Tag: WHO

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

Neurobiologist Jörn Niessing in Der Spiegel explains how the human nose is able to differentiate between thousands of different odors. The trick is done by generalization and subsequent separation of the information obtained by the different elements of the olfactory system. Latest insights into the olfactory systems of zebrafish also explain why certain odors smell differently in different concentrations.

Claudia Füßler in Die ZEIT reports about humans contracting malaria in Southeast Asia by infections with Plasmodium knowlesi, a parasite usually infecting egret monkeys (Macaca fascicularis). P. knowlesi is the most rapidly proliferating malaria parasite, doubling its numbers in infected humans every 24 hours. In addition, it can be easily mistaken for P. malaria under the microscope. As a result, prophylaxis is highly recommended when visiting these regions.

Die ZEIT also reports on figures by the WHO demonstrating that  each year about 25,000 people in the EU die from infections with bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The article cites WHO director general Margaret Chan as saying, a “post-antibiotic era” with people dying from common infections just as they did centuries ago is approaching fast. She attributes the spread of multi-resistant pathogens to trifling and unreasonably prescriptions of antibiotics which in addition are still sold as OTC medications in many European countries.

The Economist, too, is dealing with the problem and explains why big pharma has all but abandoned the development of novel antibiotics and why this is a promising ground for biotechnology firms.

Alex Knapp in Forbes introduces a technology beyond antibiotics to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria and infectious diseases like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA. IBM and Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology are developing biodegradable nanoparticles that – once in the body – polymerize into structures able to attach to bacterial cell walls and membranes. The interaction is based on the specific electrostatic properties of bacterial cell walls which differ from human blood cells or infected tissue. Subsequently the polymers physically break through the walls and membranes and destroy the bacteria without harming the surrounding human tissue.

Matthew Herper, also in Forbes proclaims the definitive end of the blockbuster drug, and explains why this leads to rising health care costs. For Herper, the end of the blockbuster era will come in November when Lipitor, the last branded drug among the 15 most used medicines in the US, will go off patent.

Helen Coster, also in Forbes, introduces a US startup, D. Light, that sells low-price portable, rechargeable, solar-powered lights. The most advanced model provides up to 12 hours of light and also comes with a cell phone charger. The lights are sold in rural areas and urban slums in more than 30 Asian, South American, and African countries and enable inhabitants to extend their work day and provide kids with more time to study.

The New Scientist reports on the interesting observation in mice that symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease disappear if the mice are made to overexpress HSP70 heat shock protein which re-folds or disposes of proteins involved in the disease.

 

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

Joachim Müller-Jung in Frankfurter Allgemeines Zeitung (FAZ) this week deals with the ethic implications of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, describing that a huge number of tests based on fetal DNA entering the mother’s blood stream is ready to enter the market. His recommendation is to start an immediate discussion about which tests should be applied and which ones should not.

Ulrich Bahnsen in Die ZEIT interviews Norbert Donner-Banzhoff, Professor at the University of Marburg’s Department of General Practice, Preventive and Rehabilitative Medicine. Donner-Banzhoff conducted a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal CMAJ investigating the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on the drug recommendations made in articles in 11 German journals that focus on medical education. Donner-Banzhoff and his team come to the conclusion that journals financed by advertisement from the pharma industry and given away for free almost exclusively recommended the use of specified drugs, whereas journals financed entirely with subscription fees tended to recommend against the use of the same drugs. In the interview, Donner-Banzhoff suggests that a lot of articles published in the free journals have been written by ghost writers and/or members of the pharmaceutical industry.

Matthew Herper in Forbes this week deals with the latest setback in developing drugs to treat Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). He features the failure of Eli Lilly’s semagacest in a Phase III trial in more than 2,600 patients with mild-to-moderate AD. According to an interim analysis, patients receiving the drug, a gamma secretase blocker, worsened to a statistically significant greater degree than those treated with placebo. In addition, the drug was associated with an increased risk of skin cancer. Herper concludes that there is something fundamentally wrong with current hypotheses on the onset of AD and that the failure of the drug may set AD drug development back by many years (see also akampioneer’s recent comment on Probiodrug’s AD hypothesis).

While William Pentland, also in Forbes, reports a potential biofuel breakthrough in producing isobutanol directly from cellulose by using a microbe thriving in decaying grass, Josh Wolfe, co-founder and managing partner of Lux Capital Management, in Forbes states it is time to realize that investing in biofuels may be foolish. He states that while it is hyped as biotech 2.0, there is in fact a fundamental difference to biotech 1.0 which is often overlooked. While biotech 1.0 drugs and molecules can be protected by IP, biofuels cannot. In addition, the marginal cost of producing IP-protected molecules is really low once you did the discovery and first synthesis work (as compared to your margins) – so you can make big profits. Biofuel molecules however have to compete from the onset with the generic fuels already on the market. Biofuel is a commodity, he states, and instead of going back to an agrarian-based economy we should focus on materials and processing based on high energy density, such as uranium.

Donald G. McNeil jr in The New York Times reports on a panel of independent experts from 24 countries that reviewed the handling of the swine flu by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2009. The draft report – “posted in an obscure corner of the W.H.O.’s Web site” – criticizes the WHO’s “needlessly complex” definition of a pandemic, its inability to deploy 78 million doses donated by rich nations for use in poor ones and its “clumsy communications”.

Colin Barras in New Scientist writes about the origin of cancer and features recent contributions by astrobiologists. While many researchers think that cancer is triggered by a malfunction of the genes trying to control replication which needs to be limited in multicellular organisms, some astrobiologists think a tumor is switching back to some forms of basic cellular cooperation found in the earliest ancestors of multicellular organisms. The distinction is far from being academic: if cancer is some sort of “living fossil” revived it would have only a limited set of survival strategies. In contrast, contemporary medicine regards a tumor as independently evolving cells with nearly unlimited evolutionary potential to escape treatment strategies. The hypothesis explains the co-ordinated survival strategies of cancer, such as angiogenesis and metastasis, and will be further tested soon by genetic profiling.