Issue | May 2005 | May 2005 | The Scientist Magazine®

Features

The Scientist Staff | May 8, 2005 | 1 min read

Since 1998, when 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger died in a clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania, the news on gene therapy hasn't gotten much better.

Under the Microscope again

Clare Kittredge | May 8, 2005 | 8 min read

The tally is grim: three high-profile cancer cases, including one death, in French boys who underwent pioneering gene therapy for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (X-SCID).

About Us

Meet This Issue's Contributors

, a human embryonic stem cell researcher at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif., returned to academia a year ago after 15 years in biotechnology.

Editorial

The Pope and Science

As we write, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has just been formally installed as Pope Benedictus XVI.

Letter

Women, science, and academia

You write that the cost of daycare "is dwarfed by the costs to innovation of not having half the world's population adequately represented among scientific faculty members, which is the clear result of a lack of daycare."

Next stop, Mars

Jay Buckey describes well the three chief biomedical problems facing manned missions to Mars.1 Although I find his discussion of the radiation problem too pessimistic, we do need to think carefully about mission design and engineering in overcoming it.Above all, one needs to shorten the transit time to Mars and therefore study the trade-offs between the cost of extra propulsion versus the obvious gains (from reducing exposure to radiation and zero-G, as well as reducing the complexity and weight

Opinion

Sharing Stem Cell Information

Like many fellow California human embryonic stem cell researchers, I am looking forward to taking full advantage of the remarkable opportunity that the state's voters have offered us in the form of $3 billion in funding over the next 10 years.

Notebook

New genome project, new controversy

This month, National Geographic and IBM launched the Genographic Project, an ambitious attempt to trace human migration out of Africa during the last 50,000 to 60,000 years.

Need a paper? Fake it

For untenured professors, the pressure to publish is intense.

Use stem cells, get sued

Dimitri Bonnville got cardiac stem cell therapy. Now he's suing

Vision

Cancer Gene Therapy at the Crossroads

Scientists have established that gene therapy can cause cancer.1 But after more than a decade of clinical experience, formal evidence is mounting that gene therapy can cure cancer as well. The allure has attracted sufficient attention to launch a journal, Cancer Gene Therapy, in 1994. And burgeoning literature documents progress in the field.2 A landmark event late in 2003 was approval of the first such therapy. China's Shenzhen SiBono GenTech now markets an adenoviral vector that expresses wild

D at Roche

Much has been written about a perceived lack of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, as it relates to productivity.

Hot Paper

Insertional Mutagenesis from a Viral Vector

Integrated viral sequences can dysregulate genes.

Research

Longevity

During autophagy-literally "self-eating"-cells deliver cytoplasmic constituents, including whole organelles, to the lysosome for degradation.

Taking the Lid Off the Molecular Garbage Pail

a last resting place for worn-out, misfolded, or otherwise unwanted proteins.

Briefs

Proof for prions?

Protein aggregates generated in a test tube were found to infect wild-type hamsters with a disease much like scrapie.

Wound repair in mouse and fly linked

The same family of transcription factors directs the epidermal wound repair in mice and flies, according to two research teams.

New model of leukocyte arrest

Researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science report that lymphocytes rolling on high endothelial venules stop abruptly in response to chemokines presented by endothelial cells.1 Their findings suggest that chemokines stop lymphocytes in a fraction of a second, faster than previously thought.Ronen Alon and colleagues found that chemokines trigger instantaneous extension of the LFA-1 integrin – an adhesion molecule that changes between an inactive, bent conformation and an active, e

Technology

Machining the Body

Two years ago, cell biologist Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, created a buzz in the tissue-engineering world by predicting that in the not-so-distant future, scientists would be able to print whole replacement organs, and eventually whole bodies, using machines similar to desktop printers.

Kinase Screening Services Probe Signaling Pathways

Kinases, the enzymes that catalyze phosphorylation events, have been implicated in hundreds of different diseases, including cancer, inflammatory diseases, and neurological disorders.

Quantum Dots Get Smaller

For all the hype about nanotechnology, sometimes small isn't quite small enough.

Tools and Technology

One Fusion Protein, Many Labels

Have you ever needed a red fluorescent version of a protein, but only green was available?

Living Microscopy

-Slides, that enable both culturing and high-resolution microscopy of live cells.

Brighter X-rays on the Benchtop

The power of a synchrotron facility can now be found in a laboratory X-ray source.

Well Spotted

of Huntingdon, UK, recently released a new Plate Arraying module compatible with its BioRobotics MicroGrid II and GeneMachines Omni-Grid Accent contact printers.

BioBusiness

Taking a New Look at an Ancient Tradition

In March, Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, Calif., teamed up with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's (HKUST) Biotechnology Research Corporation to find new drugs that would activate telomerase and, it is hoped, result in a treatment for age-related diseases.

Institutional Review Boards in Crisis

The pressure is building on Institutional Review Boards.

Reverse Transcript

Man Behaving Oddly

As a young scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, Andrew Murray once attended an opera wearing a red rubber dress.