggests the same dosage, the board and the daily supply of condoms as used in the study and said requirements should be 0 days, which would give clinicians a formal way to periodically confirm that their patients are still negative. (In people with HIV, Truvada is used only in combination with other antiretroviral drugs to prevent the emergence of resistant strains of the virus drugs.)

CDC said it has published guidelines provisional because of concerns that "dangerous and potentially less effective PrEP practices could develop" before final recommendations are made as Truvada is already an approved drug for the treatment and HIV clinicians already prescribe its off-label use preventively . specifically, the CDC said he wanted to discourage clinicians prescribe other anti-HIV drugs as PrEP, using a dosing schedule other than the one proven to work in the study, supply orders without advice and condoms, not properly test and monitor patients for HIV infection.

the guide says it will take "several months" for PHS to issue further recommendations, as now is the collection "of expert and public input."

Davey Smith, an HIV / AIDS clinician at UC San Diego, said one outstanding issue is cost. "The main hold-up is going to be who will pay for it," says Smith. "It is also the lowest socioeconomic gays men who have already burden. They are the neediest of the needy, and they are those who do not have access to health care. I do not think we've been very good to think about the other side of the coin. "

Have you missed the funding cut despite a stellar score on your U.S. National Institutes of Health grant (NIH)? Do not give up hope. The National Health Council (NHC), a nonprofit umbrella group based in Washington DC, to some 100 groups of patients and companies, unveiled a database on Monday that connect rejected projects and donor potential funding.

The site, called funding health research, is supposed to be "the Match.com funding agencies," the NHC spokeswoman Emily Noonan. Any researcher who had a proposal that NIH deemed worthy of peer review, but has no funds can display their abstract and contact information at no cost. registered funding agencies (but nobody else) will be able to troll the summaries of projects they like.

At this time, the site has information of only the 42 patient advocacy groups such as the American Cancer Society and the Alzheimer's Association. enterprises can be added later, perhaps for tax, said Nancy Hughes, assistant vice president NHC for communications and marketing.

NHC offers the database there are more than 3 years, but it took a while to round financing ( $ 112,000 divided roughly between Pfizer and NIH) and build the database, said Hughes. On his blog, NIH extramural chief researcher Sally Rockey called "good news on the front I-going-to-get-my-grant-funded in today's economy-where-am."

Would you know if you have cancer? There may soon be an app for that. Cancer researchers have developed a small device that, using a smart phone could allow physicians to know within 60 minutes if a suspicious mass in a patient is cancerous or benign.

Instead of immediately cutting the masses they suspect are tumors, oncologists often use a large needle to remove a few cells from a piece for analysis at a laboratory of pathology. But the tests used there, such as the examination of cell shape and coloring for various proteins, are sometimes inconclusive. Laboratory tests also several days.

Alternatively, the physician-researcher Ralph Weissleder team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston has developed a miniature version of a nuclear magnetic resonance of the workhorse tool (NMR) machine that allows researchers to identify chemical compounds by the way their nuclei react in magnetic fields. The researchers also found a way to attach magnetic nanoparticles with proteins so that the machine can take these specific proteins from a Gemisch chemicals, such as those found in a sample of tumor cells. NMR machine with a standard laboratory chemistry is approaching the size of a filing cabinet, but the new device is only about as big as a cup of coffee.

To see how this could be used in the cancer clinic, MGH researchers used the standard needle procedure to collect suspicious cells from the abdomen of patients. They were then labeled cells with different magnetic nanoparticles for binding to known cancer-associated proteins and injected cells in their miniature NMR machine. The device, which data can be read with a smartphone application in place of a computer, detected levels of nine protein markers for cancer cells.

biopsies Combining the results for four of these proteins, the MGH team diagnosed accurately for 48 of the 50 patients in less than an hour per patient. The micro-NMR diagnosis was correct 100% of the time in another series of 20 patients, the MGH team reports today in Science Translational Medicine . In contrast, standard pathology tests on similar samples were correct only 74% to 84% of the time.

Weissleder hoped the device would allow a doctor to test a biopsy sample needle just minutes from the collection and tell the patient the results as soon as he or she wakes up from the procedure. Currently, patients come for a biopsy, go home, and wait several days for the results. "Our patients hate this week not know if they have cancer," he said. The strategy should also reduce repeat biopsies, which typically cost thousands of dollars, he said.

Eventually, researchers hope to use their mini-NMR apparatus to monitor the cancer and whether patients respond to drugs by detecting the levels of specific proteins in blood samples.

tumor immunologist John Greenman of the University of Hull in the UK, which also works on devices called lab-on-a-chip, called "extremely interesting" study as an early example of this technology. What is essential, he said, is that the MGH group compared his test with standard tests, which "is essential to obtain the support of the medical community." Such devices may have many applications beyond cancer, such as environmental monitoring and detection of biological weapons, he said.

As workers struggle with damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, the potential risk of more radiation will be released remains unknown. But the events unfolding since Friday earthquake gave those responsible for public health time to plan ahead, contrary to what happened after 1986 Chernobyl accident. And that means they can reduce human exposure to radiation, said a scientist who has studied the disaster.

The effect of the most significant health Chernobyl was a sharp increase in children with thyroid cancer - more than 6,000 cases, according to a recent UN report. To reduce the chances of such an increase, people living near the plant were being given potassium iodide tablets. The idea is to flood the thyroid with iodine and block inhaled radioactive iodine-131 or ingested into the thyroid. But "the time is critical," said Fred Mettler, emeritus professor of radiology at the University of New Mexico, who led an international team that investigated the health effects of the accident. If taken 1 day before exposure, pills are 80% effective, he said, if taken during the exposure point 100% effective; 8:00 later, 30% (except for pregnant women there. not many reasons adults over 20 to take the tablets, Mettler adds, because their risk of cancer is low.)

in Chernobyl, iodine-131 was also obtained in food supply through the milk of cows that had fed in pastures contaminated with radioactive iodine. Japan can prevent this by banning cows grazing in contaminated pastures, he said, or storing dairy or cheese for 80 days until the radioactivity disappeared.

Another risk is cesium-137, which can also be spewed into the air from a nuclear power plant. Its half-life is 30 years. In Chernobyl, he entered the food chain through the soil and eventually into the meat, berries and mushrooms. One solution is to dig half a meter or more above the ground, said Mettler. But the isotope also leaves the body within 2 months, so another option is to feed the livestock own food for a few months before slaughter, says Mettler. (People who accidentally ingest radioactive cesium are sometimes given a chemical called Prussian blue, which binds to cesium and helps the body to excrete. But by taking pills for cuts exposure weeks only 50%, and levels Japan will probably be too low to justify such action, said Mettler.)

Japan is also to minimize the exposure of people evacuating the area 20 km around the plant and advise people less than 10 kilometers outside of the area to stay indoors. These measures will reduce their exposure to both gamma rays (which are attenuated by walls) and radioactive particles in the air.

The bottom line, Mettler said, is that the radiation levels measured by monitors that do not correspond with what actually between people's bodies. "The trick is to keep people from being exposed."

Baruch Blumberg, who went by the nickname Barry, is best known for winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for discovering hepatitis B virus and development of a vaccine against this disease. But he often lived life away from the laboratory. It therefore seems appropriate that when he died Tuesday at age 85, apparently of a heart attack, he was hundreds of miles from his home base in Philadelphia, at a NASA conference in California. Blumberg had spent many years involved in the astrobiology program at NASA, including at one time as its leader.

Last summer Science Blumberg visited at his home in Philadelphia city center for a story about the retirement of researchers who have large collections of samples. Blumberg it was among the most massive: when we talked, he guessed he had amassed 450,000 blood samples during his career. To acquire, he checked where he had traveled: West Africa, the Arctic, Romania, Italy, Taiwan, the Pacific Islands, and more. "I wore a lab worldwide," he said. Its geographical scope was so great that his face appeared on stamps in the Maldives and Angola.

Blumberg has spent most her career at Fox Chase Cancer Center in the city and was eager to talk about hepatitis B and the importance of vaccination. But he was just as happy talk about its other activities. he was then president of the American Philosophical Society, which was founded by Benjamin Franklin and was still kayaking and hiking and an active amateur photographer was also a member of the Explorers Club of New York- "There is a branch here in Philadelphia. " he said.

This reporter had scribbled "young 85" in his notes when talking with Blumberg. The verve with which he still lived life made this plain.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and biomedical research groups are jubilant that an appellate court Federal canceled today a preliminary injunction that briefly halted research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) last year. The decision allays 2-1 months of fears that the research could be stopped again, at least temporarily. But the legal battle is not over, and the end result is an enigma.

The complaint was filed in 09 by James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, scientists who study adult stem cells. They claimed that the new NIH guidelines expanding research on hESCs violated the Dickey Amendment, a 1996 law banning the use of federal funds for research that destroys embryos. In August 2010, a judge of the US District Court Royce Lamberth agreed and issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the funding of hESC. The ban was held for 2.5 weeks until the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked the injunction while a panel of three judges deliberated.

The long-awaited decision strongly encourages NIH. Writing for himself and Thomas Griffith judge, Judge Douglas Ginsburg disagreed with Lamberth in a condition to allow the preliminary injunction to stay: it would not hurt seriously hESC scientists. The effects on hESC research "would be certain and substantial. ... Their investment in project planning would be a loss, their expenditures for equipment a waste, and their staff on a job," said the ruling.

importantly, the judges also weighed on the underlying question of whether the interpretation of the Dickey-Wicker NIH is incorrect. about half of the 21 memory pages is devoted to these arguments, with Ginsburg conclusion: "We conclude the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an ESC [embryonic stem cell] from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an ESC will be used. "

the decision was not unanimous, however ,. a third judge, Karen LeCraft Henderson, found in a dissenting opinion that his colleagues "strain mightily to find the ambiguity presses the government." She called the separation of the derivation of hESCs and research on the cells themselves of his colleagues "linguistic jujitsu . "(the dissenting opinion is probably why the court has taken months longer than expected to the rule, said the professor Hank Greely of Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif.)

the split decision gave the plaintiffs a little hope that the full court is ready to hear the case, according to Samuel Casey comments, one of their lawyers, made Nature blog. (This is known as a bench hearing.) Greely think they would have little chance of winning, though: ". Much lower" Ginsberg's decision "was very well written and clear" while Henderson was also notes that three or more active members of the full court appointed Clinton who are more likely to another with the government.

Greely also thinking of the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal of the decision to Ginsburg because the case has no disagreement among the circuit courts.

that still leaves the underlying case before Lamberth. last fall, two plaintiffs and the government have filed briefs asking Lamberth for "summary judgment," which means that the facts are not in dispute and they want to decide the case quickly without trial. Because the appellate court found that NIH correctly interpreted Dickey-Wicker, "it is much more difficult now" for Lamberth to rule on the contrary, since his decision would "almost certainly be slapped down" by the same court of appeal, said Greely.

However, the door is still open a crack to the plaintiffs because the appellate court did not weigh on another of their arguments: that the guidelines are unlawful because NIH did not follow the appropriate procedures when he developed them. (Greely think that argument is weak.)

How long these decisions and appeals take to play? Applicants should ask the appeals court to bench notice within 45 days, says Greely. Lamberth could rule on the underlying case a day or it could decide to hold a trial, which could take several months. Yet Lamberth of rules, its decision would be appealed to the appellate court and eventually the Supreme Court of the United States.

Greely scientists think can breathe easy. "No matter how you look at it was a very good day for the research community on human embryonic stem cells. The best chance seekers had was with this [appeals court] panel, and all by a low likelihood for them" says Greely. Tony Mazzaschi of the Association of American Medical Colleges are not as optimistic. "it will be a long fight," he predicted. "it will be a long time before it's over."

Five years, Rob Summers was 20 years old and about to enter his first year State University of Oregon in Corvallis, where he was a baseball team's pitcher. One night when he went out to get a gym bag from his car, another car jumped the curb, hit him, and then took off. Summers was paralyzed from the chest down. Today, in a case report published in The Lancet , physicians and researchers reveal that Summers has regained the ability to stand for a few minutes and do some voluntary movement of his legs, through electrodes they implanted in his spinal cord.

Other researchers say that the degree of recovery is remarkable, perhaps even unprecedented, but they warn that the procedure has not produced a complete cure and may not work as well for patients who are older or have more serious injuries. At a press conference today announcing the results, the researchers who conducted the study, neuroscientists V. Reggie Edgerton of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Susan Harkema of the University of Louisville Kentucky, framed their method as a way to make the most of the neural circuit that remains intact after an injury to the spine, as opposed to restoring the severed connections.

After his injury, Summers was unable to move his legs or trunk, although he had some ability to feel a light touch or bite in these areas. Two years of intensive physical therapy have failed to restore voluntary movement. The reason for spinal cord injuries cause lasting paralysis is that neurons in the adult spinal cord can not sprout new axons armlike extensions that neurons use to connect to each other. As a result, parts of the cerebral cortex that plan and initiate movements remain disconnected from spinal neurons that normally help their bidding.

In December 09, Summers became the first patient enrolled in a clinical trial of a pioneering method in studies with rodents and cats by Edgerton and others. Louisville surgeons placed a small strip of electrodes on the hard, protective layer surrounding the spinal cord. Summers has regularly undergone physiotherapy sessions during which the researchers spent pulses of electrical current through the electrodes to stimulate neurons in the spinal cord. After a few sessions, Summers was able to stand with assistance. At the end of 80 sessions over 7 months, Summers was able to stand up and support his own weight for several minutes and, with help, to step. Lying in bed, he was able to move his toes, feet and legs on command. Although these exploits require the pacemaker to be on, Summers also reported improved bladder control and sexual function, even with the stimulator off, Edgerton and colleagues reveal in The Lancet paper.

Research in animals with lesions of the spine showed that this type of epidural stimulation can activate neural circuits in the spinal cord and allow them to use sensory information to coordinate leg contractions necessary to act and take a step muscle, Edgerton said at the press conference. The results show for the first time that this method works in humans, Edgerton said.

"This is the first time someone with complete, chronic motor paralysis demonstrated any type of voluntary movement," said Gregoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

"it is an individual, so you should take it with a grain of salt," says Michael Beattie, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. "on the other hand, it is really very impressive." the fact that Summers has taken a voluntary movement suggests that at least some nerve fibers from the cortex to the spinal cord should have been spared by the injury, Beattie said. He noted that patients with spinal cord severed probably could not recover all voluntary movements.

in a press release issued by the Lancet , Summers said the treatment has done wonders for his sense of well-being. "This procedure has completely changed my life for someone who for four years was unable to even move a toe, to have the freedom and ability to stand on my own is the most amazing feeling. "

Although Courtine think there is still much room for improvement. Improvements to the design of the stimulation electrodes and more sophisticated models of electrical stimulation could produce better effects. So could stimulant, in conjunction with injections of drugs into the liquid bathing the spinal cord to improve neuronal repair, he said.

heart attacks kill because they are strangling the heart muscle cell destruction and preventing the body to pump properly. Now, researchers reveal they have nudged cells in mouse hearts to repair some of the damage, a finding that could lead to new treatments for heart attacks in humans.

The researchers are probing several ways to encourage the heart to settle. Last year, for example, cardiac stem cell biologist Deepak Srivastava of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, California, and colleagues inserted extra copies of the three genes in the cells of scar tissue, trigger to turn into cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells. Another approach is to use so-called progenitor cells, non-resident cells in the heart that are similar to stem cells can mature into cardiomyocytes. The challenge was to identify progenitor cells in adults and to determine whether they could provide enough fresh muscle.

Paul Riley stem cell biologist at University College London and his colleagues measured the capacity of progenitor cells in the epicardium, outer layer of the heart. During embryonic development, progenitor cells there is an important source of cardiomyocytes. In adults, however, the cells seem to relax. To regain youthful vigor of cells, the researchers injected mice with thymosin β4, a compound already undergoing clinical trials as a treatment for heart attack because it helps cardiomyocytes survive and stimulates the growth of new blood vessels. The researchers then mimicked a heart attack in animals by ligating one of the arteries that supply blood to the heart, wounding some of the muscle.

Unlike control mice that do not seem to fashion new cardiomyocytes, animals given thymosin β4 is part of the cells, reports the online team today Nature . The cells infiltrated the area left damaged by simulated heart attack and engaged with other cardiomyocytes physically and electrically, allowing them to beat. They also appeared to prevent some of the damage that can result from a heart attack. Magnetic resonance imaging scans showed that the hearts of mice that had received thymosin β4 had smaller scars and were able to pump more blood with each contraction than were the hearts of untreated rodents. "Having a source of cells that could repair the muscles and blood vessels is important resident," said Riley.

Because thymosin β4 was not very effective, less than 1% of progenitor cells transformed into cardiomyocytes-researchers are trying to identify other more potent molecules. Drugs that prod progenitor cells to create new muscle could benefit patients who have suffered heart attacks. But they might work better if patients took the medication preventively to initiate action progenitor cells, said Riley. It provides that persons who are susceptible to heart attacks, perhaps because they have high cholesterol and other risk factors, take regular doses, keeping their progenitor cells in a state of readiness.

The study "provides strong evidence that there is a population of cells in the epicardium that can turn into new muscles," Srivastava said. "The real question is how robust is the process [of cell transformation] and how can it be improved. "he recommends that researchers are also investigating whether the cells can rebuild the heart muscle during heart failure, a condition that affects about 5 million US and causes the body weaken gradually.

Spanish molecular biologist María Blasco, 45, will take the leadership of Spanish National Centre for cancer research (CNIO) in Madrid, where she is now a deputy director. The announcement, made today by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, ending a search for 2 years that has become mired in controversy over the current director, Mariano Barbacid.

Blasco, was chosen unanimously by the board this morning CNIO, has a PhD in Molecular Biology Center Severo Ochoa in Madrid. She did a postdoc at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York with the Nobel prize and Carol W. Greider joined CNIO in 03 to head the Group telomeres and telomerase and leading center of Molecular Oncology Program. She became Deputy Director for Basic Research 2 years later.

Blasco is best known for his research on enzymes that maintain telomere-repeat styling DNA sequences of the chromosomes and their role in cancer and aging. She co-founded a company called Life Length, which measures the telomeres for patients, companies and researchers.

Replacing founding director Mariano Barbacid, which in September 09 announced his intention to resign and focus on research, was not easy. A search by an international jury gave two foreign candidates and two others inside the CNIO came to an abrupt end last month when the international group resigned because the candidates' names were leaked to the press. The leaks occurred during a high-profile spat on Barbacid intend to establish a business partnership to fund the development of an anticancer drug, which the Ministry has declared illegal.

José Jerónimo Navas Palacios, who heads the Health Institute Carlos III in Madrid and as vice president of the CNIO Board, oversaw the selection process, said it is " satisfied "with the appointment. Blasco 'scientific relevance appropriate, sufficient knowledge of the context and adequate international relations, "said Navas Palacios. It is "the best [director] for our project."

But others hoped an outsider at the helm, if only to make a break with the reputation of Spanish science of institutional nepotism. Manel Esteller the director of epigenetics and cancer biology program at the Bellvitge biomedical research Institute of Barcelona, ​​said it was "good news" that a woman has been elevated to a higher position, but is said Blasco "not the right person for the job. "Esteller would have preferred an external candidate selected by the international group The appointment of Blasco" is a typical image of the Hispanic inbreeding, "he wrote in an e-mail to Science Insider

A drug approved for the treatment of cancer and prevent rejection of transplanted organs can also help children with progeria, a disease that resembles accelerated aging and typically kills those who are afflicted by their teenagers-a new study. The effects of the drug on the cells of these children is so striking, and the condition so devastating, that doctors and scientists are wondering whether to proceed immediately to a clinical trial.

Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), commonly known as Progeria is an extremely rare genetic disease, fewer than 100 children are currently diagnosed with it worldwide. He gained notoriety because children, despite health research for the first year or life, develop apparent features associated with age such as stiff skin, hair loss, brittle bones and cardiovascular disease. The condition has remained almost a complete mystery until 03 when two groups, one including geneticist Francis Collins, now director of the National Institutes of Health, and physician-scientist Leslie Gordon, a parent of a boy with HGPS, identified a progeria mutation in children.

The genetic defect disrupts the treatment of a protein called lamin A, which helps shape the nucleus of a cell. Accordingly, cells produce large amounts of an abnormal form of lamin A Progerin dubbed, and the blister pack and generally oval loop core. Somehow Progerin accumulation disrupts the development of most of children's tissues. Three drugs that hinder the creation of progerin are already tested on 50 children with progeria.

search for a drug that works through a different mechanism that could complement other experimental drugs, several groups studying progeria have recently turned rapamycin, a compound having various actions, including the suppression of the immune system . In 09, a research team has shown that administration of rapamycin may extend the life span of mice.

Could it therefore also help children with progeria? When children with the condition of cells exposed to the drug in lab dishes, they eliminate their abnormal accumulation of progerin and survive longer, Collins, Kan Cao of the National Research Institute on the Human Genome and colleagues today reported Science Translational Medicine . In addition, the nuclei in progeria cells go from "pretty darn abnormal" to "very beautiful, ovoid happy future," says Collins.

Normal cells are small amounts of progerin, convince many researchers that it contributes to natural aging, and the team found that rapamycin also promoted clearance of the protein in them. rapamycin, Collins says, inhibits the activity of a protein called mTOR and thereby promoting a process called autophagy that removes abnormal proteins, including progerin. This apparently enough for the kernel to return to its normal shape.

"This is a new approach worth pursuing" for the treatment of progeria, said Collins. "We now have another way to attack progerin," agreed Gordon, who was not affiliated with the study, but is the medical Director of the Progeria Research Foundation, of which she and her husband started and partially funded the work of rapamycin. "This is fantastic news."

The difficult question now is the speed to move, given the short life of children with progeria. Some scientists call for further study. "What is lacking is evidence that rapamycin is beneficial in a mouse model of the disease, which is an essential step before considering clinical trials," says molecular biologist Brian Kennedy, president of the Buck Institute research on aging in Novato, California. He noted that purely cellular studies in the new paper are difficult to reconcile with the results of a strain of mice engineered to have progeria. In these rodents, autophagy is already in overdrive, so Kennedy is skeptical that rapamycin could help these animals-and therefore children with progeria.

Everyone does not share the reluctance of Kennedy. Gordon, for example, noted that rapamycin has well known effects and relatively small side and has been tested in many children already, she and the other running from progeria current clinical trial are "seriously considering "the opportunity to begin to give an oral derivative of rapamycin children. Gordon said that progeria mouse model that worries Kennedy may not be the most accurate overview of the human condition. And although some rapid tests for the toxicity of rapamycin in mice with a form of progeria is justified, "I'm not sure we would have to wait 2-3 years for an efficiency study in mice, " she says.

Kennedy admits he would understand if Gordon, whose son progeria is now 14 years old, and other physicians pushed forward with a clinical trial. "The disease is so severe that it is an opening to try a drug in children," he said.

Centuries after the British government offered up to £ 20,000 for those who have developed a precise method for determining longitude British cabinetmaker a ship won with his invention of great price-clock precision for scientific or technical achievements are sexy again. The X-Prize Foundation is largely responsible for this renewed interest, thanks to its multi-million dollar price of incentives for radical breakthroughs in areas such as DNA sequencing and human spaceflight. US government agencies, however, are also getting in on the act. NASA and the Department of Defense, for example, have launched several prices to stimulate progress in research or to perform technical objectives. But what about Premier America funder of biomedical research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)?

NIH has so far sat on the bench the game price, but there are clues that could soon change. Yesterday, in Bethesda, Maryland, NIH campus, several parts of the body held a meeting, Crowdsourcing: The Art and Science of Open Innovation, in which various government and private organizations that provide research prices described their success, prompting speculation over whether NIH do the same. And James Anderson, NIH Director for the Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives, said in his closing speech to the audience that the NIH Director Francis Collins was about to sign documents that would permit ensure NIH meets the America COMPETES Act, which gives federal agencies the authority to provide financial incentives for researchers to address high-risk, high-reward to research questions that escaped platforms more traditional funding, such as grants and sponsored research. Yet Anderson declined to say how long it might be until NIH begins offering such prices. "We ask people to be patient," Anderson said. "But we are making progress."

The America COMPETES law was passed in 07 and was reauthorized in December. Under his leadership, federal agencies describe a problem they would like solved on Challenge.gov, then open the competition to individuals or teams, evaluate results, and the awarding of the prize money to those who turn in the best solution. Offering price has several advantages over the grant or sponsorship search said Dwayne Spradlin, president of InnoCentive, an online platform that hosts as Challenge.gov research competitions. Funders get lots of fresh eyes to the problem for less money than it usually costs to provide a subsidy. " Distribute the risk and accelerate research and development in the process, "said Spradlin.

incentives search was just a theme to the crowdsourcing conference, which also explored other ways scientists and scientific organizations could take advantage of the processing power of lots of loans brains. guru Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media explained how patient-centered Web sites such as PatientsLikeMe.com collect massive amounts of data on patient symptoms, environments, lifestyles, and states emotional. Although the data are not collected from standard scientific way, he said, scientists have yet to adopt such a massive amount of information and mine for new ideas. "We are building a global brain that exists on the Internet," he said.

Adrien Treuille, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, added that this new global brain also like to have a little fun while it's science. He and his colleagues are the creators of two online games, Foldit and Eterna, which simulate protein folding and structural mapping of RNA, respectively. These games have proven surprisingly popular among the players and nonresearchers solutions often surprised scientists because their creativity is not constrained by what they think the correct answer should look like, said Treuille. And this is precisely the value of crowdsourcing, he notes. "It is not a linear thing to engage the public in science," said Teuille. "It is incredibly non-linear and all kinds of crazy things out, some of them brilliant."

In most people in the Middle East and North Africa who have sex with men (MSM ) face severe stigma and harsh laws, creating a hidden population that researchers of HIV / AIDS and social workers have difficulty reaching. Now, review the most comprehensive yet in the spread of HIV among MSM living in the region reveals that there are several hidden epidemics, too, with a prevalence of up to 28% in some groups.

Epidemiologists Ghina Mumtaz and Laith Abu-Raddad, both of Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, conducted the study, over the past eight years has chosen the highest quality reports on HIV / AIDS they have found in the scientific literature, government documents and the non-governmental organization (NGO) surveys. Although the discovery of widespread HIV among MSM in the region could reflect a longstanding epidemic that surfaced only now because of the increased research, Mumtaz and Abu-Raddad argue that this is not a case of bias detection. "The data suggest that these epidemics are recent," said Mumtaz, who explains that several countries have documented a steady increase in prevalence over time.

As they detail in the August issue of PLoS Medicine , less than 25% of MSM in most places has reported consistent condom use, and exchange of sex for money was common, as is sex with females. Although that MSM generally knew about HIV, many do not think they were at risk of being infected. a key message of the study is that although the dominant Muslim region has a strong conservative, about 2% to 3% of men in the two dozen countries analyzed have anal sex with men, which is similar worldwide.

"We are all pretty much the same thing," said epidemiologist David Celentano of public health Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School in Baltimore, Maryland. "Everyone says Muslims will never tolerate that, but if you come back in ancient history, there are many same-sex sex. People profess to have these strong beliefs, but do not govern their behavior at all . "

study also challenges what the authors call "widespread perception" that the epidemiological data of HIV / AIDS on MSM in the region are "virtually absent." Reading documents in English, Arabic and French, they concluded that there is "considerable and increasing epidemiological evidence on HIV and risk behavior among MSM in this region." Although the quality of the studies varied, they found "significant improvement" in data collection since 03 in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Tunisia, Sudan and Pakistan. Several countries also have mandatory HIV testing for all workers who want to work abroad or for couples seeking a marriage license. "This is really a case of if you do not try, you can not find it," says Celentano. "I think these guys did a great job digging."

Although the data can provide data on the exact prevalence of HIV, the authors stress that the studies they relied on often sampled most visible MSM populations, which may introduce bias. In particular, the highest documented prevalence occurred among transgender sex workers and homeless MSM. Data can also tilt the men who consider themselves gay, underestimation of HIV in the population of men, especially if they are the "top" in anal sex with a man, do not identify themselves as homosexuals.

Abu-Raddad said the advent of the Internet and the growth of civil society and activism in many Arab countries is that it is easier to study HIV among MSM. "It was ten years ago, people thought it would be impossible to work with MSM in this region is the MSM would be willing to participate in because of fear studies," he said. "But NGOs have created bridges between governments and populations. NGOs rely on recruiting peer and not have to find these groups. They come to them. "

They are not quite psychic yet, but the machines are better at reading your mind. Researchers have invented a new noninvasive method for recording brain activity patterns and use them to direct a robot. Scientists hope that technology will give "locked in" patients-those too disabled to communicate with the outside world ability to interact with others and even give the illusion of being physically present, or "telepresent" with friends and family.

Back brain-machine interface systems allowed people to control robots, sliders, or prostheses with conscious thought, but they often take a lot of effort and concentration, says José del R. Millán, a biomedical engineer at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, which develops brain-machine interface systems that do not require to be implanted in the brain. the the objective of Millán is to make the control easier than driving a car on a road. a partially autonomous robot would allow a user to stop focusing on the tasks that he or she would normally unconsciously, as following a person or avoid running into walls. But if the robot encounters an unexpected event and needs to make a split second decision, the thoughts of the user can replace the artificial intelligence robot.

To test their technology, Millán and his colleagues have created a robot telepresent by modifying a commercially available bot called Robotino. The robot looks a bit like a platform on three wheels and can avoid obstacles on its own using infrared sensors. On top of the robot, the researchers placed a laptop running Skype, an audio and video Internet chat system, a wireless Internet connection. This allowed the human controller to see where the robot was going, and because the laptop also showed a video of the user, he allowed others to interact with the user as if the user was really there. The user also wore a small cap of electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes, which measured brain activity. This system translates the EEG signals in the navigation instructions and transmits them in real time for the robot.

EEG patterns for movement and navigation are similar from person to person and group Millán has shown that after a little practice, a healthy person can share control with the robot with very little effort. But would a bedridden patient, who has not used its members for years, have the same pattern of brain waves and be able to control the robots as effectively?

The researchers recruited two patients whose lower body was paralyzed and had been bedridden for 6 or 7 years. The researchers trained the patients to control the robot for 1 hour per week for 6 weeks. With instructions transmitted via a wireless connection, patients should not leave the hospital and were able to control the robot in the laboratory at EPFL Millán, 100 kilometers. At the end of the training period, the researchers asked subjects to drive the robot to different objectives, such as furniture, people, and small objects around the lab for 12 minutes.

The disabled patients performed as well as healthy subjects, Millán and colleagues report this week at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference Society in Boston. When the researchers turned off the shared control, forcing topics to focus continuously on the control of the robot, the subjects took a lot longer to navigate the maze when they shared control.

Millan said he was not terribly surprised that disabled people can control the robot, which previous research using brain scans showed that even patients who have been paralyzed since birth can imagine yet moving their limbs. But he was surprised how quickly they learned. He now hopes to involve more bedridden patients, including locked-in patients in the study. He also sees future applications for the brain-machine interface shared control, such as changes to allow a user to control a prosthesis or a wheelchair. Researchers can possibly add an arm current telepresent robot to enable it to grasp objects.

Neuroengineer Jose Carmena of the University of California, Berkeley, said the approach of Millán "a lot of novelty" in the way it integrates both natural and artificial systems. There are a few drawbacks he said, in a system that uses a hat instead of a device implanted directly in the brain, such as background signals that the cap can pick up. But for this application, he says, it is "a interesting avenue for telepresence. "

Millán said the bedridden patients were delighted to participate in the study. "This opens a new possibility for the families," he said, which could interact with their bedridden loved ones on a video connection without having to sit at a computer. But would the disabled patients families are creeped out by a follow robot in the kitchen while they make dinner? "well, that's something we're going to ask," he said.

Does fatherhood make men Wimpy? Are there disadvantages to take folic acid? And how can Glowing cats shed light on Aids? Science Online News Editor David Grimm chats about these stories and more with Science Editor 's online Stewart Wills.

( Listen to the full Science podcast and podcasts.)

Yet another large study aimed at preventing the spread of HIV by giving antiretroviral uninfected women (ARV) pills had to redesign the trial because of surprising and negative intermediate results.

the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN), which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, today announced that it has decided to stop one arm of a study involving over 5,000 women in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda. The decision follows an interim review of the current trial by an independent supervisory board, which found that the drug tenofovir when used as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) had less effect in protecting women than expected. Although the board did not offer details on how many women have been infected on the drug compared to placebo, they said continue with tenofovir arm was "futile" because he would not give significant results. They do not give numbers because the parts of the trial are ongoing, testing other prevention measures.

Sharon Hillier, who heads the MTN, said his team is "extremely disappointed" and that he personally is humbled and a little confused. "I have to stop guessing how the study will turn out," says Hillier. "It breaks your heart."

The study, vaginal and oral interventions to control the epidemic (VOICE), began in September 09 and should end up about 1 year from now. MTN VOICE designed to compare three different strategies for PrEP: pills tenofovir, tenofovir in vaginal gel and pills Truvada (a combination of tenofovir and a second antiretroviral drug, emtricitabine). Tenofovir gel and pills Truvada arm of the study is still ongoing. "Research on HIV prevention is a constant reminder of what we do not know," said Mitchell Warren, head of the Coalition for the Defence of vaccine against AIDS, which closely follows the PrEP studies.

The new results particularly baffled people who follow this promising prevention strategy because it was mixed but encouraging results in two similar studies presented earlier this year. In April, researchers stopped a study called FEM-PrEP which evaluated Truvada pills in nearly 2,000 young women not infected in South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania after an interim analysis revealed that the pursuit was futile. But in July, the first glimpse of infection in a study that assessed by taking either tenofovir or pills Truvada as PrEP was found that both worked well in women. A key difference in the second trial called Partners PrEP, is it involved more than 4,700 couples in Kenya and Uganda in which one partner has tested positive at first, while both VOICE and FEM-PrEP mainly young women enrolled single.

Timothy Mastro, who helped lead the FEM-PrEP trunk to FHI 360 in Durham, NC, said teasing why the same drugs fail in a population and work in another, it will analyze two main factors: the biology and behavior. Studies have shown that small amounts of antiretroviral drugs taken orally reach the vaginal mucosa. This protection may have been submerged in VOICE and FEM-PrEP if male partners had higher levels of HIV than those of PrEP partners. Or maybe women Partners PrEP had more motivation to "adhere" to study protocols and take pills every day as directed, because they knew for certain dissimilar women in the other two trials that they had sex with a man infected with HIV. Men infected Partners PrEP may also be encouraged to join their uninfected partners. "It is very important for our two groups to compare data and study populations," said Mastro.

VOICE Hillier said she is looking forward to the group of Mastro complete their detailed analysis of the factors behind the disappointing results of FEM-PrEP. "There will not be a simple answer about who should get PrEP, and it is very clear that different people can get different results," she said.

Hillier emphasizes that these conflicting results emphasize that there is still much to learn about PrEP, which also worked well in gay men in another large recent study. This analysis should be done before those responsible for public health are making recommendations for its use. "The data are telling us something very important," said Hillier. "People thought that ARVs would be magical, and you could sprinkle them there and people use them all the time and they prevent all infections. These studies teach us loud and clear that when and how they will work raises very nuanced questions. And these studies teach us things we do not want to know. "

VOICE hopes to have the results for the other two arms of the study by the end of next year.

National Health fundamental research Institutes (NIH) Institute has a new director. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) cell biologist Chris Kaiser will take the $ 2 billion mark National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) next spring.

Kaiser is now president of the MIT Department of Biology, where he uses yeast to study how proteins fold and transport molecules inside cells. He will replace the acting director NIGMS Judith Greenberg, who was filling in for Jeremy Berg left in July.

He will join the fourth largest NIH institute at a time of increasingly tight budgets. Maintaining basic R01 research grant NIGMS and the strengthening of the review process by peers are his priorities, he said Science Insider. It also plans to continue the practice of Berg blogs about how NIGMS makes funding decisions. "It is feared massive near panic in universities about getting examined subsidies and so on," says Kaiser. "It is very important, even if times become more difficult for stakeholders to understand how money is being deployed. "

Kaiser also plans to move forward with a new strategic plan for NIGMS training programs. in the implementation of the plan, it intends to draw on the lessons of the expansion, the proportion of third minority undergraduate students in the department of biology at MIT from 5% to 18% over 6 years. a key step was to reach out to mentors faculty historically minority colleges, who then suggested that their best students consider MIT for graduate school. NIGMS could seek ways to encourage these interactions, Kaiser said. "the real problem is that there are actually a huge talent pool of minority students there, but they are a step in applying for a place like MIT. "

A new approach for the treatment of lung cancer, which aims to activate dormant blocking tumor genes has shown promising results in a small clinical trial. The 45 patients on average lived a few months longer than they would have without treatment, and tumors of two patients almost completely disappeared. The results suggest that the so-called epigenetic drugs worth exploring further, say the authors.

Most drugs against cancer attempt to kill tumor cells. "Epigenetic" drugs are supposed to work differently, resetting the genetic activity of a tumor cell so that it divides rather than simply eliminate the cell. Epigentics the term refers to chemical modifications of DNA that control gene activity, turning their expression on or off, for example; into a kind of epigenetic conscripts methyl chemicals can attach to DNA and block of being transcribed into a protein. In many types of cancer, for example methylation silenced suppressor genes tumor.

cancer biologists such as Stephen Baylin of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, suggested that drugs that strip the methyl groups from DNA could prevent cancer cells from growing by changing these tumor suppressor genes back. In fact, a drug called azacytidine demethylates that DNA has been approved since 04 to treat a type of blood cancer. However, tests in the 1970s and found that 80 azacytidine was too toxic for patients with solid tumors.

But Baylin and other Hopkins researchers recently decided to see if azacytidine could help patients with solid cancers when given in low doses strong enough to reset the DNA methylation patterns, but not kill cells. Led by Charles Rudin oncologist, the team identified 45 patients with lung cancer at an advanced stage where other therapies had failed and were given low doses of azacytidine and another epigenetic drug that opens the package protein around the DNA.

The study was a modest success. The average patient lived 6.4 months - only 2 months longer than they would have without treatment. However, tumors of two or almost completely disappeared patients. Although their cancer returned later, one of these patients is still alive after 2.5 years. And four patients who do not do well on epigenetic therapy responded strongly to cancer drugs subsequent standard; Both lived 4 years, well beyond what was expected in view of their cancer.

Why some patients are much more successful than others? The Hopkins group speculates the reason is that tumors only a few patients were driven by epigenetics. They tested the tumor DNA from 26 of 45 patients for four genes which when methylated, predict a tumor of the lung will soon grow back after surgery. Patients whose tumors had at least two methylated genes before treatment, then lost methyl groups lived on average 10 months, four months longer than patients without that pattern, according to the study, published today in cancer Discovery .

"there is not a home run, but there is a real input in this area," says Baylin. The results suggest that doctors could test the models of patient gene methylation to know if their tumors can be treated with epigenetic drugs, he said. His team is also intrigued by the suggestion that epigenetic drugs can first tumor cells to better respond to other drugs, a possibility that they hope will be tested in another trial.

Two researchers not involved in the study described as "revolutionary" during a press conference today. "I think this finding is incredibly exciting and will trigger whirlwind of activity, research in the lung cancer community, "said Jeffrey Engelman oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Others are cautious. Molecular biologist Frank Lyko the German Research on Cancer in Heidelberg agrees that the study "strongly suggest" that the combo of epigenetic drugs work on lung cancer. But he said more accurate measurements of patient tumor methylation patterns are needed to definitively show that the drugs worked through epigenetic effects, not another mechanism. The analytical results reported in the paper, he said, are not "convincing".