Despite challenging obstacles, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration views plant-made pharmaceuticals as a highly promising means of building and securing the world’s drug supply, said FDA Acting Commissioner Lester Crawford at the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting and Food Expo here this week.
Speaking at a special forum on the topic Tuesday, Crawford explained that the FDA is working closely with the USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service to monitor and keep isolated p
Cornell University scientists are launching a full-scale study on the influence of climate on mosquito populations that transmit diseases such as West Nile virus (WNV) to humans. Funded by a $495,000 Global Programs grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the three-year project is a collaborative effort involving medical entomologists, climatologists, social scientists and risk analysts, as well as local and state health department officials.
“We propose to de
A tarantula venom peptide, GsMTx4, known to affect many organs, can be manipulated to withstand destruction in the stomach, making it a promising candidate for drugs that could treat cardiac arrhythmias, muscular dystrophy and many other conditions, University at Buffalo biophysicists have shown.
Moreover, the peptide, which is amphiphilic — meaning fat-soluble on one side and water-soluble on the other, much like a detergent — affects mechanically sensitive ion channels in membranes in a
Using a combination of therapies and cell grafts, a team of University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine researchers has promoted significant regeneration of nerve cells in rats with spinal cord injury.
The therapeutic approach successfully stimulated new nerve fibers called axons to grow and extend well beyond the site of the injury into surrounding tissue, following surgically induced spinal cord damage.
These results prove that combinational therapy can promot
Nearly five billion years ago, the giant gaseous planets Jupiter and Saturn formed, apparently in radically different ways.So says a scientist at the Laboratory who created exhaustive computer models based on experiments in which the element hydrogen was shocked to pressures nearly as great as those found inside the two planets.
Working with a French colleague, Didier Saumon of Material Science (X-7) created models establishing that heavy elements are concentrated in Saturn’s massive c
Don’t categorically reject hormone replacement therapy (HRT) just yet: When women begin HRT before age 60, their risk of death is 39 percent less than women not on hormones, according to a new survey.
The findings are based on a Cornell University-Stanford University meta-analysis (a study of other previously published studies), which pooled the results of 30 clinical trials of HRT with almost 27,000 women.
“The results of our analysis indicate that the benefits of HRT outwe
A voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) program using a mobile van to travel to marketplaces in townships and villages overcomes the structural barriers to HIV testing in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to UCSF researchers.
“Mobile VCT eliminates the cost and inconvenience of having to travel to urban centers for HIV testing, while the presence of the mobile van with outreach workers in busy marketplaces creates familiarity with the testing process and reduces the stigma associated with this
Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientist Alison Barth has developed the first tool to identify and study individual neurons activated in a living animal. This advance, described in the July 21 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, ultimately could lead to the development of targeted drugs that directly affect specific neurons involved in neurological diseases that alter behavior, learning and perception.
While neuroscientists have made great strides in identifying the general areas of the
Living organisms are an enormous reservoir of natural compounds potentially active against viruses, bacteria or cancerous cells, that could lead to the development of new medicines. Out of about 145 000 natural substances described today, 10% come from marine organisms. Among the few such organisms studied for their chemical composition, sponges of the genus Phloeodictyon (Haploscleridae) collected in shallow New Caledonian waters during campaigns of the programme “Marine Substances of Biological I
ESA is one step nearer to establishing a Telemedicine via Satellite Programme thanks to a constructive meeting with telemedicine experts that took place at ESRIN early last week.
Last Monday the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN) hosted a one-day Road Map Symposium to report on the work that had been done since the last meeting a year ago and to decide on the way forward. At the meeting were representatives of WHO, industry, and doctors and administrators directly involved in the heal
On 9 July 2004, the Near-Earth Object Mission Advisory Panel recommended that ESA place a high priority on developing a mission to actually move an asteroid. The conclusion was based on the panel’s consideration of six near-Earth object mission studies submitted to the Agency in February 2003.
Of the six studies, three were space-based observatories for detecting NEOs and three were rendezvous missions. All addressed the growing realisation of the threat posed by Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) a
Researchers from the Area of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering at the Universitat Jaume I (UJI), Spain, have devised a quicker method to evaluate the systems used in the automotive industry to protect the metal chassis of vehicles against corrosion. This new technique allows the time required to carry out such tests to be reduced from two months to just one day.
The metal chassis of automobiles are under constant exposure to environmental conditions (high ambient relative hum
Scientists have developed a new method for DNA amplification that could replace the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique that is invaluable for both medical diagnostics and basic research but which is confined to the laboratory. In the August issue of EMBO reports, Huimin Kong and colleagues at New England Biolabs (Beverly, MA, USA) describe a way to copy mass amounts of DNA that overcomes some of the limitations of this earlier technique.
The new technique is called HDA (helicase-
Polystyrene foam is widely used in a variety of applications, including building insulation, packaging and drinking cups. These different types of foam are all commercially produced from a single starting material – high-density spherical beads of expandable polystyrene (EPS).
The beads are expanded and moulded by the end product manufacturers using a blowing agent. Currently, pentane is used, but it is an inflammable, volatile organic compound (VOC) and up to half remains in the EPS after
Catheter-directed embolization is a well-established interventional radiology technique used to treat arterial hemorrhage in a variety of areas in the body. Although embolization has been used for over 20 years to treat trauma victims with massive bleeding and to control hemorrhage after childbirth instead of emergency hysterectomy, the investigation of glue as an embolic agent is new. Embolization is particularly useful because in massive bleeding often there is so much blood coming at the surgeon
The National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) has updated its guidelines for treatment of blood cholesterol, suggesting that people at risk for heart attack and stroke would benefit from more intensive cholesterol-lowering therapies.
Dr. Scott M. Grundy, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said the new guidelines are based largely on results from five major clinical trials involving cholesterol-lowering medications called statins. These
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