Researchers have for the first time been able to generate a pluripotent stem cell line from the cells of a patient with a genetic disease, according to a study appearing tomorrow (August 1) in Science. The scientists successfully reprogrammed skin cells from an 82-year-old patient with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) into healthy motor neurons.

"It's a stunning accomplishment," Neil Cashman, professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia who was not involved in the... Click to continue

The unassuming cells of a sea sponge may hold a clue to the origin of the nervous system, according to a paper published next Tuesday, August 5th, in Current Biology. The detection of proneural pathways in the ancient organism suggests that genes for neurogenesis evolved earlier than previously believed.

Researchers have widely believed that nerve cells evolved after the divergence of sponges, which lack organs and nervous systems, from the rest... Click to continue

After clearing the House of Representatives in April, a bill meant to extend the life of programs that stimulate innovation at small biotech companies has finally found its way onto the floor of the Senate.

The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship passed the bill, which tacks on 14 years to the lifespans... Click to continue

Embryonic stem cells are a tricky business, as evidenced by Advanced Cell Technology's recently announced financial woes. The technology is too nascent for guaranteed returns, but potential payoffs could be huge. Increasingly, biotechs are looking to navigate the uncertain funding waters by forging partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.

Some biotechs working on embryonic stem cells have been able to get start up money from the state... Click to continue

Researchers have developed a transgenic mouse model for postpartum depression which hints at medical interventions for the mood disorder, according to a study published this week in Neuron.

"For the first time we have a useful model to look at therapeutic interventions," said first author Jamie Maguire from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Postpartum depression is thought to be caused... Click to continue

New statistical analyses of the National Institutes of Health's peer review process suggest that the current system may be missing the mark on funding the right proposals.

Reviews of as many as 25% of all proposals are biased, according to a study led by Valen Johnson, from MD Anderson Cancer Center to be published tomorrow (July 29) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Johnson collected about 14,000 reviewers'... Click to continue

Engineers at the California Institute of Technology have designed a dime-sized lensless microscope able to capture high-resolution images of cells and pathogens. The low-cost, portable technology could be an ideal tool for use in developing countries, according to the paper, published online today (July 28) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Leading US research institutions may stop studying several federally-fundable embryonic stem cell lines due to potential ethical problems surrounding the creation of the lines.

As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education today (July 28), Stanford and Johns Hopkins Universities, and the ... Click to continue

The Duke University Medical Center has agreed to conduct an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Duke protein biochemist Homme Hellinga, according to a letter Hellinga wrote to Nature, which was published in the journal this week.

Hellinga retracted two papers earlier this year that claimed to have redesigned ribose-binding protein (RBP) to... Click to continue

A week after suspending a major HIV vaccine trial set to commence soon, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has laid out a plan for reshuffling priorities in HIV/AIDS vaccine development in an article appearing in Science tomorrow (July 25), coauthored by a slew of HIV vaccine researchers.

"The general trend will be funding a bit more fundamental discovery research," Fauci said,... Click to continue

Aging may not be caused by the accumulation of cellular damage, as a prominent theory suggests. Instead, the process may result from the deterioration of crucial developmental pathways, according to a study published tomorrow in Cell.

"What we found is, I think, a different way to think about aging," Stuart Kim of Stanford University, main author of the study, told The... Click to continue

Victor McKusick, who founded the field of medical genetics at Johns Hopkins University, died on Tuesday, July 22, at his home outside Baltimore. He was 86 years old.

"Victor's vision is reflected in his early recognition of the inherent value to medicine of mapping the human genome," said Aravinda Chakravarti, director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute in a 2002 statement. "His contributions to the practice of genetics in... Click to continue

The announcement last week of Advanced Cell Technology's imminent closure is evidence that embryonic stem cell technology may be too nascent for fruitful biotech innovation, according to some industry analysts.

For the past 10 years Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) has been a spotlight company for endeavors in embryonic stem cell research and cloning. But in a Securities and... Click to continue

After making a $43.7 billion offer yesterday (July 21) to buy the 44% of Genentech stock it didn't already own, the Swiss pharmaceutical company announced another biotech purchase today. Roche will acquire Mirus Bio Corporation for $125 million.

Roche's half-year financial results, released on Monday but eclipsed by the Genentech offer,... Click to continue

A team of researchers has completed human tests of the first plant-produced vaccine for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The successful results of a phase I clinical trial suggest that plants could provide a safe, inexpensive reservoir to "grow" vaccines for the common human cancer, according to a study published tomorrow (July 22) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The trial "builds upon all the advances in... Click to continue

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a whopping budget of more than two billion dollars for the FDA in 2009. On Thursday (July 17), the committee unanimously passed the markup, which would represent an increase of more than $324 million over the FDA's 2008 budget and the first time the agency's budget would breech the two billion dollar mark.

The FDA budget boost is part of a larger bill, totaling almost $20.5 billion, that also contains provisions for global food assistance, rental... Click to continue

Pharmaceutical company Roche seems to be changing up its research focus. The company is pulling the plug on its HIV research program, and today offered more than $40 billion to buy up the 44% of biotech Genentech that it does not already own.

A Roche spokesperson told Chemical & Engineering News that there are no drugs in the company's HIV drug pipeline that warrant further development. They had been developing antiretrovirals,... Click to continue

The biggest drug makers are known for cut-throat competition, not collaboration. But last week Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly bucked that trend, announcing the creation of a joint company called Enlight BioSciences to help fund and develop enabling technologies to speed drug development. The company, formed with the help of PureTech Ventures, a venture capital firm in Boston, will seek out and fund inventions from academic institutions href="/blog/display/54840/"> Click to continue

As more journal articles go online, only more recent articles tend to be cited, according to a study published today in Science. In addition, only a small group of journals and articles are being cited, the study found.

James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, surveyed a database of 34 million articles, their citations over the past 50... Click to continue

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) announced today (July 17) that it will not conduct a trial of an HIV vaccine that its own Vaccine Research Center (VRC) developed. It was known as the PAVE 100 trial.

"Based on the available scientific information, NIAID has decided that the VRC vaccine regimen did not warrant a trial of this size and scope and that PAVE 100 will not proceed," the NIAID said in a ... Click to continue

Nobel prize-winning geneticist Joshua Lederberg, liposome pioneer and essayist Gerald Weissmann, Lasker Prize-winning microbiologist Carol Greider -- these are only a smattering of the scientists whose thoughts, reflections, and tribulations have been recorded in oral histories as part... Click to continue

A science watchdog group has created a model conflict of interest disclosure policy that it hopes will be widely accepted by the editors of scientific and medical journals. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) unveiled the policy last week in advance of its ... Click to continue

An ancient RNA molecule is the answer to a bacterial mystery, according to a study published in Science tomorrow (July 18). Researchers have identified the binding molecule of a key messenger in bacteria, but to their surprise, the molecule was not a protein -- traditionally thought of as regulators of cellular processes -- but a unique RNA trigger.

In the last six years, RNA triggers, called... Click to continue

A surprising new open access policy issued this week by the American Psychological Association (APA) is being reconsidered and will not be implemented at this time, according to a statement by the publisher.

In contrast to Nature Publishing Group's announcement last week that it was taking a step toward aiding open access, the APA announced this week that it will charge authors' institutions a $2500 fee for accepted manuscripts to... Click to continue

Applications for grants to fund clinical studies do not fare as well in the National Institutes of Health's peer review process as do those for nonclinical studies, according to an NIH report released yesterday (July 14).

The report, which was conducted by NIH's Center for Scientific Review (CSR) and appears in this month's edition of The American Journal of... Click to continue

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a stark warning to the American Psychiatric Association on Thursday (July 10): Clearly outline the pharmaceutical industry's financial influence on your workings or incur my wrath!

Well, maybe Grassley didn't use those exact words.

"I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of non-profit... Click to continue

Michael E. DeBakey, heart surgeon, inventor, teacher, and research advocate, died late last Friday, July 11th, at the age of 99.

DeBakey was "the greatest surgeon of the twentieth century," his colleague George Noon said in a statement from Methodist Hospital in Houston, where he spent most of his career.

During his 70 years as a surgeon, DeBakey performed over... Click to continue

Festooned with jiggling eyeballs, threatening skeletons, and impaled floating heads, Feo Amante's horror thriller website seems an unlikely place to catch up on science. But sandwiched between the "Scary Top 10" and "Big Horror," movie and science buffs alike can check out "Science Moments," short critiques of the use, or lack thereof, of science in film.

In 1998, Eddie "Feo Amante" McMullen Jr. started the website as a platform for struggling horror and... Click to continue

Researchers have determined the crystal structure of the Ebola virus surface protein that binds host cells, they report online today in Nature. The findings open the door to solving the long-standing mystery of the virus's mechanism of infection and designing drugs to combat the deadly hemorrhagic fever caused by Ebola.

The paper is a "breakthrough," said ... Click to continue

Can a New Jersey initiative that aims to tap Wall Street money reinvigorate the state's once-ambitious plans for stem cell research?

The stem cell research community once had high hopes that New Jersey would become the next California or New York. But in November of last year, the state voted against a referendum that would have boosted stem cell research funding by $450 million. ... Click to continue

A clinical trial for an investigational arthritis drug has been put on hold after a subject in the trial, a bodybuilding father of three with no history of heart problems, suffered two heart attacks and died, the company developing the drug announced today (July 8).

Peter Munro, 48, was participating in a Phase 1 trial for RhuDex, a compound that blocks T-cell activation to prevent inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis, at a clinic outside of... Click to continue

Nature Publishing Group will begin depositing manuscripts into PubMed Central six months after publication on behalf of authors, starting later this summer, according to a release. But some open access publishing advocates say this is just a way for the publisher to maintain an embargo period, rather than making content immediately available.

Earlier this year the National Institutes of Health issued a mandate that required all... Click to continue

Representatives from Maryland biotechnology start-ups made like potential contestants for The Price is Right last Monday (June 30) and camped on a Baltimore sidewalk awaiting a chance at success. But these people weren't desperate to participate in greatest game show on Earth, with a chance to win fabulous cash and prizes. They were lined up for a chance to suckle at the teat of the state's Department of Business and Economic Development, which was passing out state tax credits to biotechs... Click to continue

The soil-dwelling model organism C. elegans, long assumed to lack any visual system whatsoever, in fact appears to be strongly responsive to light, according to a paper published online yesterday (July 6) in Nature Neuroscience. The study identifies four sensory neurons that act as photoreceptor cells driving this phototaxic behavior, and suggests a conservation of phototransduction between vertebrates and... Click to continue

Richard Marchase, the 93rd president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), who took office this week, said he plans to continue to focus on encouraging US voters in the upcoming November elections to consider science issues.

"The upcoming Presidential election and the incoming administration present unique opportunities to highlight the importance of biomedical research on a national scale," he said in a press release.

Marchase, the ... Click to continue

A prominent neuroscientist is accusing two former researchers in his lab of taking data without his permission and publishing misleading interpretations of them against his wishes.

Nikos Logothetis, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, Germany, says that two former researchers working in his lab took fMRI data from monkey brain scans without his permission and made misleading interpretations in a paper published this... Click to continue

All researchers conducting studies with human subjects and members of institutional review boards may soon have to undergo mandatory training in human research ethics. According to a notice in the Federal Register yesterday (July 1), the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) is seeking public comment on whether such training should be required.

According to the notice, also reported in the ... Click to continue

Not one single venture-backed US company completed an initial public offering (IPO) in the second quarter of 2008, according to a report released yesterday (July 1) by the National Venture Capital Association, and the news means that small, privately-funded biotech companies may find it difficult to stay afloat in these uncertain economic times.

"Companies will either disappear... Click to continue

When you're a pharmaceutical company hoping to turn a profit on a controversial product, your work never stops, it would appear. Although, I suppose that's true of any pharmaceutical company nowadays...

GlaxoSmithKline, marketers of the over-the-counter weight-loss drug alli, which we profiled in last month's issue, is asking the FDA to force weight-loss supplement sellers to conduct clinical... Click to continue

British biologists have received government approval to create the world's first human stem cells from hybrid embryos, part pig, part human.

The Warwick Medical School team, led by Justin St. John of the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, was granted the country's third animal-human embryo license from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which goes into effect today (July 1).

The team... Click to continue

A structural brain map -- the most detailed to date -- provides support for a controversial theory of a "default" state of brain activity, and could bring key insights into the physiological basis of illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression, and Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have identified a set of axonal pathways in the human cerebral cortex that forms structural "core" of the cortex -- a neuronal nexus that acts as the main relay station between disparate brain regions involved in... Click to continue