May 2007

Pain and PromiseAutoimmune diseases lack the sledgehammer impact, and therefore the instant recognition, of our other great medical afflictions such as cancer and heart disease. But as the vivid patient testimonies on pages 6-15 illustrate, they are worthy of notoriety. Insidious and nasty, difficult to diagnose, perplexing to treat, bewildering for patients to understand, and painful to live with, autoimmunity presents a series of daunting challenges. First, there's the sheer number of condi

The Diseases Autoimmunity is transformed from an esoteric scientific challenge by the daily reality of millions of patients. So we begin with a description of the impact of autoimmune disease on patients, their families, society and healthcare systems. The depth of the challenges that underlie autoimmune diseases come through in painfully clear ways in the series of patient profiles starting on the next page. As described by Stephen

The Art of Adapting to MS By Kirsten Weir © Matthew Robbins Maggie McPhersun stands in front of a canvas that she painted, a whimsical print of swirling lines and bright colors. Completing it, she says, was "incredibly painful emotionally." McPhersun, 51, is a registered nurse from Brunswick, Maine. She's also an artist, and she once took commissions, painting intricate portraits - before multiple scle

Living with Rheumatoid Arthritis By Meredith Small © F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd. Thirteen years ago, when Steve Robson was 35 years old, he casually tried out a jackhammer while working on a jobsite in Dublin, Ireland. The next morning, Robson's left hand wouldn't work. Everyone assumed that the jackhammer was to blame, and that his hand would soon be fine. It wasn't. In fact, it wasn't the jackhammer a

Fitting Lupus into Life By Juhi Yajnik © Leah Fasten Photography In Westborough, Mass., some people find it strange that 45-year-old Marianne Crowley gardens at night. Being misunderstood, though, is nothing new to her. For most of her twenties, Crowley had symptoms that felt like severe arthritis. The muscles in her arms and hands atrophied and felt as though they were being pricked with needl

On the Panda Trail In our May issue, contributor Jerry Guo traveled to the Wolong Nature Reserve in China's Sichuan Province to learn what researchers there are doing to increase the panda population. Here, see the pandas at play - and what they leave behind. var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/53136/panda.swf", width:"552", height:"600", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Please download the Adobe Flash

Assessing the Cost of Rheumatoid Arthritis ARTICLE EXTRAS The Trials of Keeping Track In England and Wales, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects approximately 400,000 people, or 0.5-1% of the population. Those figures come from the "Final Appraisal Determination: Adalimumab, Etanercept, and Infliximab for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis," published in November last year, by the National Institute for Health and Clini

Slideshow: Stem cells for laughs Presenting last at the end of a five day conference can be a drag. Follow some slides from a talk at a recent Keystone meeting on reproduction to see how Tilo Kunath keeps the audience?s interest up. var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/53155/funnies.swf", width:"552", height:"600", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Please download the Adobe Flash Player to view this con

Families in Crisis Stanley M. Finger The impact of an autoimmune disease is felt by more than just the patient. One of the myths about autoimmune disease is that it has little socioeconomic impact. Nothing could be further from the truth. Autoimmune diseases as a whole afflict many people. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health estimated that as many as 24 million Americans have one or more a

Green Lab: Resources ARTICLE EXTRAS Interactive Q&A:   Need advice on making your lab green? Can Labs Go Green? Anatomy of a Green Lab Green lab slideshow List of resources If you are interested in finding out more about the resources needed to create a more environmentally friendly lab, the following list of websites should provide a good starting point. American Society of Heating, Refrigera

Evolving Epidemiology ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 Epidemic patterns are largely determined by the time course of an infection, whether it's measured in days, weeks, or years. Phylogenetic patterns result from an interaction between natural selection mediated by the immune system (and/or drug treatments) and random epidemiological processes. Here's how some common pandemics play out. Measles is a highly conta

1 For example, indicators of RA include the presence of rheumatoid factor (RF) and antibodies against citrullinated peptides (anti-CCP), which point toward a central role of activated B cells and plasma cells producing autoreactive immunoglobulin. In the last few years, basic and clinical research have shown that B cells can affect RA in many ways. In affected tissues of autoimmune patients, lymphoid follicles with germinal centers (GCs) - the so-called tertiary lymphoid structures - fr

1 Similarly, Estelle Bettelli of the center for neurological diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and her colleagues showed that TGF ß -transgenic mice had increased numbers of Th17 cells and more severe autoimmune diseases. 2 These results clearly demonstrated that TGF ß is essential for the induction of Th17 cells. But more important, papers recently published have shown that IL-6 promotes the development of Th17 cells and that anti-IL-6 antibody almost complete

Healthy Antagonism ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 Just a year ago, Peter Hudson, who helped develop the center, invited Poss to come to CIDD. "You want me to come for a seminar?" Poss asked. "No, no," she recalls him saying. "We want you to come." She's already having an impact. At a recent lab meeting, Hudson's postdoc, Sarah Perkins, was presenting an idea to test how an intestinal worm and a respiratory bacterium, Bordete

Watching the Brain Lie Can fMRI replace the polygraph? By Ishani Ganguli ARTICLE EXTRAS A History in Deception Anatomy of Lying Amanda lies flat on her back, clad in a steel blue hospital gown and an air of anticipation, as she is rolled headfirst into a beeping, 10-ton functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) unit. Once inside, the 20-something blonde uses a handheld device to respond to questions about the playing cards a

A History in Deception The polygraph has long been plagued by questions By Ishani Ganguli ARTICLE EXTRAS Watching the Brain Lie Anatomy of Lying The polygraph-developed in the 1920s by John Larson, a Berkeley, Calif., policeman with a PhD in physiology-relies on the notion that people get nervous when they lie. A subject is strapped to a chair by wires and cuffs on his arm, chest, and fingers, and the "lie detector" marks his v

Anatomy of Lying Is there a "deception center" in the brain?By Ishani Ganguli ARTICLE EXTRAS Watching the Brain Lie A History in Deception By some estimates, deception evolved in primates 12 million years ago; and as primate species' neocortices grew, so did the frequency of their lies. In humans, learning how to lie, and how to detect lies, is a natural part of childhood development, studies sho

Too Much to Untangle By Michael Szpir Genes and the environment both contribute to autoimmune diseases, and future advances could come from studying these factors in combination. ARTICLE EXTRAS Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis Why anyone develops an autoimmune disease is

To Build a Killing Machine David Kirn can't turn his back on a century-old quest to pit oncolytic viruses against tumors. By Andrew Holtz ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 Reports like this prompted many investigators in the middle of the last century to apply viral infections to tumors, but the available viruses, either taken from the wild or adapted from contemporary vaccines, were blunt instruments. Advances in bioengineering have provided the means t

A selected list of oncolytic viruses in clinical trialsClick on the company or institution name for more information on the clinical trials Virus Selective targeting method Indications Human trial status Companies/Institutions (candidate) Adenovirus E1B deletion restricts replication to cells with abberant mRNA transport Head and neck tumors Phase III Sunway Biotech of China (H101) Head and neck tumors Phase III (canceled) Onyx (O15)

The Importance of Imaging ARTICLE EXTRAS To Build a Killing Machine A selected list of oncolytic viruses in clinical trials Moments after being injected with a tagged virus, the entire body of a mouse glows under specialized cameras designed to pick up light emanating from deep beneath the skin. Over time the light becomes concentrated to a few key spots. These are the tumors where the virus, a strain of vaccinia, is replicating

Naltrexone Molecule How pharmacogenomics might help addiction treatment 20 years ago, scientists got hooked on a single transcription factor that responds to a number of drugs of abuse. Will their work lead to treatments? By Kerry Grens ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 In 2003 David Oslin and Charles O'Brien at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Addiction Treatment and their colleagues reported an association between this SNP and how well

Innovative Treatments Autoimmune disease has been a therapeutic backwater. No longer. A collection of innovative therapies is now coming onstream. Anne Harding covers therapies targeted at T-cell mechanisms (Click here), and Pamela Gannon explores compounds aimed at B-cell and interleukin-6 pathways and receptors (Click here). Also included is a look back over the history of approaches to battling autoimmunity. Andrew M. Chan of Genentech

1 Nonetheless, treatment probably won't involve blocking any one pathway entirely. Instead, the best treatments will make slight modifications in several places. "The future is really novel pathways - to interact with novel pathways that offer the opportunity for different types of responses," says Brian Kotzin, vice president of medical sciences at Amgen in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Billions of Data Points Despite the potential undesirable con

var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/html/52903/Charts/FC_2_3_Column2D.swf", width:"620", height:"420", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/html/53144/timeCurrEmployer.xml&chartWidth=620" }; UFO.create(FO, "currEmployer");var FO = { movie:"/supplementary/html/52903/Charts/FC_2_3_Bar2D.swf", width:"620", height:"420", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true", flashvars:"&dataURL=/supplementary/html/53144/companyAreaWork.xml&chartWidth=620&chartH

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top 30 Companies Use the interactive chart below to sort the top ranked institutions by category. Resize the rows or scroll within the chart to view category. Click here to view the printable PDF. // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/53161/top30_07.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval ta

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007 Results PDF ARTICLE EXTRAS The Little Company That Can Sandoz stands out Top 30 Companies Top Large Companies Top Small Companies Most Important Factors Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Best Places to Work: Survey Findings PDF

Sandoz stands out By Andrea Gawrylewski Courtesty of Sandoz ARTICLE EXTRAS The Little Company That Can Best Places to Work 2007 Top 30 Companies Top Large Companies Top Small Companies Most Important Factors Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Best Places to Work: Survey Findings PDF Having never ranked in the history of our Best Places to Work in Industry survey, Sandoz debut

The Little Company That Can By Bob Grant Photo by Catherine Ledner ARTICLE EXTRAS Best Places to Work 2007 Sandoz stands out Top 30 Companies Top Large Companies Top Small Companies Most Important Factors Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories Best Places to Work: Survey Findings PDF Amylin Pharmaceuticals, a 20-year-old biopharmaceutical company based in San Diego, broke into ou

Top Autoimmune Diseases DISEASE AGE OF ONSET IMPACTED TISSUES SYMPTOMS MECHANISM CURRENT TREATMENT Addison's disease Children or young adults Adrenal glands Fatigue Low blood pressure Muscle weakness Sometimes darkening of the skin Weight loss Inadequate production of cortisol and, sometimes, aldosterone Hormone replacement for cortisol and, if needed, aldosterone Allergic asthma Teenage years Lungs Constricted ai

Historical Highlights in Therapies Autoimmune diseases stretch far back into the history of humans. Related illnesses even exist in nonhuman primates, such as the baboon model of Chaga's disease. Treatments for human autoimmune diseases have also been around for ages, or at least centuries. In the late 1600s, physicians treated RA with Peruvian bark, which contains quinine. A century later, physician

1 B-Cell Depletion Edwards and his colleagues began to explore the use of B-cell depletion therapy. "Our basic research on cellular interaction in RA indicated that it ought to work, so we tried it," says Edwards. His group used rituximab. The antibody binds to the CD20 receptor, which is expressed on the surface of B cells throughout most stages of B-cell maturation. The drug most likely causes destruction of the B cells by a combination of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxi

Life Science Industry Awards 2007 Saluting the winners: Customization, value, and customer service is the name of the game. By Andrea Gawrylewski, Bob Grant, and Manasee Wagh Although biomedical companies in search of new drugs often seem to grab all the headlines, anyone working in bioscience research and drug development knows that none of their advances would be possible without the life science industry that creates the rea

Andrew Holtz, author of House, MD, spent 17 years at CNN, during 10 of which he covered medicine. He holds a masters degree in public health from Portland State University and writes a regular column for Oncology Times. On page 48, he reports on scientists who are trying to use viruses to treat cancer. ?The story is an interesting intersection of business and science,? say Holtz. ?Companies and academics are now trying to show that oncovirus can co

Related Articles Slideshow: On the panda trail On a March afternoon, there are so many pandas in the ?kindergarten pen? at Wolong Nature Reserve in China?s Sichuan Province, it?s hard to keep track of their antics. One is attempting a handstand while three others are playing king of the hill. These carefree cubs ? a record 19 from Wolong?s 2006 breeding season ? are part of the dramatic comeback for a symbol of conservation: the giant panda. The toddlers may one day follow Xiangxi

With the Beijing Olympics just a year away, and desert dunes now only 150 miles away from the city, officials have been dreaming big when it comes to battling legendary Chinese sandstorms in the capital and across the country?s arid north. In 2001, the government approved a new phase of an $8 billion antidesertification campaign, stretching from the capital to Inner Mongolia. The 4,500 kilometer shelterbelt ? with 25 million hectares of trees planted and

Tilo Kunath, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, found himself chatting with an older gentleman next to him. That had the potential to be sticky: Kunath works with embryonic and extraembryonic stem cell lines, and his work sometimes requires the destruction of human embryos. His traveling companion wasn't exactly quiet about his more socially conservative views.

Plasmid GHRH delivery in a dog. Credit: Courtesy of Patricia Brown" />Plasmid GHRH delivery in a dog. Credit: Courtesy of Patricia Brown A few months after arriving at Baylor College of Medicine in 1995, Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, an assistant professor, adopted an abandoned Jack Russell terrier she found at the cafeteria. Baylor, named for the school, is one of two dogs that Draghia-Akli has lost to cancer in the past six years, and watching his decline was taxing. ?He

Credit: Courtesy of Linda Snook" /> Credit: Courtesy of Linda Snook On some workdays, Milton S. Love happily sinks to the bottom of the sea in a contraption the size of a telephone booth turned on its side. With only a clammy mat to lie on, for a break he gets to sit upright while trying not to bump his head on the three-foot high ceiling. Through a tiny hole, Milton spends a couple of blissful hours counting fish, speaking aloud the names and sizes he sees as a video camera rolls. I

The rise of forensic palynology, a once obscure science.

Long hunt for auxin receptors turns up the F-box protein TIR1 and a novel mechanism.

Credit: Reprinted by permission of Macmillian Publishers, LTD." /> Credit: Reprinted by permission of Macmillian Publishers, LTD. The paper: T. Hessa et al., ?Recognition of transmembrane helices by the endoplasmic reticulum translocon,? Nature, 433:377?81, 2005. (Cited in 88 papers) The finding: Gunnar von Heijn

The paper: X. Cai et al., ?Human microRNAs are processed from capped, polyadenylated transcripts that can also function as mRNAs.? RNA, 10:1957?66, 2004. (Cited in 99 papers) The finding: Bryan Cullen and colleagues at Duke University and the University of Kansas investigated the development of human micro-RNAs (miR

Credit: © Helen McArdle / Photo Researchers, Inc." /> Credit: © Helen McArdle / Photo Researchers, Inc. The paper: M.F. Fraga, et al. ?Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins.? Proc Natl Acad Sci, 102:10413?4, 2005. (cited in 91 papers) The finding:

Credit: Courtesy of The International Union of Crystallography" /> Credit: Courtesy of The International Union of Crystallography S.N. Willis et al., ?Apoptosis initiated when BH3 ligands engage multiple Bcl-2 homologs, not Bax or Bak,? Science, 315:856?9, Feb. 9, 2007. The authors leverage knockout mice lacking BH3-only ?activators? to examine how the Bcl2 protein family cont

Stefan Hell and researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany detail an approach to microscopy that achieves a resolution of half the wavelength of light.

Credit: Courtesy of the International Union of Crystallography" /> Credit: Courtesy of the International Union of Crystallography Crystallizing proteins is a daunting task. Last year Alexander McPherson of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues proposed a novel strategy to develop crystals quickly by including high concentrations of small molecules to the so-called mother liquors. They analyzed data on the crystallization of 81 different protein cultur

A vial of Koch?s Tuburculin from 1895 resides at Charité Hospital, Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer" />A vial of Koch?s Tuburculin from 1895 resides at Charité Hospital, Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer Robert Koch (1843?1910), who isolated Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882 and proved that it caused tuberculosis, announced at a medical congress in Berlin eight years later that he had developed a substance capable of preventing the growth of the tub