Voting commences on research prize determined by public poll

Posted by Elie Dolgin | Categories: , , ,

It’s an off year in the US election cycle, which means that neither the President nor most members of Congress will face the voters come November. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still cast a ballot this fall. Today, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston announced the finalists for the second annual BRIght Futures Prize, a $100,000 research contest in which the winner is decided by a public poll. Voting is now open through 21 November.  Read more

In wake of Syrian chemical attacks, scientists seek to improve sarin antidotes

Posted by Elie Dolgin | Categories: ,

In wake of Syrian chemical attacks, scientists seek to improve sarin antidotes

In the early hours of 21 August, doctors in Damascus area hospitals scrambled—often in vain—to save the lives of Syrian civilians brought to the hospital with foaming mouths and convulsions. Today, a report released by a United Nations inspection team confirms, as many have suspected, that the chemical weapon used in the attack was the deadly nerve gas sarin.  Read more

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Toddler’s death prompts reflection on bioengineered tissue transplants

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Toddler’s death prompts reflection on bioengineered tissue transplants

There was sad news over the weekend that the youngest patient to ever receive a bioengineered trachea seeded with her own bone marrow–derived stem cells had died. Hannah Warren, who was born without a windpipe, received the artificial trachea at Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria in April. It was only the sixth procedure of its kind and the first to be performed in the US. She would have turned three next month.  Read more

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Yale immunologist wins new €4 million award

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Yale immunologist wins new €4 million award

Most scientists will say that they go to the lab every day out of a pure love of science, not to make buckets of money. But for researchers at the pinnacle of their fields, science can be a lucrative trade. Win a Nobel Prize, and you could take home more than $1.2 million. Bag a Templeton Prize, and you could be depositing a $1.7 million check. Net a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, first awarded earlier this year, and you’d walk away with a cool $3 million.  Read more

Melanoma drug joins ‘breakthrough’ club

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Melanoma drug joins 'breakthrough' club

Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted its first ‘breakthrough therapy designations’ to a pair of cystic fibrosis drugs (see Nat. Med. 19, 116–117, 2013). But since then, it’s been all about the cancer agents.  Read more

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3D-printed material has tissue-like properties

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A rubbery material made using a three-dimensional printer can transmit electrical signals and mechanically fold like biological tissue in predictable ways. The work, published in this week’s issue of Science by researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, could pave the way for tissue engineering, controlled drug release technologies or other medical applications.  Read more

New, intensive trials planned on heels of Mississippi HIV ‘cure’

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New, intensive trials planned on heels of Mississippi HIV ‘cure’

ATLANTA — Until recently, the medical community held a consensus that children born with HIV might be obliged to take antiretroviral drugs for the rest of their lives. But the announcement made last week that an infant in rural Mississippi who stopped receiving medicine at 18 months of age and has since lived for a year with no measurable viral RNA in the blood is prompting HIV experts to question the conventional wisdom.  Read more

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Antidotes edge closer to reversing effects of new blood thinners

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Antidotes edge closer to reversing effects of new blood thinners

The US approval late last year of the blood thinner Eliquis (apixaban) made it the third blood-thinner pill option to come online in the last three years, all of which have proven to be as or more effective as the old go-to warfarin, with lower rates of brain hemorrhaging and fewer blood tests required to get the dosing right. However, unlike warfarin, which has an antidote in the form of vitamin K, no compounds exist that directly counteract the anticoagulation effects of these next-generation blood thinners—something desperately needed for the 1–3% of patients who suffer major bleeding complications, experience trauma injuries or require urgent surgery while on these pills.  Read more

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‘FlyWalker’ tracks insect feet, could advance Parkinson’s research

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They may have wings, but fruit flies spend plenty of time on their feet. And these insects, also known as Drosophila, are a standard animal model for studying neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and even Alzhiemer’s.  Read more

VIDEO: Newly discovered form of cell division may help ward off cancer

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Cell biologists have long thought that cytokinesis, the final step of cell division in which the cytoplasm and its contents are split, is necessary for the proper assortment of chromosomes. Disrupt this process, the prevailing wisdom held, and aneuploidy will result, with cancerous implications. But a team led by Mark Burkard at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has discovered a new type of cell division, dubbed ‘klerokinesis’, that protects cells from failed cytokinesis.  Read more

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