In the aftermath of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger's death last September during a University of Pennsylvania gene therapy trial, intensified regulation of such studies will be a major topic at the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) annual meeting, May 31-June 4 in Denver. "I think the important thing is to really keep focus," says society president Savio L. Woo, director of the Institute for Gene Therapy at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Medical research is a risky business, and we can't

In the aftermath of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger's death last September during a University of Pennsylvania gene therapy trial, intensified regulation of such studies will be a major topic at the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) annual meeting, May 31-June 4 in Denver. "I think the important thing is to really keep focus," says society president Savio L. Woo, director of the Institute for Gene Therapy at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Medical research is a risky business, and we can't

For this article, Steve Bunk interviewed William J. Boyle, associate director, department of cell biology, Amgen, Thousand Oaks, Calif., and Tatsuo Suda, emeritus professor and dean, Showa University School of Dentistry, Tokyo, Japan. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that these papers have been cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age.   D.L. Lacey, E. Timms, H.-L. Tan, M.J. Kelley, C.R. Dunstan, T. Burgess, R. Elliott, A. Colom

Courtesy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Just how important are vitamins and minerals in influencing resistance to infectious diseases? Some of the best current answers to that question will be offered in a supplement to the Journal of Infectious Diseases appearing later this year. The special publication, stemming from a 1999 workshop organized by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, attests that the field is rife with research activity nowadays. Micronutrients such

Graphic: Cathleen Heard The amazing strides forward in biomedical research over the past two decades, led by an American triumvirate of academia, industry, and government, are not without accompanying concerns. One such worry is that curiosity could become an endangered justification for the conduct of life science. Basking in the sun of its results, biomedical research in particular may risk becoming too results-oriented. Increasingly, universities and teaching hospitals are turning to private

Courtesy of National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab.A collection of confiscated and/or donated skins, trophies, and fur coats at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory. Try suggesting to Ed Espinoza that in forensic sciences, wildlife work is the poor sister. The deputy director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Ore., may mention something about anthropomorphism, followed by comparative statistics on populations of walruses and small towns, or the n

Dexterity through Dextrose For osteoarthritis sufferers, injections of a sugar solution could be much more than placebo, a new study suggests (K.D. Reeves et al., "Randomized prospective double-blind prolotherapy for knee osteoarthritis with or without ACL laxity," Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 6:68-80, March 2000). Prolotherapy, the injection of growth factors or their stimulators, is aimed at inducing an inflammatory response, to effect tissue repair or growth. A dextrose solut

A change in the Food and Drug Administration's "philosophy toward review of applications" is responsible for a "remarkable" acceleration in the time required for new drug approvals, according to Kenneth I. Kaitin, director of Tufts University's Center for the Study of Drug Development. The result has been an upsurge of novel medications on the market in recent years. Kaitin adds that the agency and industry now are turning their joint efforts toward shortening drug development times, particularl

The masses of sequencing information that now confront genomic scientists raise a huge question: Exactly what do the products of these genes do? About 30 genomes have been completely sequenced, and up to 100 will be done by year's end, perhaps including a roughly finished sequence of humankind's 100,000 or more genes. Sequence data can identify gene products involved in disease, but the challenge facing researchers is far broader than that. Somehow, they must characterize the biochemical functio

Bioinformatics Tools With efforts mounting to characterize protein functions following genome sequencing, bioinformatics has emerged as a key technology. Three such developments were showcased at a recent genomics conference in San Diego: WHALES (Web Homology Alert Service)--This keeps National Institutes of Health intramural scientists aware of new releases in the databases for DNA and protein sequences. It's based on stored, user-defined profiles that are processed weekly, with results return

University-based researchers have reason for optimism following President Bill Clinton's request in his fiscal year (FY) 2001 budget for a $2.8 billion increase in science funding. As negotiations begin in Congress on the long, bumpy track toward budget approval, the fastest starter out of the gate is the National Science Foundation, which would receive double the largest dollar increase in its half-century of existence. The National Institutes of Health likewise is in line for a substantial fun

For this article, Steve Bunk interviewed Woodring E. Wright, cell biology professor, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that this paper has been cited significantly more often than the average paper of the same type and age. A.G. Bodnar, M. Ouellette, M. Frolkis, S.E. Holt, C.P. Chiu, G.B. Morin, C.B. Harley, J.W. Shay, S. Lichtsteiner, W.E. Wright, "Extension of life-span by introduction of telomerase into normal human cells,"