Muscular dystrophies – a group of inherited disorders whose common denominator is muscle weakness, and the loss of muscle tissue over time – are most often due to mutations in the protein dystrophin.
How to improve the predictive value of preclinical drug discovery has preoccupied many a biotech executive. This week, advice on the topic has come from a somewhat unusual corner: philosophy.
Researchers have been able to foil two emerging viruses that can cause encephalitis by tricking them into trying to fuse with artificial cells. The work enables better study of such viruses, and potentially could be used as a therapeutic approach as well.
Yet another link between the brain and the immune system – a connection that was once thought to be nonexistent – was reported recently with findings that major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules play a role in shaping neural connections in early brain development.
Two groups of scientists – led by researchers from Genentech Inc. and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, respectively – have reported on why some cancer cells are resistant to drugs, such as Taxol, that target microtubules. Such drugs are among the most widely prescribed chemotherapeutic agents.
Short hairpin RNAs are one of the workhorses of RNA interference – when they work. And researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories recently described a way to better predict which ones will work best on a given gene.
Getting a better biological handle on neurological diseases is definitely an unmet need. Diagnosing neurological diseases – and indeed, deciding whether a disease is neurological in the sense of having a physiological basis, or psychological, originating in the mind – remains a highly imprecise art at best.
WASHINGTON – Collectively, the U.S. spends in excess of $2 trillion annually on health care. Ten percent to 15 percent of that money is spent on measurements of some sort. "And a lot of those are inaccurate and irreproducible." Such was the sobering assessment of Willie May, director of the material measurement laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
WASHINGTON – "The textbook view on proteins is that they are globular. They are globular, they are well-folded and their function relates entirely to their form," summarized Peter Wright of the Scripps Institute.
Washington – "The textbook view on proteins is that they are globular. They are globular, they are well-folded and their function relates entirely to their form," summarized Peter Wright of the Scripps Institute.