Research community questioning legitimacy of Canadian drug approved for market in Africa

With one million deaths and 300 million new cases of malaria each year, the quest for a successful malaria treatment is urgent. But one new drug, touted by its manufacturer as safe and exceptionally effective, and already approved for sale by five African nations, is provoking suspicion in the malaria research community. At best, some researchers claim, the Canadian drug Malarex has not been ade

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions report that satellite imagery could be used to determine areas at high-risk for exposure to Sin Nombre virus (SNV), a rodent-born disease that causes the often fatal hantaviral pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in humans. According to the researchers, satellite imaging detects the distinct environmental conditions that may serve as a refuge for the disease-carrying deer mice. Higher populations of infected deer mice in

In a groundbreaking study, a North Carolina State University microbiologist has discovered that the bacteria associated with almost all human ulcers – one that is also correlated with the development of certain types of gastric cancer in humans – uses hydrogen as an energy source.

The finding is novel because most bacteria use sugars and other carbohydrates to grow, says Dr. Jonathan Olson, assistant professor of microbiology at NC State. The human pathogen Helicobacter pylori does not.

Cytomegalovirus, hidden in most people, begins to give up secrets of its stealth

Princeton scientists have taken an important step toward understanding a virus that infects and lies dormant in most people, but emerges as a serious illness in transplant patients, some newborns and other people with weakened immune systems.

The virus, called human cytomegalovirus, enters the bone marrow and can hide there for a lifetime. Until now, however, scientists had not been able to stud

A revolutionary new test for identifying people infected with tuberculosis (TB), one of the leading causes of death worldwide, will shortly be launched by Oxford Immunotec Ltd, a new Oxford University spin-off company. The test radically improves the speed and accuracy with which the disease can be identified. It has been developed to replace the existing skin test for TB, which is given to 600,000 UK schoolchildren every year.

Oxford Immunotec’s test has come from discoveries made over

Scientists have identified a critical, new stem cell protein – a marked advance in the elucidation of the molecular blueprint of stem cells.

Drs. Robert Tsai and Ronald McKay at the NIH have discovered a novel gene, called nucleostemin, whose encoded protein is necessary for maintaining the proliferative capacity of embryonic and adult stem cells, and possibly some types of cancer cells. Their report is published in the December 1 issue of the scientific journal Genes & Development.

Falling asleep is usually thought of as something we can control ourselves as part of our behaviour patterns. In a new article in the December Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr Bidi Evans argues that waking and sleeping is actually controlled by a physical mechanism that is ‘hard-wired’ into the brain. She suggests that evidence from people with brain damage shows that coma patients literally cannot wake up, because their waking mechanism is ‘broken’. Dr Evans recommends that sleep medicin

A researcher at Aston University in Birmingham has become the first in the UK to investigate a new type of vaccination delivery that could revolutionise how we are protected against diseases including flu, hepatitis and, most excitingly, cancer.
Dr Yvonne Perrie from the School of Life & Health Sciences has received a research grant from The Royal Society for a brand new project to investigate the potential of delivering DNA vaccines by mouth.

“The patient would be given a small solutio

The findings of this research published on 30th November 2002 in The Lancet suggest that targeting the underlying cause of asthma—rather than treating symptoms of the disorder—could be more effective in reducing severe asthma attacks.

Asthma affects 5.1 million people in the UK and leads to an estimated 1,500 deaths per year, however current treatment methods, based on an assessment of symptoms and a measurement of lung function may not be the most effective.

Asthma is known to be

Metabolic and biochemical reactions are basically the same in all living beings, or at least comparable. The genetic codes of all living beings, that is to say of bacteria, plants, fungii and animals, are made up of the same set of building blocks. Human genes are therefore correctly translated into the corresponding proteins even by bacteria. The features that both bacteria and higher forms of life (so-called eukaryotes) have in common end, however, with the synthesis of «raw proteins» since unlike

The prospect of using bacteria to manufacture complex human proteins for use in therapeutic drugs is a step closer thanks to new research published today in Science.

Researchers from Switzerland and the UK report they have engineered the bacterium Escherichia coli to carry a vital piece of cell machinery that adds sugar molecules to newly synthesized proteins by a process known as glycosylation.

The finding opens up the possibility of producing complex human proteins
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Novel Method of Creating New Species Observed in Laboratory Yeast

The sex life of yeast has University of Houston biologists fermenting new ideas about evolution and beer.

Researchers studying yeast reproductive habits have for the first time observed a rapid method for the creation of new species, shedding light on the way organisms evolve and suggesting possible ways to improve yeast biotechnology and fermentation processes used in beer and wine-making.

“Most mod

A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have solved the structure of an enzyme that modulates central nervous system (CNS) functions such as pain perception, cognition, feeding, sleep, and locomotor activity.

The enzyme, described in the latest issue of the journal Science, is called fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), and it breaks down certain fatty signaling molecules that reside in the lipid membranes of CNS cells. The TSRI group reports that FAAH modulates the

Study opens door for faster, simpler methods of measuring carbon nanotubes

Building upon this summer’s groundbreaking finding that carbon nanotubes are fluorescent, chemists at Rice University have precisely identified the optical signatures of 33 “species” of nanotubes, establishing a new methodology for assaying nanotubes that is simpler and faster than existing methods.

In research published this week by Science magazine, a spectroscopy research team led by Rice Chem

Results of a study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggest that the antibiotic azithromycin could be an effective treatment option for children with cholera.
Cholera is a major public-health problem which is greatly under-reported; children are most affected by this bacterial disease which causes severe diarrhoea resulting in dehydration. Around 5000 deaths from cholera were reported to the WHO in 2000, probably a severe underestimate as Bangladesh—where over 200,000 people are infected with t

Authors of a UK study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggest that targeting the underlying cause of asthma—rather than treating symptoms of the disorder—could be more effective in reducing severe asthma attacks.

Conventional treatment for people with asthma relies on assessments of symptoms and simple measures of lung function. however, increased concentrations of microscopic cells called eosinophils cause the inflammation of airways in the lung that lead to asthma symptoms; eosinophils