May 2007

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

More Than Skin Deep By Kirsten Weir Courtesy of Scott Steele Scott Steele, the 32-year-old managing director of the Classical Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon, still remembers a trip to a hair salon as a teenager. The hairdresser took one look at the psoriasis outbreak on his scalp and forehead and actually backed away. Even after Steele explained that it wasn't contagious, the woman refused to cu

Crash Course with Rheumatoid Arthritis By Juhi Yajnik © Courtesy of the Daily Press In 1987, Beverly Williams began a battle with rheumatoid arthritis. Williams was a 22-year-old newspaper reporter, fresh out of Virginia Tech, when her hands started to hurt. Her doctor sent her to a specialist who diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis. She took the news lightly. "But if I knew then, what I know now," she says

1 on the epidemiology of autoimmune diseases, perhaps the most detailed publication on the topic so far. That report shows that in the more common conditions, such as MS, the imbalance tilts so that affected patients are roughly two-thirds female. "In some diseases, however, the degree of disproportion is very extreme," Cooper says. For example, at least 85% of patients with thyroiditis, systemic sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and Sjögren disease are female. In data from the Cent

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

The Causes What causes autoimmune disease? Jeff Bluestone of the University of California, San Francisco - one of the world's leading authorities on the mechanisms behind autoimmunity - talks us through the pathways that trigger and fuel the internal battle to control the immune system. Thomas Dörner of the Charite University Hospital Berlin (see article here) and Yoshiyuki Ohsugi of Chugai Pharma

Audio Slideshow: The Parasites of Beaver Pond Tom Raffel of Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics takes writer Brendan Borrell on a trip to Beaver Pond where the parasites are jumping. var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/53152/cidd.swf", width:"550", height:"511", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Please download the Adobe Flash Player to view this content:

1 Consequently, immunologists adjusted their focus from trying to determine why autoreactive cells escape deletion to exploring how the immune system maintains a homeostatic balance and why it sometimes fails. It seems clear that understanding this balance - a peaceful coexistence of protective immunity without self-destructing - will reveal how the immune system really works and how autoimmunity is triggered. The challenge resides in the comple

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)

Ultraviolet Light and Lupus ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis Sunlight can worsen rashes and even trigger a flare-up of the disease in some people with lupus. It is well known that sun-sensitive lupus patients carry certain variants of the HLA genes, but those are

Drugs, Diet, and Lupus ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis One of the best examples of a gene-environment interaction in autoimmunity involves instances in which certain drugs produce a lupus-like syndrome in genetically susceptible individuals. It turns out

Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis Recently, Lars Klareskog at the Karolinska Institute and his colleagues described a strong gene-environment interaction in a subset of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (L. Klareskog et al., "Genes,

How a Killer Virus is Trained on Cancer

Ultraviolet Light and Dermatomyositis ARTICLE EXTRAS Too Much to Untangle Ultraviolet Light and Lupus Drugs, Diet, and Lupus Smoking and Rheumatoid Arthritis Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Dermatomyositis is a connective-tissue disease that is characterized by inflammation of the skin and the muscles. Exposure to sunlight, either occupationally or recreationally, is anecdotally associa

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

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top Small 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/topSmall.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top Large 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/topLarge.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval

Best Places to Work in Industry, 2007 Survey Methodology Related Articles Best Places to Work in Industry 2007 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 Survey Methodology Survey Form: A web-based survey was posted on The Scientist web site from January February 8 to

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Top Companies on the Most Important Factors Categories 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/topCoFactors.csv");

Best Places to Work in Industry 2007: Most Important Factors 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/mostImpFactors.csv"); // start asyncronous data re

Manipulating the Mechanisms By Mike May Andrew C. Chan, MD, PhD, vice president of research immunology and antibody engineering at Genetech, discusses the future of research on autoimmunity, and how it could lead to more precise treatments. In the pharmaceutical industry in general, what therapies look particularly promising? There is a plethora of different kinds of mechanisms that are being pursue

Moving from Prediction to Prevention By Noel R. Rose Preventing autoimmune diseases is still a long way off, but it's a goal worth pursuing. © Bill McAllen Photography For me, the dream began in the early 1960s. As a medical student, I was helping with the care of a 16-year-old girl who had classical Hashimoto thyroiditis, a disease that more commonly occurs among middle-aged women. I guessed that this

Organizations for Autoimmune DiseasesThis sampling of international associations, foundations, and societies focused on various autoimmune diseases reveals the group efforts that benefit patients and researchers. Although many other organizations exist, the ones listed here provide informative Web sites with frequent updates. American Autoimmune Related Diseases Associationwww.aarda.org AARDA pursues the eradication of autoimmune diseases, as well as the alleviation

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

Journals should make confidential full manuscript files available.

What we really need is for people to be healthy and productive for a greater portion of their lifespan. Re-engineering humans Re: ?What if humans were designed to last??1 Except in those areas of the world where food shortages, war and disease are major threats, most people can now expect to live longer than their grandparents did. Those of us fortunate enough to be living in the wealthier parts of

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

US land-grant universities need a radical rethink of their priorities.

Do unto humans, as you would have them do unto you.

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

Credit: © Frank Rogozienski Photography" /> Credit: © Frank Rogozienski Photography Amy Kiger admits to a healthy dose of yeast envy from time to time. In her tidy, two-year-old lab at the University of California, San Diego, she picks up a thin tube of Drosophila to explain how she?s using the flies to investigate membrane-mediated events that guide cell shape. Yeast genetics may be faster, easier, and better worked out, but for Kiger one of the most exci

Tips and resources for choosing the right antibody development program.