Plans for a Biosafety Level 4 containment linkurl:lab;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23468/ at Boston University hit another bump in the road yesterday (December 13), when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled unanimously that the state's environmental approval process for the project had been deeply flawed. The assessment echoed a recent National Research Council linkurl:review,;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53944/ which concluded last month that the NIH had al

Adult stem cells taken from humans suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy can be genetically modified and used to treat the disease in a mouse model, researchers linkurl:report;http://www.cellstemcell.com/ today in Cell Stem Cell. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a progressive condition caused by a mutation on the X chromosome that leads to a lack of dystrophin protein in muscle. The mutation is usually caused by a deletion or mutation in the gene, leading to a shift in the reading frame of m

The makers of the antibody-based cancer drug Erbitux have settled a patent dispute with Israeli researchers who claimed to have invented the process for making the drug. Last year, Yeda Research and Development, the tech transfer office of the Weizmann Institute, sued ImClone and Sanofi-Aventis over the Erbitux patent. (The patent was owned by the latter and licensed by the former.) The dispute centered on a long-standing argument between Yale researcher linkurl:Joseph Schlessinger;http://www.

A former Cleveland Clinic physician is suing the hospital for firing him over conflicts of interest, the Wall Street Journal linkurl:reports.;http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB119699329567216612.html Jay Yadav, who was fired last year from his post as head of the vascular intervention unit, invented a device to prevent blockages caused by neck stents. He tested the device at the Cleveland Clinic, and received shares from the company that commercialized it. However, he insists that he reveal

Skin cells reprogrammed for pluripotency can be used to treat anemia in a mouse model of the disease, reports a study published online in Science today (December 6). The researchers, led by linkurl:Rudolph Jaenisch;http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/jaenisch.html and Jacob Hanna at MIT, say the study provides proof of principle that linkurl:induced pluripotent stem cells;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53873/ (iPS cells) can be used to treat diseases. The scientists first creat

Jeff Perkel, a past editor at The Scientist, reports: It would seem that, when it comes to the Archon X Prize for Genomics, George Church has had a change of heart. The $10 million prize will go to the first group that can sequence 100 genomes (to at least 98 percent coverage and with less than one error per 100,000 bases) in 10 days, for under $10,000 per genome. linkurl:Last year,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/36685/ Church, a Harvard geneticist and DNA sequencing pioneer, tol

The Scientist intern Jonathan Scheff reports: Seymour Benzer, whose research into the structure and function of genes as well as the connection between genes and behavior laid the foundation of modern genetics, died on Friday, November 30, at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. He was 86. linkurl:David Anderson,;http://www.dja.caltech.edu a colleague at the California Institute of Technology, where Benzer was a professor of neuroscience, in a statement called Benzer "a giant in science... He star

Japanese researchers who linkurl:reprogrammed;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53873/ pluripotency into adult human skin cells say they have improved the technique, according to a linkurl:paper;http://www.nature.com/nbt published online today (Nov. 30) in Nature Biotechnology. linkurl:Shinya Yamanaka;http://www.frontier.kyoto-u.ac.jp/rc02/kyojuE.html of Kyoto University and his colleagues originally used four transcription factors to induce pluripotency in linkurl:mouse;http://www.the

Videos are on the rise in science publishing, as we linkurl:reported;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53500/ in August. On Friday, BioMed Central, sister company to The Scientist, joined the video crew with the linkurl:launch;http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/bmcblog/entry/biomed_central_youtube_channel_debuts of its YouTube channel. Unlike efforts such as the video methods journal, JoVE, the 45 videos hosted on the channel so far consist of authors and editors talking about thei

A Surrey, UK, lab thought to be the linkurl:source;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53474/ of a foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in August again ran afoul of biosafety practices last week, when a leaking valve likely released live FMD virus into a contained drainage system. Merial, a company on the site that makes FMD vaccine, had been banned from using live virus after the August outbreak, but the government restored its license to work with FMD earlier this month when biosafety

The fifth-largest academic journal publisher, SAGE, yesterday (November 20) announced an agreement with linkurl:open access;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/home/53781/ science and medicine publisher, Hindawi, to launch a new series of open access journals, the Chronicle of Higher Education linkurl:reports.;http://chronicle.com/news/article/3472/journal-publisher-goes-for-open-access Publication will be funded by author charges, using a linkurl:gold open access;http://www.the-scientist.com/

Earlier this week, The Scientist linkurl:reported;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53869/ on a trial comparing the efficacy of a hypertension drug, nebivolol, in African American and white American patients. It seems that Forest Laboratories, the drug's manufacturer, is making all kinds of comparisons for marketing purposes, and resorting to some questionable practices to do so. The Wall Street Journal Health Blog linkurl:reports;http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/11/21/odd-ghostwriting-off