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The Stowers Institute for Medical Research Predictions and plans abound these days concerning Kansas City--that border town straddling Missouri and Kansas known for its jazz, barbecue, and riverboat gambling--as a future leader in biomedical research. But perhaps the most eloquent recent argument that such an ambitious goal might be achieved was a standing ovation given on Nov. 8 by 1,200 of the city's business and scientific community leaders to James E. Stowers Jr. and his wife, Virginia G. St

Accuracy in Recounts It can take a pathologist, moving a micrometer across a slide under a microscope, days to measure 10 different layers in a skin tissue sample. It can also take days to count regrown or restenosed endothelial cells to gauge the effect of a drug on, say, ruptured coronary artery elastic lamina. And a second pathologist may get different results. But Mark Braughler of TissueInformatics, speaking at the Techvest Tissue Repair, Replacement, and Regeneration conference in New Yor

Much of the promise of bioinformatics likely lies with the big money and novel approaches of the private sector. At a late October symposium titled "Biosilico 2000," several bioinformatics company executives came together at the Trump Plaza in New York City to discuss the state of the immensely expansive and increasingly heterogeneous field of bioinformatics. Not surprisingly, many touted their products and business plans; but they also discussed and compared philosophies for engaging in the dau

Last year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) routinely assigned patent applications for bioinformatics inventions to examiners in diverse departments. Then the office made a projection, based on input from companies, that it would receive more than 300 such applications in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. To ensure consistent treatment for the predicted flood of filings, PTO created Art Unit 1631 (AU1631) last December. This unit now consists of 10 examiners holding degrees, sometim

A new website from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that many online pharmacies provide legitimate prescription services but that some questionable sites may make purchasing medicines online risky.On its website dedicated to this topic, the FDA highlights some of the problems associated with purchasing prescriptions online. These include sub-standard products; little or no quality control; possibility of an incorrect diagnosis by sites that inappropriately diagnose and prescribe o

The genome of the zebrafish is to be sequenced at the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Centre near Cambridge, UK.

500,000 people will help research councils to solve post-genomic puzzles.

Families of children suffering a degenerative brain disease are suing the hospital and researchers who used their children's blood and tissue to identify and patent the gene responsible for the disorder.

HOUSTON "Mosquitoes are flying syringes," declared Frank Cortez-Flores of Loma Linda University (California), and two mosquito-borne diseases have broken past old geographic boundaries to invade the US. The first, West Nile encephalitis, is a newcomer to the western hemisphere and thus has garnered the most headlines. The other, dengue fever, is considered the world's most important vector-borne viral disease affecting people, in terms of both morbidity and mortality. The West Nile virus, native

The Italian Minister for Agricultural and Forestry Policy has made it clear he intends to ban GMOs of agricultural interest - but will he manage to sway the Italian public?

The UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence has opted to remove confidentiality from its appraisal process as a means of pre-empting information leaks.

A special report just published in the UK reveals the extent and pace of the gene patent rush.