"I'm not at all surprised at the time it's taken for monoclonal antibodies to move forward," says Patrick Scannon, president of Xoma Corp., a San Francisco-based biotechnology company that specializes in monoclonal antibody--or MAb--therapeutics. "I was always incredulous about the so-called magic bullet claims." The bold claims to which Scannon refers began springing up in 1975, the same year that the monoclonal antibody was first developed. Essentially bioengineered forms of antibodies--the

University of Iowa biochemist John Donelson's brush with disaster during a 1987 expedition to West Africa is a prime example of the kind of nightmare that can occur when a scientist embarks on a research project in a Third World country. For weeks Donelson had been touring remote areas in Mali and Cameroon, collecting parasite specimens from natives infected with onchocerciasis, a disease prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. Midway through the Cameroon leg of his trip, Donelson ran low on the liqui

In 1948, a group of government researchers arrived in a small New England city to begin a long-term epidemiologic study of its residents. In the ensuing 42 years, their research has come to have considerable impact on health care in the United States. The project, the Framingham Heart Study, conducted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health, has provided surveillance of the cardiac health of a randomly selected sample of men and women from

In the 1990s, anyone tuning in to a television news program or opening a popular magazine in the United States can learn about the dangers of such heart risk factors as hypertension, high cholesterol, and cigarette smoking. But until the early 1950s, these factors were not identified as precursors of heart disease. "The Framingham study put into numbers what was only assumed or thought at the time," says Marvin Moser, a clinical professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. "And

Forecasting who will walk away with the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology is hardly a precise science. Yet there are at least two indicators that have consistently pointed to prize-winning potential. One is a scientist's citation ranking; there is an unusually high correlation between citation frequency and Nobel recognition. The second indicator is the winning of one of the so-called predictor prizes that traditionally anticipate Nobel committee selections. As Columbia University sociolog

For the better part of this century, microbiologists have largely ignored evolutionary relationships among bacteria. But a revolution has occurred in microbiology with the advent of nucleic sequencing: Today, new phylogenetic relationships can be determined in far more detail and depth than was ever thought possible. Carl R. Woese, 62, of the department of microbiology at the University of Illinois in Urbana, is widely considered the leader of this revolution. His 1987 review, "Bacterial evolu

Since the discovery of monoclonal antibodies in 1975 (see pages 22 and 29), scientists have attempted to harness their power to bind selectively with substances in the body. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers sought to combine potent cell toxins with a monoclonal antibody that would bind with cancer cells. They believed that the resulting immunotoxin (IT) could then be launched as a kind of surgical strike on cancer cells. But, as is the case with many new ventures in science, thing

The last decade has seen extraordinary advances in identifying single genes that are responsible for a variety of human diseases. Most recantly researchers have pinpointed the genes that cause retinoblastoma, chronic granulomatous disease, muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis, the last as recently as September. Ingenious experimental design and new technologies are helping to pave the way for rapid identification of other disease-causing genes. And from there, the development of improved d

With an estimated 500,000 cases worldwide, the number of AIDS patients is quickly outpacing the meager advancements made to control the disease and treat those infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. Only one drug, zidovudine (AZT), has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat HIV infection. Although results from recent clinical trials have found that AZT significantly slows the progression of the disease in patients with early AIDS-related complex (ARC), the dr