NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 31st July 2008 07:00 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 30th July 2008 08:46 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 28th July 2008 11:09 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th July 2008 04:52 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 24th July 2008 05:20 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 23rd July 2008 02:26 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 21st July 2008 04:50 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 18th July 2008 06:03 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 16th July 2008 05:05 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 9th July 2008 04:24 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 8th July 2008 03:13 PM GMT] 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
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 2nd July 2008 09:51 PM GMT] 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
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Andrea's blog
Andrea Gawrylewski
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