Virus-Disease Links Are Hard to Forge Researchers confront skepticism, conflicting results, limited funding By Douglas Steinberg If genomics is glitzy nowadays, virus research is, well, gritty. Its latest heyday, when HIV was shown to cause AIDS, only masked its true nature. Associating viruses with diseases has always been particularly difficult and labor intensive. Cause-and-effect relationships are maddeningly elusive.1 Consider the following two questions: Does infection by mouse mammary

In the human tragedy of HIV infection, dendritic cells play a vicious double role analogous to an international cocaine trafficker who morphs into a street-level crack peddler. These antigen-presenting immune-system cells transport HIV from the mucosal membranes near which it enters the body to secondary lymphoid organs. There, the cells pass the virus over to the T lymphocytes that it will ultimately destroy. Exactly how dendritic cells serve these functions is unknown, but two new studie

When inventors apply for a patent, they must set forth the utility of their invention and describe it. Which utilities and description meet the grade, and which don't? The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) recently proposed new guidelines for its examiners. These guidelines were discussed in an article titled "Biotech Faces Evolving Patent System" in the last issue of The Scientist.1 PTO had not at that time published specific examples of how the guidelines would be interpreted. The office

Like medieval alchemists, modern biologists apply intricate, esoteric protocols to lowly matter, such as bacteria and rodents. Unlike alchemists, biologists successfully transmute these creatures into gold--disease-fighting pharmaceuticals and profits accruing from them. An indispensable ingredient in this dross-to-drug process is patent protection, which preserves monopoly and attracts investment. Unfortunately, the patent system isn't as ideal a catalyst as the chimerical philosopher's stone s

Graphic: Cathleen Heard The boy had the classic symptoms of acute leukemia--low blood counts and tumor cells circulating in his bloodstream. But the diagnosis was tentative because the tumor cells looked atypical for leukemia. So doctors extracted RNA from the cells, made cDNAs from the RNA, and incubated the cDNAs with a chip bearing thousands of single-stranded gene fragments on its glass surface. The hybridization pattern suggested, surprisingly, that the boy had a muscle tumor. After confirm

Genetically modified (GM) crops, and foods derived from them, continue to ignite controversy and spur jockeying by trade groups and businesses. At its January convention in Houston, the American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents the interests of farmers, released results of a survey last summer on attitudes toward biotechnology and food. Biotechnology was supported by 57 percent of the 1,002 respondents if it improved taste, 65 percent if it improved nutritional value, 69 percent if it in

In its bitter, seven-year-old lawsuit against Promega Corp., the Roche Group has just been deprived of one of its patents covering Taq DNA polymerase, the enzyme crucial to automating PCR. The federal judge hearing the case decided last month that the inventors of a method for purifying this enzyme had dealt dishonestly with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in applying for the patent in 1988 and 1989. Because of the inventors' "inequitable conduct," Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the Northe

In 1993, Jamie Zhang was in a career funk not uncommon among biologists with Ph.D.s. Three years out of graduate school, she was in her second postdoctoral job, studying the molecular biology of cancer at Rutgers University. But she wasn't satisfied in the lab--and hadn't been for a long time. "Everybody's unhappy as a graduate student," she observes. "Then in my first postdoc, I just felt like I was spinning my wheels." She blamed the feeling on her doubts about her project and on the differen

Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., just won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his work on nitric oxide. Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., heads the National Human Genome Research Institute. And 49 investigators who hold both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees are funded by the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute. What these disparate observations reflect is the rise of the M.D.-Ph.D., whose training and professional pedigree dovetail nicely with two hallmarks of the current biomedical arena: rapid

Pity the academic researcher. Doing good science is hard enough, but getting grants and spending them wisely may be even more daunting. By instinct and training, most scientists aren't cut out to be money managers or accountants. Yet, researchers are being thrust ever more into the fiscal realm. "PIs [principal investigators] are carrying more responsibility for the administration of their awards than they have in the past," observes Julie Norris, director of the Office of Sponsored Programs at

A pharmaceutical milestone seems to have been reached last month when a National Cancer Institute panel approved an anti-tumor drug called PS-341 for government-financed clinical trials. PS-341 is the first agent targeting the ubiquitin-mediated proteolytic system to be headed for human testing, according to ProScript Inc., the small firm in Cambridge, Mass., that developed the drug. Clinical trials at NCI and several medical centers could begin later this summer if the Food and Drug Administra

New machines and approaches are offering neuroscientists unprecedented access to the working human brain By Douglas Steinberg Photo: Neil Michel/Axiom Sylvia WIRED FOR AN IMAGE: Research associate Valerie Clark gets her brain waves recorded by Ron Mangun, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis. Mind-reading, that staple of science fiction, is inching closer to science fact, thanks to steady progress in the field of brain imaging. In the last few years, neuroimagers hav