March 2001

Image courtesy of Eyewire ©2001, Graphic: Cathleen Heard The economy may be chasing the bear rather than the bull, but short-term economic downturns are not affecting pharmaceutical firms' expansion--at least, not yet. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that AstraZeneca PLC's profits were up,1 and those who know the industry see the human lifestyle as more of a factor in drug company growth than the economy. "Although you may see peaks and valleys in bioscience growth and development

With an arsenal of 17 approved drugs and intricate rules for deploying each one, a physician's battle to shut down HIV replication is like chess against an opponent too strong to be driven from the board, so keeping the game going is the only alternative to losing. Today's best strategy for suppressing HIV calls for using three or four inhibitors in combination. As with a chessboard siege defense, conserving pieces while sealing off each new attack, doctors try to pick drug combinations that pre

At the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held in San Francisco, Celera Genomics CEO J. Craig Venter and National Human Genome Research Institute director Francis S. Collins spent considerable time appeasing autograph seekers at their respective plenary lectures--the former, signing dozens of copies of the February 16 issue of AAAS's journal Science, the latter, copies of the February 15 issue of Nature. They were the sorts of receptions usually experienced by roc

The pharmaceutical industry is cautiously optimistic that the new Bush administration and Congress will continue efforts to streamline the drug discovery and approval process. But the federal regulatory and licensing landscape will also be shaped this year by patent reform and gene therapy issues. In addition, two major pieces of legislation--one affecting drug approval times and the other market exclusivity--will either be phased out or reauthorized in the coming 18 months. "We really c

Amid last month's hoopla over the human genome sequence and what it says about humans, plant biologists announced two new efforts aimed at a firmer understanding of plant evolution--who is related to whom and how--a discipline better known as systematics. Constructing evolutionary family trees is harder than investigating personal genealogies--biologists don't have the equivalent of birth registrations or family bibles to consult. Fossils tell them what ancient plants use to look like, but placi

The Scientist 15[5]:18, Mar. 5, 2001 NEWS News Notes D2 Receptors Fight Addiction By Harvey Black Mice, which have been experimentally addicted to alcohol show a decrease in alcohol consumption when the population of D2 receptors in their brains is increased, Nora D. Volkow, associate director of Brookhaven National Laboratory reported at a symposium on addiction and the brain. In imaging studies, Volkow found that cocaine addicts had lower numbers of these receptors fo

This note is in response to Saul Green,1 who was responding to Mary Woolley's call for scientists to reach out to nonscientists.2 Green says he and his colleagues have been trying to do this for many years but without apparent success. I believe I can see why. It is not, as he implies, the "closedness" of those who, for example, believe in homeopathy and are therefore unresponsive to scientific refutation of that belief system. Rather it appears to be the mutual "closedness" of two distinct beli

Thank you for the update on the status and plight of postdocs.1 I personally spent 11 years on the postdoc/research associate circuit, and found that expectations for performance relative to the salary, benefits, and opportunities for advancement were totally unrealistic. I became less competitive in the grant "game" each year that passed, not because of my proposals, but because I was seen as "not productive." Catch-22! Many of my colleagues dropped out and pursued non-life science careers in

Few drug discovery stories have offered researchers as many chances for dismissive disbelief as the one William B. Coley launched with his bacterial lysate treatments for cancer. If, perhaps, he looks down from above, he's probably watching the development of immunostimulatory oligonucleotides with a keen sense of excitement and anticipation. "For who would have thought," marvels Robert L. Bratzler, CEO of Coley Pharmaceuticals Group, "that DNA, which was not supposed to have immune stimulation

An Herbal Cure for PMS? Approaches to treating premenstrual syndrome (PMS) include taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac, rubbing in progesterone creams, and eating more essential fatty acids, all of which are of questionable efficacy. An Internet search turns up the usual "food supplement" remedies. "Herbal solace," for example, offers as a main ingredient phenylalinine, an "element" that is found naturally in some plants and animals. This makes some sense, for phenyla

For this article, Steve Bunk interviewed Jörn E. Schmitz, instructor in medicine, and Keith A. Reimann, associate professor of medicine, both of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard University Medical School. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age.   J.E. Schmitz, M.J. Kuroda, S. Santra, V.G. Sasseville, M.A. Simon, M.A. Lifton, P. Racz, K. Tenner-Racz, M. Dale

For this article, Steve Bunk interviewed Carl R. Woese, Stanley O. Ikenberry Professor Microbiology, University of Illinois, and Gary J. Olsen, associate professor of microbiology, University of Illinois. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age.   B.L. Maidak, J.R. Cole, C.T. Parker, Jr., G.M. Garrity, N. Larsen, B. Li, T.G. Lilburn, M.J. McCaughey, G.J. Olsen, R. Overbeek, S

Molecular Modeling, Visualization, and Structure Prediction Software (Additional material not included in the print edition) Courtesy of Theoretical Biophysics GroupBeckman InstituteUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignThe photosynthetic reaction center of the purple bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas viridis (rendered using VMD) The aim of some life science researchers is to understand human physiology and the various diseases and mutations that can cause the body to go haywire. Accomplishing th

Suppliers of Cytotoxicity Reagents (Part 1) Suppliers of Cytotoxicity Reagents (Part 2) Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series on cell death. A second article on apoptosis will be published June 25. Courtesy of Loats AssociatesA comet assay showing degradation of 45 percent of the genomic DNA A few years ago the ultimate fate of dead cells was the laboratory trashcan. But cell necrobiology (the study of mechanisms of cell death) is now one of the hot fields of science.1 Cells c