April 1999

As the role of college and university president increasingly becomes that of chief fundraiser, the trend is to fill the post with an individual whose administrative experience outweighs his or her academic credentials. Politicians and business leaders--people with an eye on sources of money, from legislatures or bottom-line savings--also fit the fundraising requirements. David Baltimore Despite this trend, a small number of people trained in the biological sciences have become college preside

While prominent scientists plead with legislators to reconsider their conservative stance on funding human embryonic stem (ES) cell research, a six-year-old company in Baltimore is quietly making the matter moot. In a just-released tour-de-force research report, it is no longer quite so quiet.1 Researchers at Osiris Therapeutics and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine coaxed human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) from adults' bone marrow to develop into cartilage, fat, and bone cells

Pfizer's Anipryl is designed to treat dogs with Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome. A new market is emerging for the use of human psychoactive drugs on pets with behavioral problems. The first two such medications to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, both of them for dogs, became available early this year. Novartis Animal Health of Greensboro, N.C., now markets clomipramine hydrochloride, a tricyclic antidepressant used for obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans, under the

With news about Dolly and embryonic stem cells the stuff of cocktail party conversation, cloning a transgenic sheep or cow seems like child's play. The recipe is simple: Insert a pet gene into the nucleus of a cultured cell, fuse it with an enucleated egg, and voilà--a cow with high-octane milk. But incorporating genes into nuclear chromosomes isn't the only road to fame and fortune. Animals and plants have other sources of genetic information--their respiratory mitochondria and photosy

During the advent of gene therapy, fixing single-gene disorders seemed the most obvious application. But early vectors failed to transfect enough targeted cells long enough to have more than a transient effect. Recent animal studies using adeno-associated virus (AAV) may provide renewed hope for treating single-gene disorders. Two groups recently took advantage of AAV's ability to infect nondividing muscle cells--something that most other vectors cannot provide.1 And both used clever techniques

When Herbert Boyer of the University of California and Stanley Cohen of Stanford University found a way to recombine DNA molecules in test tubes using restriction enzymes,1 they crossed the ultimate milestone in genetic engineering in the early 1970s. They also set the stage for a firestorm of controversy. Scientists and nonscientists feared that the new technology could be used to create hazardous biological materials. Could, for example, pathogenic genes cloned into E.coli plasmids transform

Anger, uncertainty, and confusion followed in the wake of the unprecedented suspension of research March 26 at the Veterans Administration Greater Los Angeles Health Care System (VAGLAHS), the largest center of its kind in the country. "Everything has come to a screeching halt," said VAGLAHS spokeswoman Marianne Davis, who estimated some 1,200 protocols and hundreds of researchers were stopped in their tracks. The order--which applies to the five Los Angeles-area facilities and seven outpatien

Several announcements on biotechnology research have made the front pages of the country's major newspapers over the past few months. Stories have ranged from gene therapy on a fetus, to the highly competitive race to crack the human gene code, to an attempt to transfer genes from the egg of an infertile woman into the egg of another woman in the hopes of achieving a viable pregnancy. As with the announcement two years ago of the cloning of an adult ewe in Scotland, these reports cause feelings

One of the foremost concerns of biomedical scientists in the United States is the difficulty in obtaining grant funding from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH grant review system has now become like the weather: Everybody talks about it, but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. A disturbing example of the shortcomings of NIH review panels was provided by John McGowan, the director of extramural research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He courag

UPSTREAM, DOWNSTREAM: Biochemical activity upstream of cyclooxygenase is better understood than reactions downstream of the enzyme. Cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and stroke represent disparate destinations. But the pathogenic road leading to each passes through one enzyme: cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2). Because of that biochemical junction, a class of compounds called COX-2 inhibitors, originally designed as anti-inflammatory agents against arthritis, may have broader utility. The relationship betwe

Bioethics is "definitely a growth industry," says Norman Fost. So you want to be a bioethicist. Join the rather crowded, ever-growing club. Bioethics centers and programs continue to proliferate as doctors, lawyers, and persons of every conceivable background remain intrigued by issues ranging from human cloning to managed health care. As Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, puts it, bioethics has moved from "infancy into adolescence." Th

improve sensitivity fivefold Schematic image of ThermoQuest's UV6000LP Photodiode Array Detector Date: April 12, 1999 (This is a slightly revised version of the article which appeared in the print edition of The Scientist) The LightPipe Flowcell from ThermoQuest is one of the critical components of the company's new UV6000LP Photodiode Array Detector. The flowcell resolves a longstanding problem in optoelectric devices: When the pathlength of a conventional flowcell is increased, both

"Innovation is our mission," states Rockford, Ill.-based Pierce Chemical Company's Rick Chu. True to those words, Chu has applied Pierce's expertise in detergent chemistry to the development of a family of protein extraction reagents designed to rapidly and efficiently extract proteins from bacteria, yeast, and mammalian cell lines. Cell lysis, of course, is an important first step in recovering recombinant proteins or for providing samples for various assays. The new Pierce protein extraction

Molecular Devices' FLIPR384 System The accelerating pace of drug discovery has spawned an increasing need for functional assays using living cells. Automating these assays for high-throughput systems, however, has proven to be difficult. Noting that the most common biological assays employed in high-throughput settings rely on some kind of fluorescent measurement, Molecular Devices Corporation of Sunnyvale, Calif., has developed an automated solution for functional whole-cell screening. Launc

Peanuts may be losing their bite PEANUT ALLERGY VACCINE Peanuts are more than just an annoyance on airplanes--for a few dozen people each year, they cause deadly anaphylactic shock. The only protection is knowledge of one's allergy and avoidance of the offending food. But most peanut-associated allergic deaths occur from peanut extracts added to prepared foods--additives that sometimes remain unlisted on labels. A peanut allergy vaccine could prevent such deaths. Kam Leong, a professor of biom