Cell signaling news
Here we present recent news items specially selected from Nature, Nature Medicine and Nature Biotechnology.
May 2008
2008:
October |
September |
August |
July |
June |
May |
April |
March |
February |
January
Other years: 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007
News | News in brief | News Features
News
Epilepsy drug may help alcoholics
The drug gabapentin is used to treat epileptic seizures and chronic pain, and researchers now suggest that it may also help ease cravings in alcoholics.
Nature News (29 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Venerable institute gets a refit
Britain's Royal Institution has reopened after extensive renovations that were aimed to, according to director Susan Greenfield, "position the Royal Institution at the centre of twenty-first-century society, where science will take its proper place at the heart of all our lives".
Nature News (29 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Genetic testing for everyone
Private companies are starting to test customers' DNA for gene variants linked with conditions such as obesity or Alzheimer's disease, but psychosocial scientists who study how people respond to risk information say there is scant evidence that people are affected deeply by genetic test results, or that such tests spur much change in behavior.
Nature News (29 May 2008)
| Full Text |
France's research agency splits up
France's CNRS, the largest fundamental science agency in Europe, is to be reorganized into six quasi-autonomous national institutes for mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering sciences, humanities and social sciences, and ecology and biodiversity by the end of 2008.
Nature News (29 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Meeting urges scientists into politics
The non-partisan organization Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) held a workshop in Washington DC to tell scientists what it takes to run for public office — and how to go about it.
Nature News (22 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Poland tackles science like a business
Poland's science minister Barbara Kudrycka explains how the Polish government plans to reform the country's science and higher-education system.
Nature News (22 May 2008)
| Full Text |
US plans more primate research
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) anticipates that demand for non-human primate research will rise steeply; the increase is ascribed to the recent failure of Merck's HIV vaccine in clinical trials and the need to develop new vaccine concepts.
Nature News (22 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Carbon nanotubes: the new asbestos?
When injected into the lung mesothelium of mice, long, straight, multi-walled carbon nanotubes can cause granulomas similar to those caused by asbestos fibers.
Nature News (20 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Embryonic stem-cell trial put on hold
The first potential clinical trial of a cell therapy derived from embryonic stem (ES) cells has been put on hold by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), reflecting concerns about the still unknown risks of these treatments in humans.
Nature News (19 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Open-air demo supports UK embryo research
Politicians, scientists and patient groups demonstrated outside Britain's Parliament to show their support for a new bill that would give researchers greater options for working with human embryonic cells, including the creation of 'cybrid' embryos created by injecting human DNA into empty cow egg cells.
Nature News (12 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Chemists spin a web of data
A chemist running a computer server from his home is quietly solving one of his colleagues' biggest frustrations by providing the community with an open-access source of chemical information.
Nature News (8 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Medical schools swap pigs for plastic
Doctors used to try out their surgical skills on animals before being allowed to work on patients; now just a handful of US medical schools still have animal labs.
Nature News (8 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Etiology of eating disorders explored as patience for a cure thins
New studies have now started plumbing the biological sources of anorexia and bulimia nervosa — and are also offering hints as to how current and future drugs might target that those pathways.
Nature Medicine 14, 470 (2008)
| Full Text |
Cancer clues fetched from canines
A comparison of tumor tissues now indicates that some cancers bear identical genetic abnormalities and molecular pathogenesis in humans and canines.
Nature Medicine 14, 471 (2008)
| Full Text |
Scaled-up self-experimentation proposed
A British biotech entrepreneur named William Bains is proposing that scientists that self-experiment should form collectives, pooling resources to make their findings more acceptable to the mainstream scientific community.
Nature Medicine 14, 471 (2008)
| Full Text |
Regulators scramble to tighten loopholes after heparin debacle
The recent discovery of a contaminant in batches of the blood-thinning drug heparin has thrown into stark contrast the inadequacies and loopholes in the regulation of manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in China.
Nature Biotechnology 26, 477-478 (2008)
| Full Text |
Inhaled insulin's last gasp?
Clinical programs for inhaled insulin have received several setbacks of late, but in early April the death blow was delivered: Pfizer said it is updating the label of its inhaled insulin product Exubera to reflect an increased incidence of lung cancer cases among former smokers.
Nature Biotechnology 26, 479-480 (2008)
| Full Text |
Courts deny Pfizer access
The legal wrangle between New York-based Pfizer and three prominent medical journals over the release of confidential peer-review documents, the outcome of which directly affects biotechs, ended with the integrity of the peer review process intact.
Nature Biotechnology 26, 480 (2008)
| Full Text |
Doctors accused of doing illegal stem-cell trials
An apparently successful stem-cell treatment in Austria for urinary incontinence is now being questioned after it has emerged that clinical trials for the therapy may have been done illegally.
Nature News (1 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Genetics bill cruises through Senate
The unanimous vote last week by the US Senate to outlaw discrimination against people on the basis of their genetic information is being celebrated by civil-rights groups, which have long campaigned for the safeguards.
Nature News (1 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Programs promise to end PDF paper-chase
Researchers are buzzing about a new type of software that allows them to manage their research paper downloads from online journals much more effectively.
Nature News (1 May 2008)
| Full Text |
News in brief
| Funding boost for B-cell-based HIV vaccine research
| Japan to allow limited human embryonic cloning
| British parliament backs hybrid embryos
| Cancer forces Tasmanian devil onto endangered list
| Hefty funds lay foundations for stem-cell facilities
| Drug firm turns spotlight on basic systems biology
| Sacked whistle-blower demands reinstatement
| Changes for ESAs
| IL-1 trap go-ahead
| International consortium to tackle cancer genomes
| UK government slammed for underfunding research
| Artist cleared over possession of bacteria
News Features
Microbiology: The inside story
The US National Institutes of Health and the European Commission have each pledged millions of dollars to identify and characterize the human microbiome — the collection of microorganisms living in and on the human body.
Nature News (29 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Microbiology: Straight from the gut
Surgeons are taking advantage of a rare chance to study microbes as they colonize the walls of the gut after transplanting an intestine.
Nature News (29 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Marine microbiology: Origins of Death
Plankton and photosynthetic cyanobacteria undergo a process strikingly similar to apoptosis in plants and animals; plankton diatoms that contain high levels of nitric oxide grow slowly and are highly sensitive to stress, and activate as many as six metacaspases during their cell-death program.
Nature News (29 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Learning from death
Vishva Dixit, the vice-president of research at Genentech, discusses his research career — from studying apoptosis and elucidating the function of the 'inflammasome' to developing anti-cancer therapeutics.
Nature News (15 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Chemistry: Designer debacle
A principal investigator and his former graduate student discuss the retraction of their two high-profile chemistry papers.
Nature News (15 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Hungry for sleep
For many years, epidemiologists have linked sleep deprivation to poor health. Now, even as the average amount of shuteye people get continues to diminish, new evidence from biological research helps explain how missing out on sleep might contribute to obesity and diabetes.
Nature Medicine 14, 477-480 (2008)
| Full Text |
The special treatment
The special protocol assessment introduced only six years ago by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to facilitate clinical trials is gaining popularity.
Nature Biotechnology 26, 487-489 (2008)
| Full Text |
Cell biology: The cellular hullabaloo
The inner life of a cell is noisy. Helen Pearson discovers how the resulting randomness makes life more challenging — and richer.
Nature News (8 May 2008)
| Full Text |
Stem cells: The 3-billion-dollar question
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine aims to transform the way stem-cell research is funded, but it must also deliver the medical and economic benefits it promised in order to convince taxpayers to fund it in the first place.
Nature News (1 May 2008)
| Full Text |
|
