Tag: epigenetics

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

Andreas Sentker in Die ZEIT takes up the issue of rising eco-terrorism in Germany directed against field trials of genetically modified plants. These plants are an easy target as trial sites have to be disclosed to the public in registers following legislation initiated by the former red-green coalition in Germany. While in the past years opponents of genetically modified plants only targeted the plants they dub as “Gen-Dreck”, violence is now also directed against security firms and guards watching the fields. Last week, a masked gang assaulted security guards, looted their mobile phones and destroyed different plants of research projects from the University of Rostock. The plants were carrying genes for the production of biopolymers and for a vaccine against viral diseases.

In Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Hanno Charisius introduces efforts to create artificial leaves mimicking photosynthesis to create hydrogen which can be used as fuel or energy source. Daniel Nocera from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is just using the principle: water molecules are split using electrical current produced by solar cells – an ages-old principle. Noceras new twist, however, is the use of a mix of cobalt and phosphate as a catalyst. The mix is accumulating at the electrodes, but after a while it is crumbling and thereby regenerating. The reaction is not the most effective one, but prototypes are already running for months without efficiency drop. First machines will now be installed in India for tests in realistic  conditions; the goal is to meet the daily power demand of an Indian family by using just 4 liters of water and sunlight. Nocera is now trying to combine his catalyst with solar cells to a single device.

Katrin Blawat, also in SZ, in a somewhat pessimistic article deals with the many failures to develop a drug to combat Alzheimer’s disease. Given that there are neither cures nor effective therapies to prevent or delay the onset of AD, she cautions against tests for early diagnosis.

Another negative outlook is given by Werner Bartens in the same paper. Bartens deals with personalized medicine, calling the concept a “set phrase” invented to disguise that personalized medicine is a mere “PR strategy by the pharma industry and stakeholders from academia” invented to lay a smoke screen on the failure to develop new blockbuster drugs. For Bartens, the “niche buster concept” is “science fiction” allowing the pharma industry to obtain approval without any proof of patient benefit. As an example, Bartens interestingly mentions the introduction of personalized cancer drugs of which only a fraction of the patients is benefitting.

In contrast, Ronald D. Gerste in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) writes about how cancer patients have profited from targeted therapies, e.g. in terms of decreasing cancer mortality and improved survival. Gerste features a trial by the MD Anderson Center in Houston/Texas in which 460 cancer patients underwent detailed molecular genetic analysis. Subsequently, they were treated by a matching therapy addressing the most promising molecular mechanism. Without applying any experimental drugs, this procedure increased survival from 9 to 13.4 months on average.

Also in NZZ, Stefan Betschon makes the case for better science communication, introducing an article by Dirk Helbing and Stefano Bialetti on “how to create an innovation accelerator“. They propose to improve the academic publication system by publishing articles ahead of peer review finalization and call for review by crowd sourcing. Rejected publications should also be made public, alongside with comments.

The Economist this week casts doubt on whether the goal to eradicate polio by the end of 2012 can be met. The disease is still endemic in four countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria), however re-emerged in African and Asian countries in recent years. Reasons are political (war, refugees, etc.), socioeconomic (poor sanitation) and medical (vaccines needs cold chain, virus can hide in asymptomatic carriers) factors.

Another article in The Economist deals with epigenetics findings by a German research group from the University of Konstanz. The team found that stress during pregnancy (abuse, violence, famine, death of a relative etc.) can lead to a change in the DNA methylation patterns of the unborn child, e.g. of the gene coding for glucocorticoid receptors which relay signals from stress hormones in the blood to cells of the brain regions controlling behavior. The findings may explain why children of stressed mothers show higher-than-normal rates of psychological and behavioral disorders and may lead to insights about how and when interventions are possible and promising.

Andrew Pollack in the New York Times features discussions on changing the rules for research in human subjects. The US government claims that changes are needed in the light of genomics studies using patients’ DNA samples, the use of the Internet and a growing reliance on studies that take place at many sites at once. Among the proposed changes are adding informed consent rules to donors of blood, DNA or tissue samples and allowing a single institutional review board for multiple-site clinical studies.

And finally, for all of us struggling daily with the touchscreen keyboards of our iPads and iPhones, IBM comes with a solution: a keyboard that morphs to fit an individual’s finger anatomy and typing style. Paul Marks in Wired dug out an IBM patent describing keyboards in which buttons are automatically resized, reshaped and repositioned according to the users typing style.

 

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

John Markoff reports in the New York Times about scientists who created online video game EteRNA in which players can come up with novel ways of folding RNA. The scientists claim it is “democratizing science” by attracting thousands of citizens to participate in constructing new ways to understand and use the folding of RNA.

Finally, the NYT reports about wine. While archaeologists discovered the earliest winemaking facility of the world in Armenia where wine was being made there as early as 7,400 years ago – proving that mankind must have found something positive in consuming red wine, today’s scientists still grapple at understanding the benefits. Dealing with the halt of the last resveratrol trial in which biotech company Sirtis (now GSK) tried to prove that this particular ingredient of red wine is able to extend the life span of obese Rhesus Monkeys, Nicholas Wade casts doubt about the usefulness of resveratrol and resveratrol-mimicking chemicals as anti-aging drugs.

The Economist this week deals with epigenetics in a story featuring that not only mothers but fathers as well may be able to pass on a propensity to obesity if they themselves have been starved during their life before fathering offspring. The findings are from mice.

A separate story deals with attempts by British researchers to attach glowing proteins to cancer cells so that they emit red light. However to detect it doctors would have to use a specially developed camera that scans the body slice by slice. Such cameras are expensive, and the £500,000 ($750,000) they cost may be the greatest hurdle to deploying the technique.

Djuke Veldhuis reports in New Scientist about a simple blood test for Down’s syndrome that successfully detected all 86 cases confirmed by other methods. The validation study is published in BMJ 2011; 342:c7401.

In The Scientist, Vanessa Schipani elaborates why it is not a good idea to use the usually well-fed, parasite-free and genetically similar lab animals to study immunology. Instead, she makes a case for ecoimmunology, a new field studying immunology in wild animals and still trying to attract more researchers and funding. Jef Akst reports about cancer researchers identifying an increasing number of proteins that have a dual nature in cancer: they may initially promote the development of tumors, but in the long run make them less aggressive, or vice versa. “One problem in identifying such two-faced proteins may stem from the fact that these opposing effects are rarely demonstrated in the same research paper,” Jef writes, adding that both reviewers and funding agencies do not like this kind of complex stories and rather prefer focusing on one side of the coin.

Speaking of peer reviews, Martina Lenzen-Schulte in the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)  reports about efforts of peer-reviewed journals like the British Medical Journal or the EMBO Journal to make the peer review process more transparent by disclosing the names of the reviewers and the review or even the complete review process. Goals are to improve the quality of the process and of reviews in general and to prevent reviewers from either stealing ideas or putting a spoke in competitors’ wheels.

Volker Stollorz in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) provides a concise review of the ongoing debate whether the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is caused by the newly discovered retrovirus XMRV or whether contamination of specimens, the lab or chemicals used in experiments have produce results that could be mistaken for XMRV. The article clarifies that there are increasing doubts about the hypothesis as many independent researchers have not been able to find the virus in the blood of CFS patients and/or from blood banks.

Focus reports on new efforts to combat AIDS by learning from the about 1% of humans resistant to the virus. The article cites James Hoxie, of Penn Center for AIDS Research, who is trying to cure AIDS by removing from immune cells of AIDS patients those genes that provide entry to HIV. Subsequently, the immune cells are transferred back to the patient. Focus states the approach goes back to findings in Germany at Charité Berlin where a patient suffering from both AIDS and leukemia received a bone marrow transplant from a HIV resistant donor. Citing an article in Blood (DOI 10.1182/blood-2010-09-309591), Focus states the patient is now virus-free and off AIDS medications.