March 1998

Question of the day: Why is basic research, particularly biomedical research, like highways and bridges? Answer: Because Congress loves them both, especially in this election year. 'MIRACULOUS': NIH, under the direction of Harold Varmus, would get an 8.4 percent increase in its budget under President Clinton's proposed plan. For that reason, as much as any other, the spending plan that Congress is now writing for the fiscal year that begins October 1 shapes up as one of the best research-fundin

DECOY RECEPTORS: Genentech's Avi Ashkenazi suspects that using ligands to bind to decoy receptors present in healthy cells, but not in cancer cells, could trigger apoptosis in tumors. Scientists studying signal transduction have spent the past several years piecing together the cell's apoptotic machinery-the complex signaling mechanisms that tell damaged cells to commit suicide. The discovery of more signaling proteins and their receptors has given biotechnology companies potential tools to fi

Date: March 16, 1998 New Drug Development A regional lab visit highlights challenges of agency-wide change At the Food and Drug Administration's Central Region office in Philadelphia, cabinetsful of documentation offer only a vague notion of the paperwork involved in getting a new drug through FDA's review and approval process. Nicholas Falcone, the district office's coordinator of new drug applications (NDAs) and abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs)-the latter for generic compounds-hefts

CALLING ALL MENTORS: Washington's Steven Nourse says disabled students often are not encouraged by teachers and counselors to study science. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires that United States companies comply with mandates to improve accessibility for disabled individuals. Yet U.S. Census data show that disabled people constitute more than 10 percent of the general work force and only 2.7 percent of the scientific and engineering work force. To improve opportunities for th

Edited by: James Kling P.A. Hoodless, T. Haerry, S. Abdollah, M. Stapleton, M.B. O'Connor, L. Attisano, J.L. Wrana, "MADR1, a MAD-related protein that functions in BMP2 signaling pathways," Cell, 85:489-500, 1996. (Cited in more than 115 publications to date) Comments by Jeffrey L. Wrana, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and department of medical genetics and microbiology, University of Toronto CHAIN REACTION: A team led by Jeffrey Wrana of the Hospital for Sick Children

Edited by: James Kling M. Packer, M.R. Bristow, J.N. Cohn, W.S. Colucci, M.B. Fowler, E.M. Gilbert, N.H. Shusterman, "The effect of carvedilol on morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic heart failure," New England Journal of Medicine, 334:1349-55, 1996. (Cited in more than 160 publications to date) Comments by Edward M. Gilbert, division of cardiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City STANDARD OF CARE: Research by Utah's Edward Gilbert suggests that blocking nore

Liquid chrom-atography is to the protein re-searcher what the hammer is to the carpenter. Liquid chromatographic techniques comprise a major portion of the repertoire of protocols the protein researcher can call upon to purify and analyze proteins. Modern liquid chromatography has come a long way since its infancy-when early matrices were capable of providing only crude separations-to modern matrices and technologies that can accomplish the purification of a protein to homogeneity in a single

More and more, products are developed "to make our lives easier". From self-cleaning ovens to fast-food drive-throughs to filing taxes by phone or computer (April 15 is rapidly approaching), more efficient and painless ways to go about our chores are developed daily, and biotechnology is no exception to this process. Preassembled, prepackaged bottle top filters are a prime example of a product designed to save scientists precious time in the laboratory. MSI Internally Supported Filter. Image c