WIKIMEDIA, RYDDRAGYNMoving basic research discoveries into the clinic can be difficult even with regulatory considerations set aside. Researchers working with some National Institutes of Health-approved stem cells face an additional translational challenge: therapies using these cells are not be eligible for commercialization because they don’t meet Food and Drug Administration requirements. That’s according to an analysis published in Cell Stem Cell this week (February 6).
“The main concern is: How do we move this technology [to the clinic]? How do we translate it?” author Erica Jonlin, the regulatory manager at the University of Washington Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, told The Scientist.
WIKIMEDIA, CDCBy outcompeting commensal E. coli, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium can exploit a standard immune response in mice to promote their own growth, scientists from the University of California, Irvine, and their colleagues reported in Immunity this week (February 6).
“[This study] takes several counterintuitive observations in the field and connects them to a coherent picture—a daring ‘Battle of the Bugs,’” said microbiologist Sebastian Winter, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who was not involved in the work.
WIKIMEDIA, GRZEGORZ WICHERWithout microglia to perform “synaptic pruning”—in which unwanted neural links are disposed of—mouse brains develop with weaker connections, leading to altered social behavior. In a Nature Neuroscience paper published this week (February 3), researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and their colleagues proposed that their findings in mice could provide clues about human brain disorders that involve altered connectivity.
