Cell signaling news
Here we present recent news items specially selected from Nature, Nature Medicine and Nature Biotechnology.
October 2007
2007:
December |
November |
October |
September |
August |
July |
June |
May |
April |
March |
February |
January
Other years: 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010
News | News in brief | News Features
News
Health official speaks out about row over drug critic
The public discussion of cardiovascular side effects of the diabetes pill Avandia (rosiglitazone) is at the center of a spat between a former drug-company official at SmithKline Beecham and a researcher at the University of North Carolina.
Nature News (25 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Europeans forgo US labs
The funding crisis at US universities has led European researchers to return to their native countries, where budgets for scientific research are on the rise.
Nature News (25 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Italian bioethics committee in uproar
Several new appointments to Italy's National Bioethics Committee have caused turbulence within the advisory body and threaten its ability to find an ethical common ground between members who favor embryonic stem cell research and those who oppose it.
Nature News (25 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Little consensus on egg freezing
An American Society for Reproductive Medicine committee has recommended that freezing a woman's eggs for use later in fertility treatments be considered an experimental treatment, despite the emergence of data suggesting that egg freezing doesn't greatly increase birth defects or abnormalities.
Nature News (25 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Security issues plague US research
The US National Academies called for the creation of a commission to represent the interests of universities and national security agencies in an effort to establish consistent rules on sensitive and classified research, and ease visa and technology-transfer restrictions.
Nature News (25 October 2007)
| Full Text |
French agency head resigns in cancer row
The resignation on 8 October of Christian Bréchot, director-general of the French medical research agency, INSERM, is the latest and highest-profile fallout of a bitter conflict about new technologies for screening cancer cells.
Nature News (18 October 2007)
| Full Text |
So similar, yet so different
Individual human genomes differ only in the minute details, yet varying elements such as single nucleotide polymorphisms may be responsible for many personal characteristics.
Nature News (18 October 2007)
| Full Text |
The shape of protein structures to come
The Rosetta project, which uses the computing time of 150,000 home computers, has enabled scientists to predict a protein structure using just the amino acid sequence.
Nature News (18 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Amidst doubts, space research program takes flight
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) have launched a joint plan to encourage biomedical research aboard the International Space Station.
Nature Medicine 13, 1123 (2007)
| Full Text |
Poor trial design leaves gene therapy death a mystery
The poor design of a gene therapy trial during which a woman died has complicated efforts to determine if her death was caused by the gene therapy itself or by a medication that she was taking that blocks TNF-α.
Nature Medicine 13, 1124 (2007)
| Full Text |
Karolinska Institute under fire for controversial cancer report
A controversial report from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, which claims that access to the newest cancer drugs enhances survival, has triggered a spat between the report's authors and experts who say the report's conclusions are based on faulty analysis.
Nature Medicine 13, 1124 (2007)
| Full Text |
Straight talk from... Colin Blakemore
Colin Blakemore, outgoing head of Britain's Medical Research Council, talks about his tenure at the agency, the future of British medical research and the community's fears over the council's new agenda.
Nature Medicine 13, 1125 (2007)
| Full Text |
Biologists claim Nobel prize with a knock-out
Oliver Smithies, Mario Capecchi and Martin Evans share the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells".
Nature News (11 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Doctors not to blame over HIV infection by tainted blood
A Canadian court has acquitted four doctors and a US blood products company of criminal negligence in the case of four hemophiliacs who were infected with HIV after receiving transfusions of tainted blood in the 1980s.
Nature News (11 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Congress grills officials over biosafety boom
Officials of the Bush administration were grilled by members of Congress over the rapid expansion of laboratories that house pathogens on the same day that reports surfaced that the government wasn't keeping tabs on the number of such labs in operation, or coordinating their regulation.
Nature News (11 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Europe ponders restrictions on life sciences
A proposed two-tier approach to publishing, in which a document without sensitive content is published for the public in conjunction with a full-content version for "relevant bio-stakeholders", is called "unworkable and contrary to scientific freedom" by the European Biosafety Association (EBSA).
Nature News (11 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Doubts raised over stem-cell marker
The Oct4 protein maintains mouse embryonic stem cells in an undifferentiated state, but it may not be a relevant marker for pluripotency in stem cells derived from adult tissues.
Nature News (11 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Industry concerns mount over CIRM grants
California's biotechnology companies are anxious to compete for the US$3 billion entrusted to the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to promote stem cell research in the state; however, the size and scope of the awards to for-profit companies, as well as the potential restrictions for their use, are still unknown.
Nature Biotechnology 25, 1063-1064 (2007)
| Full Text |
Death in gene therapy trial raises questions about private IRBs
The institutional review board (IRB) that approved Targeted Genetics' controversial and ill-fated gene therapy trial is a private, for-profit company, which raises ethical questions about the suitability of for-profit companies in assessing the risks of clinical trials.
Nature Biotechnology 25, 1063-1064 (2007)
| Full Text |
Researchers criticized for poor time-keeping
The US National Science Foundation has launched a comprehensive inquiry into how scientists account for their time when conducting research under government grants.
Nature News (4 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Dogs help sniff out genes
With the aid of the dog genome it is now possible to locate the genes responsible for specific traits with as few as 10 animals with the feature and 10 without.
Nature News (4 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Minimum telomere length defined for healthy cells
Researchers have found that the shortest length telomeres can reach before they cause fusion and chromosomal breakage is 12.8 repeats (of six base pairs) long.
Nature News (4 October 2007)
| Full Text |
News in brief
| Watson suspended over comments on race
| Senate retreats from bid to ease stem-cell restrictions
| Only six EU nations meet research visa deadline
| Equal pay for women in science is achievable
| Cancer institute named after benefactor
| Blueprint drawn up for Britain's science spending
| Council of Europe votes against creationist teaching
| India gets high-security lab for human diseases
| NIH funding consortia
| Amgen's first cuts
| New miRNA company
| Enzyme reduces cancer risk of fries
| No answer from RAC
| White House axes risk-assessment bulletin
| Lack of inspection raises concerns over drug trials
| See-through frog offers inside information
News Features
Personal genomics: His daughter's DNA
Despite a training in clinical genetics, Hugh Rienhoff didn't know what was wrong with his daughter. So, as he tells Brendan Maher, he set about finding out.
Nature News (18 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Mice with a human touch
In September 2006, Vectibix (panitumumab) — the first totally human monoclonal antibody made in a transgenic mouse — gained US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the treatment of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-expressing colorectal cancers. The milestones achieved during the 20-year quest to humanize mouse antibodies to avoid host immune responses are chronicled in this News Feature.
Nature Biotechnology 25, 1075-1077 (2007)
| Full Text |
Russian science: The battle for Russia's brains
Scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences have clashed with the government over efforts to increase funding, productivity and accountability at the venerable institution.
Nature News (4 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Russian science: What the scientists say
Russian researchers, and those who have worked in Russia, share their thoughts with Nature on the problems faced by the country's scientific system — and how they could be addressed.
Nature News (4 October 2007)
| Full Text |
Behavioural genetics: A question of survival
Intrepid Russian scientists have built a log cabin field laboratory where mouse brains can be analyzed histologically to determine neurobiological differences between mice coping well or badly with the great outdoors.
Nature News (4 October 2007)
| Full Text |
|
