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Cilia link seeing and peeing

By Bob Grant | January 16, 2008

I've officially heard my favorite one-liner here at the Keystone symposium on the molecular basis for biological membrane organization. In her presentation on the molecular link between polycystic defects such as retinopathies and linkurl:polycystic kidney disease,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/14662/ Angela Wandinger-Ness of the University of New Mexico offered this gem: "There is a connection between seeing and peeing." After the giggles subsided, linkurl:Wandinger-Ness;http://

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Race drug marketing dropped

By Kerry Grens | January 16, 2008

The company that sells linkurl:BiDil,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15896 the first drug to be marketed specifically for linkurl:one race of patients,;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53869 is pulling its marketing and sales support for the drug. While the approval of the drug just for African American patients was met with controversy, the company, Nitromed, cites a "challenging capital market environment" as the reason for pulling its marketing efforts, according to a l

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Calcium signaling: STIM revisited

By Bob Grant | January 15, 2008

In cell signaling, calcium is king. The flux of calcium ions across cell membranes regulates cellular activities from muscle contraction to neuron firing to immune cell function. A talk I saw here at the Keystone symposium on the molecular basis for biological membrane organization in Big Sky, Montana, presented some significant steps forward in understanding the molecular pathway whereby the cell senses the depletion of calcium from stores in the endoplasmic reticulum and in order to allow the

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Folkman remembered as creative, kind

By Alison McCook | January 15, 2008

This afternoon, I spoke with Harold Dvorak, a colleague of Judah Folkman's at Harvard, who reacted to his colleague's linkurl:sudden passing;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54173/ yesterday. He said that he's spent the day thinking back over Folkman's generosity as a physician, not only his achievements as a pioneer in anti-angiogenesis therapy for cancer. Hundreds of patients contacted Folkman with problems - an incurable case of cancer, for instance - and he stayed i

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Judah Folkman dies

By Alison McCook | January 15, 2008

Judah Folkman, a proponent of the idea that halting angiogenesis could starve tumors, died yesterday at the age of 74. According to news reports, the cause of death was a heart attack. The promise of anti-angiogenesis therapies led to many high hopes for Folkman's work, particularly when the New York Times ran a linkurl:1998 story;http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Folkmans-War-Angiogenesis-Struggle/dp/0375502440 quoting James Watson's prediction that Folkman would cure cancer in two years. Folkman "wa

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Let's grow organs

By Alison McCook | January 15, 2008

This week's news about researchers growing a new heart from baby cells was exciting, no doubt - a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, led by Doris Taylor, grew a beating rat heart by adding heart cells from newborn rats to the scaffolding of a dead rat's heart. After only two weeks, the authors report in this month's Nature Medicine, the organ began conducting electrical impulses and pumping blood. The achievement, researchers said, suggests scientists could one day linkurl:gr

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$100 million more from Gates

By Alison McCook | January 14, 2008

The linkurl:Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/25259/ has established a new five-year $100 million fast-track grant program for global health research. Each project will receive $100,000, with the option of additional funding if merited. The program, which will adopt a fast-track review, is for scientists with "creative concepts" to fight global health scourges affecting developing countries, such as vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics. One of the

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How useful is ethics class?

By Edyta Zielinska | January 14, 2008

PhD students and postdocs who get training in responsible conduct in research (RCR) don't absorb the lessons, especially when they've seen others break the rules before, according to a recent linkurl:report;http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0898-9621&volume=15&issue=1&spage=30 in the journal __Accountability in Research: Policies & Quality Assurance.__ Main message: Getting rules in ethics classes is useless if the scientific community doesn't obey the rules, too. The auth

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True neural stem cells?

By Kerry Grens | January 14, 2008

Researchers have identified a distinct group of early-stage linkurl:neural stem cells,;http://www.the-scientist.com/2007/4/1/42/1 called neural rosette cells, that can form more types of neural cells than typical neural stem cells, reports a study published today (January 14) in linkurl:__Genes & Development__.;http://www.genesdev.org As neural stem cells develop from embryonic stem cells, they form a radial pattern of epithelial cells, called rosettes. Scientists had seen the morphology befor

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Embryo biopsy harmless -- really

By Kerry Grens | January 11, 2008

In findings that confirm linkurl:previous ones;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/24363/ ultimately dismissed as hype in 2006, scientists have shown that it is possible to create stem cells from an embryo without destroying it. In a linkurl:study;http://images.cell.com/images/EdImages/chung.pdf published online this week in __Cell Stem Cell,__ scientists led by Advanced Cell Technology's Robert Lanza removed one cell from an eight-cell embryo and created viable lines of stem cells. The e

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