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With an arsenal of 17 approved drugs and intricate rules for deploying each one, a physician's battle to shut down HIV replication is like chess against an opponent too strong to be driven from the board, so keeping the game going is the only alternative to losing. Today's best strategy for suppressing HIV calls for using three or four inhibitors in combination. As with a chessboard siege defense, conserving pieces while sealing off each new attack, doctors try to pick drug combinations that pre

At the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held in San Francisco, Celera Genomics CEO J. Craig Venter and National Human Genome Research Institute director Francis S. Collins spent considerable time appeasing autograph seekers at their respective plenary lectures--the former, signing dozens of copies of the February 16 issue of AAAS's journal Science, the latter, copies of the February 15 issue of Nature. They were the sorts of receptions usually experienced by roc

Image courtesy of Eyewire ©2001, Graphic: Cathleen Heard The economy may be chasing the bear rather than the bull, but short-term economic downturns are not affecting pharmaceutical firms' expansion--at least, not yet. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that AstraZeneca PLC's profits were up,1 and those who know the industry see the human lifestyle as more of a factor in drug company growth than the economy. "Although you may see peaks and valleys in bioscience growth and development

Amid last month's hoopla over the human genome sequence and what it says about humans, plant biologists announced two new efforts aimed at a firmer understanding of plant evolution--who is related to whom and how--a discipline better known as systematics. Constructing evolutionary family trees is harder than investigating personal genealogies--biologists don't have the equivalent of birth registrations or family bibles to consult. Fossils tell them what ancient plants use to look like, but placi

The Scientist 15[5]:18, Mar. 5, 2001 NEWS News Notes D2 Receptors Fight Addiction By Harvey Black Mice, which have been experimentally addicted to alcohol show a decrease in alcohol consumption when the population of D2 receptors in their brains is increased, Nora D. Volkow, associate director of Brookhaven National Laboratory reported at a symposium on addiction and the brain. In imaging studies, Volkow found that cocaine addicts had lower numbers of these receptors fo

The pharmaceutical industry is cautiously optimistic that the new Bush administration and Congress will continue efforts to streamline the drug discovery and approval process. But the federal regulatory and licensing landscape will also be shaped this year by patent reform and gene therapy issues. In addition, two major pieces of legislation--one affecting drug approval times and the other market exclusivity--will either be phased out or reauthorized in the coming 18 months. "We really c

Courtesy Santa Fe InstituteThe Santa Fe Institute, situated in the hills above Santa Fe, N.M. Even its interior design serves the unusual purpose of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI). At the top of a winding drive on the outskirts of the New Mexico capital that calls itself "the city different," SFI occupies a 1950s hacienda defined by three descending "pods." First is reception and administration. Second is a community area, full of comfortable furniture, with big views of the city and mountains. C

A good gene pool, like love, is where you find it. Now genomics researchers have two new ones to swoon over: one from Estonia, a crossroads of Scandinavian cultures and the northernmost of the former Soviet Union's Baltic republics; and from Tonga, an island kingdom half a world away where a Polynesian people has lived in near-perfect isolation for close to 3,500 years. Tonga and Estonia laid final plans last November and December, respectively, for national gene pool exploration programs aimed

Stewart Bros. Photographers, Inc. Future site of the HHMI's collaborative research campus. New laboratories will be located in the lower left; the institute will occupy portions of the three office buildings pictured to the right. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation's largest privately held funder of biomedical research, has announced plans to build a major new high-tech laboratory facility. The 10-year, $500 million plan includes a biomedical science center for technology developme

Cell Engineering at Hopkins Already a hub for stem cell research, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has announced plans for a new center to focus on selecting and modifying human cells. Called the Institute for Cell Engineering (ICE), the 40,000 square foot building will be funded through a $58.5 million private, anonymously made donation. Hopkins faculty announced the new project at a January 30 press conference. "What we're interested in really is reprogramming cells and puttin

On February 12, amid considerable international fanfare, Rockville, Md.-based Celera Genomics and the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium jointly announced the publishing of long-awaited papers detailing the human genome.1,2. Although the two groups jointly announced the sequencing of about 90 percent of the human genome at a White House press conference last June, drawn-out negotiations delayed the publishing of initial genome data until now. "It would be fair to say that Palestini

Photos © Michael Davidson and The Florida State University These photos show the 60-carbon alkene buckminsterfullerene ("buckyballs"). This substance joins graphite and diamond as a third form of carbon molecule. Technology sometimes derives from clever combinations of tools. Merging immune system cells with cancer cells led to the hybridoma technology that produces monoclonal antibodies. A recipe of restriction enzymes, plasmids, and DNA underlies recombinant DNA and transgenic technologi