Since news that researchers had restored sight in dogs with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) broke two weeks ago, Jean Bennett's phones at the F.M. Kirby Center for Molecular Ophthalmology at University of Pennsylvania's Scheie Eye Institute haven't stopped ringing. Anxious parents, whose infants suffer from this and other retinal degenerative diseases, want help. But they have to wait a few years; much more needs to be done. Researchers at Penn, Cornell University, and the University of Florida

The National Institutes of Health awarded Northwestern University $17 million for a five-year project examining functional mouse genomics, one of the largest grants the institution has ever received. Through a technique honed by Joseph S. Takahashi, professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern and director of the newly established NIH Neurogenomics Center, random point mutations are introduced using the chemical ENU (N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea), and the mice are screened for specific beha

With the potential for catching serious metabolic disorders before symptoms appear, medical laboratories in the United States are increasingly screening newborns using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) technology. A recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows about 500,000 newborns underwent such screening last year, up from 60,000 in 1996. This report, "Using Tandem Mass Spectrometry for Metabolic Disease Screening Among Newborns" (w

You say tomato, but Phyllis Bowen, nutrition and dietetics professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, says possible prostate cancer deterrent and a great source of research funds. Recently added to the list of project directors for the National Foundation for Cancer Research, Bowen and collaborator, Konstantin Christov will use $300,000 in NFCR funding to examine the role of lycopene (a strong antioxidant that gives tomatoes their red color) in apoptosis of prostate cancer cells and hyperplas