auth123#Anette Breindl

Discovering Multiple Forms of Multiple Sclerosis By analyzing the RNA transcripts in blood cells of subjects with multiple sclerosis, a team at Brigham and Women's Hospital has been able to identify two subtypes of the disease early in its course. Multiple sclerosis patients differ greatly in how active their disease is. But currently, doctors have no way to predict at diagnosis who is likely to have a more active disease, and so benefit from more aggressive treatment. In their study, the

auth123#Anette Breindl

auth123#Anette Breindl

By Anette Breindl Science Editor At the 2011 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), outgoing president George Sledge told the audience that while drug developers were becoming smarter than "stupid cancers" – cancers defined and driven largely by a single mutation that could be attacked with targeted therapies – they needed to become smarter than "smart cancers" that are characterized by an overall high mutational load and will quickly mutate their way around any targeted

But, he said, "increasingly, we will be able to do needle biopsies" to get tissue, doing away with the need for fresh-frozen tumor samples from surgeries.

XMRV Is No Longer the Cause of Anything at All Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) made a splash a few years back when researchers suggested it was the viral cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). But doubts about those data rapidly surfaced as other groups were unable to reproduce the data. Now, a multicenter blind analysis led by scientists from Columbia University, including the same lab that published the original analysis, reported that no such correlation between CFS

The company also has completed an open-label Phase II study with the drug in autism, and did see positive effects on irritability as well as on social withdrawal in that trial.

Addrenex was sold to Sciele for $29 million, and all told, if it exercises its option, Acorda could end up paying up to $133 million for Neuronex.

14, 2012, issue of Cell. – Anette Breindl, Science Editor

It's just not the one we wanted" – at least for the time being.

And among the sessions at the conference were both an oral abstract session dedicated to "V1/V2 Antibody Responses" and a symposium on "New Env Immunogens."

The part of hemagglutinin targeted by VIS410 is in a somewhat hidden place, which is probably one reason why flu infections do not usually trigger its production.

If we want to develop truly novel therapeutics rather than me-too drugs," Vale said, "that's what we'll need to do: Look one step beyond the obvious."

Sleepless-in-St.-Louis-Mice Give Clues to Alzheimer's Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis discovered a relationship between amyloid-beta (A-beta) levels and sleep patterns that might find use as an early diagnostic marker of Alzheimer's disease. Levels of soluble A-beta normally change with the sleep-wake cycle. The authors found that in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, that rhythmic change was no longer apparent once the animals started developing amyloid plaques. At the same time

the ENCODE project will have profound impact."

And, he added, the findings will lead to "a major paradigm shift in how we use the genome to understand the genetic causes of disease, which will open up new avenues for the development of diagnostics and therapies."

By Anette Breindl Science Editor Scientists have developed a mathematical model that they hope will ultimately be able to help determine how to best prevent resistance to currently available HIV drugs – and how to find effective combinations of new drugs early on in clinical development

Hill said in the lab of senior author Martin Nowak, very similar work is being done on cancer drug combinations, as well.