The Great Beyond

Chemists are mourning the loss of a bright young star of the field, Keith Fagnou, an organic chemist at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Fagnou died three days after being admitted to hospital with the H1N1 flu virus. He was 38 years old.

An announcement from the department of chemistry at the university reads “Professor Fagnou was an outstanding scientist, teacher, and mentor. He will be missed by all his colleagues and students as a leader, a teacher, a passionate scientist, and a good friend.”

Fagnou was researching the organic chemistry of carbon-hydrogen bonds in cyclic molecules called arenes, with the aim of making these catalytic reactions more efficient. Fagnou’s research was part of the green chemistry movement, which is trying to make chemical processes more sustainable. In 2003, Fagnou won the Polanyi prize, given by the province of Ontario in honour of Nobel laureate John Polanyi, who won the prize for chemistry in 1986.

The Ottawa Citizen uses Fagnou’s death to discuss how this strain of flu might hit young, seemingly healthy people more than seasonal flu – which tends to cause worst suffering in the elderly and very young.

Over at popular chemistry blog In the pipeline the question over the availability and production of vaccines in Canada is raised in the comments thread, although it is very unlikely that someone of Fagnou’s age and physical health would feel the need to be vaccinated. Extra poignancy is added when you take a look at the University of Ottawa’s swine flu advice page, which reads:

Due to the limited supply of the H1N1 flu vaccine, the University of Ottawa may be required to hold its campus vaccination clinic at a later date. The University is waiting on confirmation from Public Health Ottawa and will keep the community informed of all developments.

The latest CDC estimates, released late last week, suggest that the number of deaths from swine flu is greater than expected (Washington Post).

Fagnou is survived by his wife, who is a doctor, and their three young children. His PhD supervisor Mark Lautens from the university of Toronto told the Globe and Mail how Fagnou’s death is not only a tragic loss to his family and friends, but also to Canadian chemistry: “I think it's safe to say he was the most high-profile rising young star in chemistry in Canada.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 16, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Swine flu | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Pfizer has announced plans to close six of its 20 research sites around the world.

Under the perhaps slightly disingenuous headline “Pfizer Announces Global Research Network”, the pharma company has come clean on what its recent merger with Wyeth will mean for its scientists.

In a statement, Pfizer said it would “significantly reduce R&D activities” at a number of sites, reducing its overall square footage of R&D by 35% and reducing 20 sites down to five main sites and nine specialized units (AP has the most user friendly breakdown of who is for the chop).

Pfizer has also admitted that there will be job losses, although it has not said how many researchers will be let go. The company has previously said it would reduce its total workforce by around 15% (approximately 20,000 people) after the merger.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 10, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A paper has been published today in Nature Nanotechnology with a fairly provocative title: Nanoparticles can cause DNA damage across a cellular barrier.

But before we start shouting “grey goo” from the rooftops and blaming nanotechnology for ruining our lives, the paper requires some more considered thought. We already suspect that certain nanoparticles cause damage, but the need for more research is abundantly clear.

What the team, led by Charles Case from the Bristol Implant Research Centre, UK, and his colleagues have shown is that in their lab situation – more of which later – certain nanoparticles can reach through a cellular barrier and cause damage to the DNA in fibroblasts, which are cells important in wound healing.

The fact that nanoparticles can cross a cellular barrier (think blood-brain barrier, or the placenta) could cause alarm, but in this case shouldn’t.

The report is likely to be more interesting for those wanting to study the cellular processes that are happening. The set up in the lab was far removed from a real-life situation. Case’s team used a type of cell that can be used to build a structure that mimics a cellular barrier, they then built up three layers of these cells to make sure there were no gaps, and put the fibroblasts behind it. They then exposed the system to a very high dose of cobalt/chromium nanoparticles – because these are created in small amounts when artificial joints wear during use.

The results showed that the nanoparticles stayed in amongst the barrier cells without killing them. They nanoparticles didn’t reach the fibroblasts. So how was the DNA in the fibroblasts damaged? This is the part that is likely to whet the appetites of other scientists in the field. It looks like the nanoparticles set off a series of signals within the cells of the barrier, that ultimately led to the release of DNA-damaging ATP through two specific channels at the edge of the barrier.

This signalling process meant that the fibroblasts’ DNA was more damaged when the barrier was present than when the fibroblasts were directly exposed to the nanoparticles.

So what does this mean? I can’t put it any better than Andrew Maynard, nanotech regulation expert from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, who told me, “it's an important study as it raises possible new ways in which harm could occur following exposure. But while it raises new questions, it is far from conclusive on whether this is a relevant or significant way in which specific types of nanoparticles can cause harm. More research is needed.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 05, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Drug company Novartis is to pump $1 billion into China over the next five years. Included in this plan is a move to turn the company’s existing research institute in Shanghai into the largest of its kind in the country

The expansion of the CNIBR in Shanghai will involve relocating the facility to a new campus, where researchers will focus on diseases that are highly prevalent in China, says Novartis. The number of researchers employed should increase from 160 to 1,000, making it the largest Novartis R&D centre after its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland and its Cambridge, USA facility.

“We are confident that our expanded investment in R&D will result in innovative therapies for patients in China and other countries nurtured by the growing scientific excellence in China,” says Daniel Vasella, chairman and CEO of Novartis (press release).

The investment is just the latest indication that pharma companies view China as vital to their future profitability, along with other rapidly developing nations such as India.

“I think it will be a signal of China’s rising importance in the pharmaceutical industry,” says Vasella (WSJ). “You have to ask yourself where do you need to be down the road, and clearly it is here.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 03, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

GlaxoSmithKline has announced a rosy set of third-quarter financial figures, and is going to be boosted by the ongoing H1N1 outbreak.

The company says it expects further growth in the fourth quarter “including significant sales of influenza products”.

“In Europe, we received approval for Pandemrix, our pandemic H1N1 vaccine. This follows more than 10 years of investment and effort into research of pandemic influenza. To date we have announced orders worldwide for approximately 440 million doses of the vaccine,” says CEO Andrew Witty.

Witty also says the company is beginning to see the outcome of its attempts to move away from “white pill/western markets”. While total sales at GSK were up 3%, emerging market sales were up 25% and now represent 14% of its pharmaceutical turnover versus 12% last year. Under 30% of sales were from white pill and western markets, versus 38% in the second quarter of 2008.

The Daily Telegraph says analysts expect sales of GSK’s Pandemrix to hit £1bn in the fourth quarter and Relenza to reach £180m.

The Financial Times notes:

Upgrading GSK from “hold” to “accumulate”, analysts at Charles Stanley concluded: “The company is evolving much more smoothly than we anticipated from a business dependent on blockbuster products to one based on strong and diversified franchises.”

Gbola Amusa, pharmaceuticals analyst with UBS, was also positive. “It was a solid quarter . . . GSK has turned the corner on a difficult year,” he said in a research note. But, like Bernstein Research in a separate note, he flagged the need to study progress in the company’s pipeline of future patented products.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 29, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Twitter’s self appointed ‘@sciencegoddess’ – a.k.a. Joanne Manaster, a science educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wants to know what your favourite element is. She’s gotten a lot of response, rendered in 140 character ‘tweets,’ which shouldn’t surprise. It’s chemistry week, after all. Moreover, she says “Most people even if they’ve just gotten through high school science have been exposed to the elements – the periodic table of the elements, that is.” Many of the responses reveal, if briefly, people's personal and intellectual connections to the building blocks of the universe.

So far Carbon seems to be winning with Tungsten pulling its weight. Much credit is given to @oliversacks, whose book Uncle Tungsten was inspired by a family member who manufactured light bulbs and had, like Sacks and Manaster, a knack for inspiring a love of science.

Read on for more elemental twestimonials:

Continue reading "Tweet your favourite element" »

Posted by Brendan Maher on October 23, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

GlaxoSmithKline has been ordered to pay out $2.5 million in a lawsuit over birth defects allegedly associated with its antidepressant Paxil.

Bloomberg reports that 599 similar cases are in the pipeline (personally I wonder how many potentially $2.5m a year grossing drugs are in GSK’s pipeline).

“The first win is always huge, especially when you get a jury saying the drug caused the injury,” says Sean Tracey, the lawyer for the family of Lyam Kilker, who was born with heart defects and whose mother was using Paxil.

The Philadelphia Inquirer notes:

By a 10-2 margin, jurors said Glaxo officials had “negligently failed to warn” the doctor treating [Kilker's mother Michelle] David about Paxil's risks and concluded the medicine was a “factual cause” of the child's heart defects.

But the jury also found that Glaxo’s handling of the drug was not “outrageous”, meaning the family could not seek punitive damages against the drugmaker.

Continue reading "GSK hit with $2.5m ruling in antidepressant case" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 14, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After Venkatraman Ramakrishnan learnt he'd shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with Ada Yonath and Thomas Steitz), NatureNews went to meet him at the UK Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge. Here he is, describing the thrill of seeing atomic-resolution structures of the ribosome - and his surprise at winning a chemistry Nobel: a subject in which, he admits, he'd flunk an undergraduate degree.

For more videos from Nature, go to http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on October 13, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry has gone to Thomas Steitz, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Ada Yonath for “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”. They take a third of the prize home each.

The new laureates used X-ray crystallography to reveal the structure of the ribosome, the factories in cells that turn DNA blueprints into the the finished products of proteins.

Contacted by Nature News, Ramakrishnan said “I’m in a bit of shock at the moment. So many people contributed, and the ribosome is so important, that I am just pleased to be one of the three.” (Read the full story later today.)

The prize committee notes that Ramakrishnan, Steitz and Yonath “showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.”

Understanding the ribosome is also of importance to those designing antibiotics, which can work by blocking bacterial ribosomes.

Of course you can’t please everyone. One member of the Nature office who is rather purist about his science was heard muttering, “they gave it to biologists again”.

Ramakrishnan works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Steitz is at Yale University, USA. Yonath is at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Congratulations to all!

Continue reading "Nobels 09: Chemistry" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 07, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night Cambridge’s clown school gave the world’s best and brightest the awards they deserved. Harvard University hosted its 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, where its Annals of Improbable Research recognized the usual combination of mad scientists and asinine leaders.

Pulling in the biology prize was a Japanese team that discovered pandas are more than just cuddly tax dollar vacuums — their poop packs a potent punch. The group isolated bacteria in panda feces that can reduce kitchen waste by more than 90 percent in mass. Good news, given that pandas produce about 40 pounds of poop a day — and as one might expect, it doesn’t stink.

The Ig Nobel prizes also continued their fascination with skivvies. Back in 2001 the biology prize went to the inventor of panties that filter out flatulence with a replaceable charcoal filter, and this year the public health prize went to the inventors of a bra that can be “quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander” — in this case that needy bystander was Wolfgang Ketterle, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Continue reading "Panda poop, panties and more at the Ig Nobels" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on October 02, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Worrying levels of Tamiflu are detectable in rivers during flu season, report researchers in Japan, raising questions about the use of this drug and the possibility of drug resistance emerging.

Gopal Ghosh, of Kyoto University, and colleagues looked for oseltamivir carboxylate in river water. This is the anti-influenza molecule that the body converts Tamiflu into.

Ghosh found the compound in sewage treatment plant effluent in Kyoto at concentrations likely to be “high enough to lead to antiviral resistance in waterfowl” he told Wired. Once resistance emerged in birds it might come back to haunt humans.

The paper in Environmental Health Perspectives detailing this research suggests treating effluent with ozone during influenza epidemics, when use of Tamiflu and the potential for resistance will sky-rocket.

Wired notes:

Once ingested, virtually all Tamiflu will end up in the environment in the active form, notes environmental chemist Jerker Fick of Umeå University in Sweden. … Two years ago, Fick’s team published data showing that most sewage-treatment technologies will remove “zero percent” of any OC present. And ducks love hanging out around warm, nutrient-rich outflows of treated water during winter-flu season. While sampling for waterborne OC last year in Japan, “I saw it myself,” he says.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 01, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pop, pop, fizz, fizz -- oh, what a release it is.

Bubbles bursting from a glass of sparkling wine release sweet-smelling chemicals that hover above the liquid to tickle your nose as well as your tongue.

A team led by Gérard Liger-Belair, a chemist at the University of Reims in the Champagne region of France, naturally, analyzed the aerosols in champagne using ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry and discovered an abundance of double-ended, aromatic compounds that both cling to and repel water. These chemicals, called surfactants, are dragged upwards in the airy champagne bubbles and are released when the bubbles pop, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study authors argue that the surface of sparkling wine behaves much like the surface of the sea. "By drawing a parallel between the fizz of the ocean and the fizz in Champagne wines, our results closely link bursting bubbles and flavour release — supporting the idea rising and collapsing bubbles act as a continuous lift for aromas in every glass of champagne," Liger-Belair, the author of Uncorked: The Science of Champagne, told the Telegraph.

The New York Times, on the other hand, likens the aromatic uplift to an elevator.

Metaphors and analogies aside, the findings could have real implications for wine connoisseurs. "In the past, we thought that the carbon dioxide in the bubbles just gave the wine an acidic bite and a little tingle on the tongue, but this study shows that it is much more than this," Jamie Goode, founder of The Wine Anorak magazine, told BBC News. "Glasses that encourage more bubbles to come up are going to be better." So next time you crack open a bottle of bubbly, make sure you grab a fluted glass.

The Associated Press remarked that the Hawaiian singer Don Ho was on to something when he sang in his 1966 hit that "tiny bubbles in the wine make me feel happy, make me feel fine". You can watch him croon at the 2005 Pro Bowl in Honolulu, Hawaii, here:

Image by quinn.anya via flickr under Creative Commons

Posted by Elie Dolgin on September 29, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With less than two weeks to go until the Nobel Prize winners are announced, the soothsayers at Thomson Reuters have rubbed their crystal balls and come up with a shortlist of favourites.

The contenders, as predicted by Thomson Reuters' citation analyst David Pendlebury, are based on the number of citations and high-impact papers published in Nobel-worthy fields of study. Since 2002, 15 'citation' Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, seven of which were tapped in the same year as their triumph, including last year’s chemistry champ, Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego.

This year’s frontrunners for physiology or medicine include the codiscoverers of telomeres, the repetitive DNA add-ons at the ends of chromosomes that have been linked to ageing and cancer as they shrink, the researchers who worked out cellular membrane trafficking, and the Japanese researcher who showed that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could track oxygen flow, making real-time brain scans and functional MRI possible.

Continue reading "Nobel nod" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on September 24, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

These blobs are images of the electron clouds around a carbon atom. There’s a radially symmetric blob, and a double-lobed blob with a node in the middle – just like the patterns of electron density that the s and p atomic orbitals give rise to.

The snaps come from Igor Mikhailovskij and colleagues at the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology, Ukraine, reporting in a paper to be published in Physical Review B. They cool a chain of carbon atoms to 4 kelvin in a vacuum, and apply a voltage so as to create an electric field which draws some electrons away from the atom on the chain’s tip, towards a phosphor screen. (This is called field emission microscopy). The spatial distribution of that image represents the electron density around the atom. If the round blob looks elliptical, that's perhaps due to interaction with the graphite tip that supports the carbon chain, the researchers think.

More images below the fold...

Continue reading "Electron clouds: seeing is believing" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on September 17, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The genuinely rather good They Might Be Giants have released their science for kids album, Here comes science, previewed in Nature, and on the podcast.

Here is the lovely song "Meet the elements".

You should also check out "Science is real" (thanks Bad Astronomy) and show it to everyone you know. Especially kids.

Below the fold: Previous songs about science.

Continue reading "Songs about science XXV: Meet the elements" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on September 14, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has recorded its 50 millionth small molecule in its CAS registry, a database of chemical information.

"Reaching the 50 million mark so quickly is an indicator of the accelerating pace of scientific knowledge," according to a press release, which notes that the 40 millionth substance was registered 9 months ago.

Number 50 million's chemical name is (5Z)-5-[(5-Fluoro-2-hydroxyphenyl)methylene]-2-(4-methyl-1-piperazinyl)-4(5H)-thiazolone, and it's a potential reliever for neuropathic (nerve) pain.

On Sciencebase, David Bradley notes that the predominant source of this new chemical substance information is the global patent literature. Several years ago, patents accounted for approximately 20 percent of the substance information added to the registry. WIth the explosion of patent literature today, that number is closer to 70 percent. "If they’re scraping patents on such a vast scale, is the addition of a few extra million entries actually representative of technological advance?" he wonders.

Chart: CAS/wikipedia

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on September 10, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The pharmaceutical industry cannot rely on increasing sales to drive its profits, a leading executive warned this week.

Speaking at the British Pharmaceutical Conference in Manchester, Brent Vose, vice president of Global Drug Development at AstraZeneca, said that the world financial situation makes it even more important to be smart about drug research.

“Over time sales have continued to go up in dollar terms. I have little doubt that that will not continue,” he said. “As GDP and tax revenues reduce, the pressures on healthcare budgets will increase.”

The financial crisis comes at a bad time for major pharmaceutical companies, which are also bracing for the patents on a number of big selling drugs to expire, opening them up to generic competition.

Speaking at another conference session, Steve Wicks, vice president of Worldwide Pharmaceutical Sciences at Pfizer, noted that it is normal for a drug to lose 60% of its market share in the first year of generic competition. Wicks cautions that new big sellers are not coming on to the market in time to fill the gaps from the big blockbusters about to lose their patents.

“We are beginning to move into the unsustainable cycle,” he said.

Continue reading "Hard times ahead for big pharma" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 09, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There were probably some champagne corks popping over at AstraZeneca this weekend as the company unveiled results showing its new drug for thinning blood performs better than one of the world’s current best sellers.

Zeneca’s ticagrelor (marketed as Brilinta) was better at reducing cardiovascular events such as death and stroke than clopidogrel (Plavix). To put this in context: Plavix places as the world’s second or third best selling drug, with annual sales of $6 billion.

Results from a trial of over 18,000 patients were presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting and also published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Death from vascular causes, myocardial infarction, or stroke occurred in 9.8% of patients on ticagrelor versus 11.7% of those on clopidogrel.

Continue reading "Zeneca swells on Brilinta thinner news" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 01, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A former SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory researcher who allegedly destroyed $500,000 worth of protein crystals earlier this month was arrested and charged on Monday for willfully ruining government property.

The 4,000 to 5,000 now-useless protein crystals represented a “whole variety of different samples” involved in the Protein Structure Initiative, a federally-funded project to expedite the discovery of atomic-level protein structures, says Ian Wilson, director of the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG), which oversees the initiative. Some crystals were aimed at matching three-dimensional protein structures with their corresponding DNA sequences; others were part of targeted research projects including the Human Microbiome Project and efforts to map every protein made by the bacterium Thermotoga maritima.

Continue reading "Vandal destroys protein crystals in California" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on July 29, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Here’s a brilliant example of scientists at a chemistry blog providing instant high-quality peer review of an odd paper – complete with live-blogged experimenting.

Spotting a surprising claim in a paper published by the respected Journal of the American Chemical Society (X. Wang et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc., DOI: 10.1021/ja904224y), an organic chemist flagged it with a terse “WTF is going on here?” in the comments thread of an unrelated post at widely-visited chemistry blog, Totally Synthetic.

WTF indeed. The paper claimed that sodium hydride, a strong reducing agent, was acting as an oxidant – converting an alcohol to a ketone.

Less than 24 hours after that alert had appeared online, blog-savvy chemists had repeated the paper’s experiment, and shown that the authors had their reaction right but their mechanism mistaken: some other oxidant (probably trace amounts of oxygen in air) was doing the work. Totally Synthetic’s author, medicinal chemist Paul Docherty, live-blogged his own experiment to kick off the fun.

“This is perhaps the first time that such a 'web2.0' approach to chemistry has occurred, and I'm indebted to my readers for their effort!” Docherty tells Chemistry World.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 27, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Element 112 has a name! Taken from Nicolaus Copernicus, the man who said that the universe didn’t revolve around the Earth, and that we were actually spinning round our star, the Sun.

Element 112, first discovered in 1996 by the group of Sigurd Hofmann at the centre for heavy ion research in Darmstadt, Germany has been in want of a name since it was officially recognised by the International Union of Pure an Applied Chemistry last month.

Hofmann wanted to buck the recent trend of element naming to come out of his lab – which gave us a rush of elements named after fairly modern-era scientists: Bohr, Meitner, Roentgen, as well as a couple named after places nearby: Hess and Darmstadt.

Continue reading "Welcome to the periodic table Copernicium!" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 15, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Europe’s pharmaceutical industry breathed a sigh of relief yesterday as the European Commission unveiled the results of its inquiry into anti-competitive activities of major companies.

These activities might include deals between companies or complex patenting strategies designed to delay the arrival of generic drugs on the market. This could mean consumers end up paying for the more expensive branded drugs rather than cheaper generics.

Despite the fact that antitrust proceedings have been initiated against several pharma players, the perception seems to be that the industry had dodged a bullet. The European Commission announced a formal antitrust investigation into French pharma company Servier and a number of generics companies over “agreements” which may have been designed for “hindering entry on to the market of generic perindopril, a cardio-vascular medicine” (press release).

That announcement came as the Commission released its final report on antitrust and generics, claiming that “shortcomings in pharmaceutical sector require further action”. It says that the appearance of generic drugs on the market is being delayed and that “company practices are among the causes”.

Continue reading "Europe takes gentle aim at pharma deals" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 09, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chemicals giant BASF is about to get much bigger by acquiring Swiss speciality chemicals firm Ciba. But with that expansion will come an immediate trimming down – the take over will lead to a loss of around 3700 jobs by 2013, saving the company some 400 million Euros. BASF has around 97,000 employees and Ciba around 12,500.

“The combined businesses can be successful in the long term only if we optimize them and exploit the full potential for synergies,” said CEO Juergen Hambrecht (Bloomberg).

Hambrecht also admitted that this in “unfortunately not good news” for some of his employees (C&EN).

As well as job losses, the company is now deciding the fate of 23 of Ciba’s plants – which could be sold, or closed or restructured within BASF.

Meanwhile in China, BASF and the China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) are set to spend an extra $500 million on their joint petrochemicals venture in Nanjing (Bloomberg), a move that is broght about by increased costs, and which triggered a jump in BASF’s share price (Reuters).

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 07, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The editor of a respected diabetes journal has admitted he rushed an article on a Sanofi-Aventis drug into print in response to the company’s plunging share price.

Rumours about the results of the study on Lantus (insulin glargine) are perceived to be behind a 14% tumble in Sanofi shares last week.

“The market was falling and there were rumours about papers that we assumed were ours,” says Edwin Gale, editor of the Diabetologia journal and a researcher at the University of Bristol (Bloomberg).

“Because we were aware there were leaks, we felt there would be an alarmist, uncontrolled statement coming out in the press, so we did a rush job on it, coming out a week earlier than expected. We’ve never had to do that before.”

Bloomberg notes that Ralph DeFronzo, a diabetes researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center, warned in an 11 June conference call that an “earthquake” might put doctors off Lantus.

Continue reading " Share price tumble prompted ‘rushed publication’ of drug study " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 01, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Roche has decided it is tired of having its name prefixed with the words ‘pharma giant’. In response, the company is bailing out of the pharmaceutical industry associations in both the UK and the US.

Instead, it will be signing up with the US Biotechnology Industry Association (BIO). The move follows the company’s merger with biotech firm Genentech earlier this year for around $46 billion.

“As part of the world's largest biotechnology company, Genentech and Roche believe that BIO’s purpose is closely aligned with the direction of the new company and, therefore, can represent the company’s interests in Washington, among policymakers, legislators and the general public,” said the company (AP).

Farewell big pharma, hello big biotech.

Continue reading "Roche: we’re not pharma anymore" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 30, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Biologic drugs should face the same generic competition as standard pharmaceuticals after seven years, aides of US president Barack Obama have stated.

Be they called bio-similars, bio-generics, follow-on biologics or something else, products derived from biotechnology have been a hot topic in the US recently. Obama has come down somewhere between the extremes currently proposed for these drugs.

Democratic House rep Henry Waxman proposed legislation that would give biotech drugs just five years of exclusivity before other companies could muscle in. Another rep, Republican Anna Eshoo, put forward a proposal offering 12 years.

Now Bloomberg has obtained a letter from Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, and Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, pushing for a “generous compromise” on seven years.

“Lengthy periods of exclusivity will harm patients by diminishing innovation and unnecessarily delaying access to affordable drugs,” they wrote.

Continue reading "Biosimilars: Obama’s seven year pitch" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 29, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tremble in fear Big Pharma! Reese Witherspoon is coming for you!

We have previously encountered fictionalised pharma stories (‘phiction’ as they shall henceforth be known), notably in ‘The Constant Gardener’ where an evil drug company murders Rachel Weisz.

Now Reese Witherspoon is going to find the humour hiding behind the fake journals, the controversial drug trials, the federal investigations, the ghost writing, and all the other scandals.

Reuters reports that Universal Pictures is developing a comedy called ‘Pharm Girl’ (see what they did there) in which Witherspoon plays “a woman who gets a job at a pharmaceutical powerhouse and begins to see the underbelly of the industry as she rises through the company’s ranks”.

Film mag Empire opines:

The pharmaceutical industry is shaping up to be Hollywood's bad guy of the month, stepping into the breach usually filled with Nazis and dastardly English types with twiddly moustaches. The Ed Zwick-helmed Love And Other Drugs will also put the boot into big pharma, albeit in a similarly comically-toned way.

Hat tip: Pharma Gossip.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 18, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Rex Dalton

The accidental death earlier this year of a researcher in a chemistry laboratory fire continues to reverberate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

UCLA officials have recently switched to a defensive mode, after last month agreeing to pay nearly $32,000 in fines and accepting health and safety citations for violations following the 16 January death of Sheri Sangji.

A statement posted on 8 June says the university will engage in a partial appeal of the state sanctions to prevent their use in any future civil or criminal proceeding against UCLA. Sangji's family and friends are pushing for more scrutiny of the 29 December accident. Sangji, age 23, was critically burned when a syringe malfunctioned when she was removing volatile t-butyl lithium from a container.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health cited UCLA in May for inadequate training, not providing protective clothing, and failing to correct previously identified lab safety deficiencies. At the time, UCLA noted it had taken all required corrective actions.

But now a UCLA attorney’s statement says the university had corrected the noted deficiencies prior to the incident – only failed to document those remedies. The university says the appeal doesn’t mean it isn’t serious about maintaining safe laboratories.

The appeal will be heard during an administrative hearing process in the coming months.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 12, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

GlaxoSmithKline is to expand its pilot programme offering cheaper drugs in poorer countries, according to its chief executive.

Andrew Witty says the Philippines pilot had boosted sales by between 15 and 40% with price cuts of 30 to 50% (Financial Times, Wall Street Journal).

“Making sure the price-volume equation is right is a key piece of the strategy,” says Witty (FT). “We’re willing to flex our business model to show that we are as competitive in the Philippines as in Philadelphia.”

Earlier this year he promised that drug prices in so-called Least Developed Countries would be cut to 25% of prices in richer nations.

However, it is not all going GSK’s way in the pricing stakes. In another article, the WSJ notes:

GlaxoSmithKline PLC and the Russian government are at odds over the price of HIV drugs, underscoring the difficulties drug companies face in the emerging markets on which they have staked their hopes for future growth.

Image: Witty / GSK

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 12, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new chemical element has been officially recognised by the world’s ruling chemists. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has asked discoverer Sigurd Hofmann to pick a name for ‘Element 112’.

Hofmann’s team smashed zinc atoms into a lead target with the help of a particle accelerator to create their new element, which has an atomic number of 112, meaning each atom has 112 protons in its nucleus.

At the moment the element has been given the temporary name ‘ununbium’, derived from the Latin for one-one-two (BBC, Daily Mail).

“During the next few weeks, the scientists of the discovering team will deliberate on a name for the new element,” says Hofmann, of the GSI Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany (press release).

Previous GSI experiments have given us Bohrium, Hassium, Meitnerium, Darmstadtium, and Roentgenium. All rather serious names those; maybe it’s time to lighten things up by calling this one MegaHugeElementium or GreatBigium.

Image: the element team / A. Zschau, GSI

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 12, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone’s favourite chemical registry legislation, REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances) has passed another milestone. The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has produced its first recommendation for seven substances of very high concern.

The opinion of the member states committee is that seven out of a candidate list of 15 substances will be prioritised. In future, these substances can only be used within the EU when specifically authorised to do so.

Continue reading "REACH reaches milestone" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 02, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new programme to develop cures for rare or ‘orphan’ diseases has been unveiled in the US. The National Institutes of Health is putting $24 million up for work on some of the 6,600 rare diseases that impact 25 million Americans and which currently have no effective treatments.

“The federal government may be the only institution that can take the financial risks needed to jumpstart the development of treatments for these diseases, and NIH clearly has the scientific capability to do the work,” says NIH Acting Director Raynard Kington (press release).

NIH’s definition of a rare disease is “one that affects fewer than 200,000 Americans”. It also notes that it can cost $10 million to get a treatment through the pre-clinical drug trial process. Between 80 and 90% of drugs fail, leading this stage to be dubbed the ‘valley of death’.

Obviously $24 million isn’t going to go far with costs of up to $10 million per drug, but NIH’s new Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases programme will aim to improve the drug development process itself, as well as coming up with its own treatments.

”Preclinical work is hard and our resources will be limited,” Stephen Groft, director of the NHI rare diseases offices acknowledges (WSJ).

Reuters notes the TRND programme will also be reporting its failures, something not widely practised in drug development. “We are going to tell everyone what we are doing,” says Christopher Austin of the NIH Chemical Genomics Center. “That alone will be revolutionary.”

Derek Lowe, on the In the Pipeline blog, adds:

Treating rare diseases can be quite profitable in the industrialized world (ask Genzyme, among other companies), but if the conditions are localized in poorer areas no one's likely to take a crack at them. So my first reaction is ‘Good, and the best of luck to you’.

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 21, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The American Chemical Society (ACS)'s Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), an authoritative subscription database which holds information on over 40 million molecules, is not known for its commitment to free chemical information on the internet. Their attitude: if you want reliable data on molecules, you should pay for it.

That view appears to be ever-so-slightly softening. Last week, CAS press-released that, in collaboration with Wikipedia, it had launched a free web-based resource, “common chemistry”, holding information on around 7800 chemical substances for the general public. The service has actually been available since the ACS spring meeting (March 22-26) in Salt Lake City.

"This collaboration is CAS' gesture to provide accurate chemical information and CAS Registry Numbers to the public,” Christine McCue, CAS vice president for marketing, tells Chemical & Engineering News, the ACS-published magazine.

Continue reading "Gesture chemistry" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on May 20, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pfizer has announced plans to give free drugs to people who have lost their jobs following the credit crunch.

A new programme titled Medicines Assistance for Those who Are in Need (Maintain) will give 12 month supplies of medication to Americans in financial hardship who lose their jobs and their health insurance this year. This will presumably include the hundreds of scientists Pfizer is itself laying off.

“We all know people who have been laid off recently and have lost their health insurance, making it difficult for them to pay for health care,” says Jorge Puente, the company’s regional president of Worldwide Pharmaceuticals. “We thought there must be some way we could help recently unemployed people who are taking Pfizer medicines to continue treatment during these challenging economic times.”

Over 70 drugs are on the free list, including Viagra and cholesterol medication Lipitor.

“Pharma’s obviously always trying to work on their image. It gets them to be able to say, ‘We can help out in a recession and help people afford our drugs.’” Jon LeCroy, an analyst with Natixis Bleichroeder, told the WSJ. The Journal also highlights schemes from Abbott and Merck to help the needy.

Bizarrely, earlier this week GlakoSmithKline nixed claims that it was planning to offer a 50% discount on medicines to the uninsured. Those claims were based on a press release issued in error, said the company (see: FiercePharma).

Image: detail from ‘Maintain’ application form

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 15, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma companies Merck and GSK are squaring up for a fight, with rival products vying for a slice of the controversial cervical cancer vaccine market.

Merck’s Gardasil has already been on the market for a while, and the company last week unveiled results showing that it can protect for over eight years, extending the known protection time.

GSK meanwhile unveiled a study on its product Cervarix, which it claims shows it to be better than Gardasil. Cervarix has yet to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, although it is used in other countries.

The whole issue of vaccinating against cervical cancer has been controversial. Both Merck and GSK’s vaccines actually protect against Human papillomavirus (HPV) , which can cause the cancer. Some groups, mainly on the political right, fear that vaccinating young people against STDs may encourage promiscuity, although the US Centres for Disease Control recommends vaccination for all 11 and 12 year old girls.

According to the Wall Street Journal, $1.4 billion of Gardasil sold last year, while GSK moved about $231 million-worth of Cervarix. As Mike Huckman notes on MSNBC’s Pharma’s Market blog, which vaccine works best is only one part of the fight.

“Sales of Gardasil are going down,” he writes. “By its own admission, Merck is having a tough time getting females in their late teens and early- to mid-20s to get the set of three shots.

“It’s hoping to find a way to break through with that population and to win approval of the vaccine for older women and males to reignite sales growth. And Glaxo will be late getting into the game.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 11, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Count Lennart Bernadotte of didn’t quite make it to 100. He died in 2004 at the age of 95, but not before ensuring that his life’s great project had a future. Great grandson of King Oscar II who presented the first Nobel awards in Stockholm in 1901, Count Lennart launched, exactly sixty years ago, the Nobel Laureates Meeting in Lindau, a pretty but very provincial town on Lake Constance. The original aim of the weeklong meetings was to encourage isolated and struggling scientists and doctors in post-war Germany by bringing them into social contact with great living scientists from around the world.

Over the next 55 years or so, not a lot changed, even though Germany was no longer isolated or struggling. The meetings – morning lectures, afternoon discussions, evening dances - were popular but remained anachronistically provincial. By the turn of the millennium that had become unsustainable. Laureates were becoming less interested in a long trip to speak with locals at meetings primarily conducted in German, however charming the location.

In 2005, the meetings were internationalised and thrust into the modern world (Nature 436, 170-1). Now 600 hand-picked students from all around the world mingle, discuss and dance with 20 or more Nobel laureates during summer.

To commemorate the centenary of Count Lennart’s birth on 8 May, the Meetings organisers set up a science-history project to digitalise selected lectures from their archives and make them openly available on their webpage (www.lindau-nobel.de). The first eleven selected lectures are now live, more will follow in phases throughout the summer.

The cleaned up voice recordings, accompanied by an introduction and charming black-and-white photos taken in Lindau, bring legendary scientists to life – be it Rita Levi Montalcini (Physiology or Medicine, 1986) pushing her human-rights agenda, Rosalyn Yalow (Physiology or Medicine, 1977) appealing to women to help solve social problems or simply the extraordinary plumminess of the British tones of Lawrence Bragg (Physics 1915) and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (Chemistry 1964). A particular treasure is the lecture on the gravitational constant by Paul Dirac (1933, Physics). Dirac was renowned for being almost pathologically socially withdrawn. Despite this, he showed up to the first ten meetings in Lindau, where, they say, he remained almost silent aside from his lectures.

Coming soon – Werner Heisenberg, Konrad Lorenz, James Watson and other stellar personalities.

Image: Nobel Laureate Dorothy Crowfoot-Hodgkin (Chemistry 1964) and young researchers at
the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 1986.

Posted by Alison Abbott on May 11, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Elsevier yesterday said the “fake journal” it published, which came to light in an Australian court case over the drug Vioxx, was one of a series. The publishing company admitted publishing five other “sponsored article compilation publications … that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures”.

The look-alike journals were funded by pharmaceutical clients including Merck, which is under investigation in the Australian court for improperly marketing drugs including Vioxx (see our previous coverage of the allegations and of Merck's defence.).

The CEO of Elsevier’s Health Sciences Division, Michael Hansen, said:

This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.

We are currently conducting an internal review but believe this was an isolated practice from a past period in time. It does not reflect the way we operate today. The individuals involved in the project have long since left the company.

Elsevier published six such journals, according to The Scientist. Hansen added that Elsevier has "strict disclosure rules in place so that readers are aware of any financial interests behind a specific article or journal, or when entire compilation products are created for pharmaceutical marketing purposes".

Posted by Lucas Laursen on May 08, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Merck began its legal defence yesterday in an Australian court case over Vioxx marketing tactics that allegedly included publishing marketing material in the guise of peer-reviewed literature.

"The relationship between Vioxx and cardiovascular risk was ... and remains contradictory and uncertain," said Merck's legal counsel Peter Garling, according to the Australian.

The case has drawn attention from scientists and doctors, some of whom have asked why anyone would agree to serve on the editorial board of a publication that contained only reprints and summaries of studies with positive conclusions about Merck-owned drugs. The publication, called The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, appears in at least one journal indexing service.

An Elsevier spokesperson told The Scientist that the "project in question was produced 6 years ago and disclosure protocols have evolved since 2003."

Posted by Lucas Laursen on May 05, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma companies could be facing billions of dollars in legal payouts as the fallout from a March ruling in the US Supreme Court makes itself felt, according to Bloomberg.

The Supreme Court ruled that Federal approval of a drug complete with listed side effects doesn’t stop people suing over side effects (see: FDA-approved warning labels won't protect companies). Bloomberg now reports that the decision has “affected more than 250 lawsuits involving at least 10 companies that were in limbo before”.

Mark Herrmann, attorney at Jones Day in Chicago, told the wire service that the decision could cost the industry billions. “There’s no way to quantify it, but the number has as many zeroes in it as attacked Pearl Harbor,” he said.

Full article: Wyeth Supreme Court Loss Breaks Drug Lawsuit Logjam.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 01, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

French chef Pierre Gagnaire has created the world’s first “entirely synthetic gourmet dish” and unveiled it today in Hong Kong. In collaboration with the molecular gastronomy pioneer Hervé This, Gagnaire has created a dish made not from natural flora and fauna but from basic molecules.

The new dish’s ingredients are ascorbic acid, glucose, citric acid and 4-O-a-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol. The result, says the Times, is “a starter of jelly balls tasting of apple and lemon; creamy on the inside and crackling on the outside”.

“If you use pure compounds, you open up billions and billions of new possibilities,” says This. “It’s like a painter using primary colours or a musician composing note by note.”

In an email last month This noted, “Don’t be afraid: if Pierre is doing it, it will be good ...”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 20, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE – Current Nature editor Philip Campbell’s tribute, John Maddox 1925–2009, is now on our website:

It was with great sadness that I and my colleagues at Nature learned of the death on Sunday of Sir John Maddox — or 'JM', as his colleagues always referred to him.

There was puzzlement, too. Yes, John had been looking frail recently, but, well, this was JM — the perpetually restless, irresistible, unstoppable force. The editor who conducted some gatherings with 'shock and awe' as some recall. The 'man with a whim of iron' as others used to call him. And the man who survived countless cigarettes and glasses of red wine, many consumed late into the night as he wrote the week's Editorials at the last possible moment.

As Walter Gratzer, of King’s College, London, wrote recently, “John Maddox brought an old-fashioned Nature into the modern age from the mid-1960s.” (History of Nature feature.)

A full appreciation from Nature will follow shortly. Meanwhile, here is what the world is saying.

Without too much trouble I could probably fill blogs for a month with tales of John: of waiting at the typesetter while he finished an editorial way beyond deadline; of a plan to visit Mexico together when we wined and dined the very attractive press attache at the Mexican Consulate; of how he regularly set fire to his waste-paper basket. Of being sent to the wine bar with a fiver for a bottle of Chateau Thames. Of him disappearing on a Friday night and saying, as the door closed, that he wanted a thousand words from me by Monday for the following week’s issue – on anything I pleased. Of many cases of exasperation and irritation, and many more acts of kindness.

- Henry Gee, Nature editor

He was one of those fellows who shaped the direction of science for quite a long period of time with the power of one of the most influential science journals in the world. I suspect every scientist of my generation read his editorials in our weekly perusal of the journal.

- PZ Myers, Pharyngula

One of the toughest adversaries I’ve ever wrangled with is Sir John Maddox. He was hard-headed, scarily knowledgeable, hyper-articulate, unfailingly gracious even as he ripped you a new one.

- John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology

As Editor of Nature, he restored the journal to an unchallenged position as the place to publish interesting research quickly, and did so at a time when Britain’s influence in world science was otherwise declining. His judgments, sometimes quirky but never dull, were always backed by persuasive argument and a sense of humour.

- The Times

It was a mark of his skilled editorship that Nature could publish a paper on, say, the Loch Ness monster without sacrificing its authority.

“He took command of Nature in a big way,” the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said. “He had a tremendous grasp of science in the full range, from physics to biology to public affairs as they affected the world of science.”

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Britain’s astronomer royal, called Mr. Maddox “a dominant figure,” adding that “he helped establish Nature’s status internationally and built it up by developing supplements to increase its coverage.” After retiring as editor in 1995, he assumed an influential elder statesman role, acting, Mr. Rees said, “as a general guru of science and scientific policy.”

- NY Times

"He adored science and talked about it all the time," she [his daughter, Bronwen Maddox] says. "He was enormously enthused by it. He was a physicist, and took to the biological sciences with enthusiasm, but I think his heart stayed in physics."

- Scientific American

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 14, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Neat technologies, On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

New pharmaceutical company dark deeds are being alleged down under.

An Antipodean class action over the health risks of Merck’s troubled drug Vioxx started at the end of March in Australia’s Federal Court. As has often happened in these cases, the legal action is bringing a host of alleged murky deeds to light.

Most mind-bogging is the claim that Merck “produced an entire journal -- called The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine -- and passed it off as an independent peer review publication”. No more details are forthcoming from the Australian, the only paper to carry this story.

No publication of this name seems to be listed in PubMed or Google Scholar either.

Another report of the court case, in The Age, notes allegations that Merck “kept a list of ‘physicians to neutralise’ in a bid to dampen criticism” of Vioxx.

The case continues.

[Hat tip: Pharmagossip.]

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 09, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Pfizer has apparently agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit over a drug trial it ran in Nigeria.

According to media reports, lawyers for the pharma giant and Nigeria’s Kano state agreed an out of court settlement over the trial of a meningitis drug, which the state alleges killed 11 children and left others seriously injured. Pfizer has denied its product caused the deaths (Pharma Times).

Reuters says sources told it last Wednesday that the settlement would come to near $75 million, with $30 million going to Kano state, $35 million to victims and $10 million going on legal fees.

The Independent presents some of the back story in its coverage:

A divorce case was all that passed for excitement at Richard P Altschuler's "kinda small" lawyer's office in West Haven, Connecticut, when the phone rang nine years ago. On the other end of the line, a world away in the heat of Nigeria, was Etigwe Uwo, a young lawyer with "an incredible story about Pfizer". The Lagos attorney was going to take on the largest pharmaceutical company in the world in an unprecedented class action pitting African parents against an American corporate giant. And he needed help.

Bloomberg says Nigeria’s federal government also sued Pfizer for $7 billion in 2007, although the BBC says this case could be dropped as a result of the new settlement.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 06, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Would you Adam and Eve it? Robot scientists - named Adam and Eve - could soon be after your research jobs.

According to a new paper in Science, an autonomous robot can conduct its own experiments and has now come up with its first results. Ross King, of Aberystwyth University, and his colleagues report that their robo-researcher ‘Adam’ has “generated functional genomics hypotheses about the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and experimentally tested these hypotheses by using laboratory automation”.

The team set Adam to work finding genes for “orphan enzymes”. These are as-yet undiscovered genes for enzymes thought to catalyze reactions that occur in yeast. King told the Times:

Because biological organisms are so complex it is important that the details of biological experiments are recorded in great detail. This is difficult for human scientists, but easy for robot scientists. Yeast is well understood. It’s been studied for over 100 years. We knew this enzyme must be there, but we didn’t know where.

Continue reading "Rise of the machines" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 03, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Neat technologies, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The historic home of chemist Joseph Priestley may soon close to the public due to budget cuts.

Priestley is famous chiefly for his work on oxygen, and many a historian of science has considered whether he or French rival Antoine Lavoisier should be accorded the honor of being named as its discoverer*. After being hounded out of England, he ended up in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where the Joseph Priestley House is now a National Historic Landmark and National Historic Chemical Landmark.

However, a notice on the house’s website says that a new report from the PA Historic and Museum Commission is recommending “discontinuing operation of the Priestley House”.

Commission executive director Barbara Franco told C&EN, “We’re not going to walk away from it and let it deteriorate. We are asking ourselves, 'Who cares about this site? Who will help us solve this problem?’”

As a citizen of the country that burned Priestley’s previous house, in Birmignham, England, I plead with you America: save the Priestley house.

* Yes, I know about Carl Scheele too.

Image: Priestley, via Wikipedia.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 02, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Declan Butler

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company by sales, has put a bit more flesh on proposals outlined last month by Andrew Witty, its chief executive to share some of its patents to boost research into neglected diseases, and to making its drugs available more cheaply in the very poorest countries.

The company's 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report, released on Tuesday, says it will put some 500 granted patents and 300 pending applications into the pool (press release, report).

The report also confirms the company will also introduce differential pricing: “Secondly, on 1 April 2009 we will reduce our prices for patented medicines in the 50 poorest countries in the world, the LDCs [least developed countries], so they are no higher than 25 per cent of the developed world price. Where possible we will reduce our prices further while ensuring we cover our manufacturing costs so this offer is sustainable.”

Continue reading "GSK’s pledge to the developing world, Part 2" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 25, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma company Merck said yesterday that it is the target of a federal grand jury investigation over drug Vioxx. According to Reuters, the probe “involves Merck's research, marketing and selling activities regarding Vioxx”.

In a letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bruce Kuhlik, Merck’s executive vice president, writes:

The letter we received [from the US Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts] is in connection with an ongoing investigation into Merck's activities related to VIOXX. This investigation began in 2004, and includes subpoenas for information and documents from the company and for witnesses to appear before a grand jury. The inquiry is continuing, and the letter does not represent a conclusion or resolution in the matter.

Vioxx was pulled from the market in 2004 over side-effects fears and resulted in multiple lawsuits and billions in damages against Merck.

“The empaneling of grand jury was widely-expected, on the VIOXX matter -- but it is a criminal inquiry, nonetheless,” says the Shearlings got Plowed blog.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 24, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma company AstraZeneca buried a clinical study that was unfavourable to one of its drugs, leaving an 8 year gap until the same results were revealed by another study, according to information released in US lawsuits.

Antipsychotic Seroquel was thought to be better than older drugs for years, while results from ‘Study 15’ were kept out of the public domain, the Washington Post reports. According to documents released as part of lawsuits against AstraZeneca, a company strategist praised efforts to put “positive spin” on “this cursed study”.

AstraZeneca notes that the US Food and Drug Administration had access to Study 15 when it approved Seroquel. A spokesman defended the Seroquel research to the Post, saying that the drug’s labelling noted the weight gain and diabetes.

Fierce Pharma says:

Stories about "buried" drug data have become shockingly common--or, we should say, so common that they're no longer shocking. … On the heels of study-burying allegations against many of AstraZeneca's rivals--Eli Lilly (Zyprexa), Pfizer (Neurontin), GlaxoSmithKline (Paxil), among others--the never-publicized, filed-away Study 15 seems like just one of a crowd.

That fact says more about jaded attitudes than it does about Study 15 itself…

See also
Previous Washington Post stories on Seroquel
A University of Minnesota psychiatrist’s role in the Seroquel story, in the Pioneer Press
The Great Beyond’s 2008 Interactive Pharma Scandal Story

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 19, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s been a busy week for massive pharma deals. After a nine-month corporate struggle, Roche has finally clinched a complete merger with Genentech, offering $46.8 billion – or $95 a share – for the 44% of the biotechnology firm that it doesn’t already own.

The offer, described as a ‘friendly agreement’ [press release], comes days after Merck and Schering-Plough shook hands on a $41 million merger, and six weeks after Pfizer snapped up Wyeth for $68 billion.

Analysts think Roche has done well to get Genentech’s board onside for under $100 a share – some were predicting much higher sums. The board had earlier rejected sub-$90 a share offers. And Roche also managed to push through an agreement before clinical trial results due in April, which are expected to drive up Genentech’s value by expanding the use of its blockbuster anticancer drug Avastin.

Details of the combined company’s operations have also been released – but there is no clear picture yet on how many jobs might go.

Continue reading "Roche and Genentech seal the deal" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on March 12, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After this week’s mega-merger of Merck and Schering-Plough the pharma stories are coming thick and fast.

A number of bloggers are suggesting that Johnson & Johnson might have something to say about the merger. Derek Lowe and Shearlings Got Plowed have noted that S-P and J&J have a deal over the drug Remicade. Lowe says:

J&J is no doubt weighing their options today, because Merck and Schering-Plough structured their deal, by all appearances, specifically to avoid triggering some provisions that would make these rights revert to J&J.
…
We're surely going to see some response from J&J, and very soon. They won't walk away from this one.

Continue reading "Merck and Schering-Plough: the fallout" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 11, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma companies Merck and Schering-Plough are to merge, with the former paying $41.1 billion to the latter’s shareholders.

Rather boringly, the new company will avoid having to pay millions to marketing gurus by simply being named ‘Merck’.

“The combined company will benefit from a formidable research and development pipeline, a significantly broader portfolio of medicines and an expanded presence in key international markets, particularly in high-growth emerging markets,” says Merck Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Richard T. Clark.

Continue reading "Merck’s mega-merger" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 09, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just hours after the US Supreme Court ruled that federal warning labels do not protect drug companies from being sued, Democrats in Congress moved to make the same rule apply to medical device manufacturers.

On Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled that federal regulations did not override – or ‘pre-empt’ – a plaintiff’s right to sue in state courts (see: FDA-approved warning labels won't protect companies). Yesterday House Representatives Frank Pallone and Henry Waxman introduced a bill to overturn a previous Supreme Court ruling that gave medical device manufacturers pre-emption immunity.

Continue reading "New pre-emption fight looms" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 06, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Los Angeles Times reports worrying details on the tragic death of Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old research assistant who suffered fatal third-degree burns after working with a pyrophoric liquid in a UCLA chemistry laboratory. The paper says that the Harran laboratory, where Sangji was working, had been safety checked a couple of months earlier and problems had been found.

Sangji died on 16 January, eighteen days after t-butyl lithium that she was syringeing from a bottle burst into flames, setting her clothes alight. The incident is under investigation by the California Division of Occupational Safety & Health (Cal/OSHA), and UCLA is conducting its own safety review.

According to the LA Times:

Two months earlier, UCLA safety inspectors found more than a dozen deficiencies in the same lab, Molecular Sciences Room 4221, according to internal investigative and inspection reports reviewed by The Times. Among the findings: Employees were not wearing requisite protective lab coats, and flammable liquids and volatile chemicals were stored improperly.

Chemical Safety Officer Michael Wheatley sent the inspection report to the researcher who oversees the lab, professor Patrick Harran, as well as to the head of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department and a top UCLA safety official. The report directed that problems be fixed by Dec. 5. But the required corrective action was not taken, records show, and on Dec. 29 all that stood between Sangji's torso and the fire that engulfed her was a highly flammable, synthetic sweater that fueled the flames.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on March 02, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The US Food and Drug Administration has accused India-based drug manufacturer Ranbaxy of falsifying data in both approved and pending drug applications.

All drug applications from Ranbaxy’s Paonta Sahib facility have been halted as a result, using what is known as the Application Integrity Policy. The company was warned by the FDA last year about “deviations from US current Good Manufacturing Practice”.

“The FDA’s investigations revealed a pattern of questionable data raising significant questions regarding the reliability of certain applications, and this warrants applying the Application Integrity Policy,” says Deborah Autor, director of the Office of Compliance at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a statement released yesterday. “Today’s action reflects the FDA’s continued vigilance and its steadfast commitment to safeguarding the public’s health.”

Ranbaxy says it is analysing the FDA’s letter and adds, “The FDA has said it has no evidence the drugs on the market are substandard and also that they comply with specifications upon testing. No products from Ranbaxy’s other manufacturing facilities are included in the AIP.”

Comment on the situation below the fold.

Continue reading "Ranbaxy ‘falsified drug approval data’, says FDA" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 26, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As Europe approves the blood thinning drug prasugrel, a nasty smell is emerging from America about the drug’s potential approval there.

The much criticised Food and Drug Administration, which will have to approve or reject the product, has admitted making a mistake by booting one researcher off a panel considering the drug.

Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, says researcher Sanjay Kaul was removed from the panel after prasugrel’s manufacturer Eli Lilly complained about research papers in which he questioned the drug’s safety (Bloomberg).

The drug ended up being approved by the panel by nine votes for versus none against.

“Basically, this was a mistake,” Woodcock told HeartWire. “And like many other errors, there were a series of small errors that led up to this happening.”

In a letter to the FDA, James Floyd and Sidney Wolfe of the consumer group non-profit Public Citizen, write:

Now, more than ever, the FDA needs to clarify and disclose to the public how it defines “intellectual bias” and the policy and procedures by which it decides to exclude members of Advisory Committees based on such perceived bias. The case of Dr. Kaul creates the appearance of a lack of such a policy, or the flawed execution of one if it exists.

Tamara Hull, a Lilly spokeswoman, told Bloomberg, “Panel membership is at the sole discretion of the FDA. We made the FDA aware that Dr. Kaul had previously published abstracts and made many public statements regarding prasugrel.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 24, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

China has banned actors from mimicking doctors or disease-sufferers in television adverts.

According to state media, the ban follows a story in the Beijing Times which exposed one actor who pretended to be four different experts on television in order to promote various drugs (Xinhua). In another case, 12 ‘experts’ selling medicine on TV shows were exposed as fakes on the internet (Shanghai Daily).

China has experienced numerous problems with fake drugs. In the most recent example a counterfeit diabetes product caused at least two deaths (Reuters, AFP).

Truth in advertising though? It’ll never catch on in the west.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 18, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

GlaxoSmithKline is to slash drug prices in the world’s poorest countries and reinvest profits made in less developed countries into hospitals and clinics, according to company chief executive Andrew Witty.

“Today we are setting out a new promise: we will reduce our prices for patented medicines in the LDCs so that they will be no higher than 25% of the developed world assuming we can cover our cost of goods,” he said at a Harvard Medical School talk (pdf).

As well as reducing prices in countries such as Zambia and Mozambique, GSK plans to establish a ‘patent pool’ to share research findings on tropical diseases. The patent pool could allow others to develop new products based on GSK’s compounds or process, with any benefits going “in full and solely” to the least developed countries (PharmaTimes). Other companies are being urged to join in the plans.

“Society expects us to do more in addressing these issues,” said Witty (Times). “To be frank, I agree. We have the capacity to do more and we can do more. The question is can we, big pharma, rise to the challenge and be a genuine catalyst for change?”

Continue reading "GSK’s pledge to the developing world" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 16, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Celebrity-obsessed UK newspaper the Guardian has wheeled out its big-hitting serious journalists today for an expose of tax avoidance and ‘offshoring’. In some potentially morally dubious (but likely entirely legal) tax-related cleverness it seems AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline have shifted the ownership of some of their trademarks to low-tax countries.

“This means they can reduce their UK-based profits and hence their British tax bills by paying royalties to the subsidiary in the tax haven for use of the trademarks,” says the paper.

GlaxoSmithKline moved the ownership of over 40 trademarks to Puerto Rico, including its big-selling Avandia diabetes drug. AstraZeneca has also moved rights to drugs such as Crestor to Puerto Rico.

The companies deny doing anything wrong, with Helen Jones, GSK’s head of tax, telling the Guardian, “It is a widespread and totally accepted practice for global companies to license out intellectual property in return for royalties which reflect the value of work carried out by the holder.”

Image: Puerto Rico / by scudsone via flickr under creative commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 03, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fight! Fight! Fight! Carl Djerassi, inventor of the pill (and author, check out his page at Stanford, where his list of representative publications are all to do with his writing exploits, not his science) has hit out at one of organic chemistry’s biggest names, Barry Trost, also at Stanford University.

Djerassi, in a letter (subscription required) to the magazine Chemical and Engineering News, has a dig at Trost for playing down the role of Robert Pettit in Trosts’s recent Nature paper about the total synthesis of a bryostatin.

Djerassi’s complaint is that Pettit, who first discovered the bryostatins and worked on their anticancer properties, is only referenced in passing in Trost’s paper, hidden away in a review article. And not only that, Djerassi doesn’t hold back in accusing Trost of self-promotion: “Trost had no problem in starting his bibliography through references to his own work in 1991 and 1983 rather than to some anonymous review article”.

Oooh, now now Carl.

The fight is highlighted at the mighty Chem Blog, and at Everyday Scientist, the former of which has some great comments as well as pointing out the uncanny resemblance of Djerassi to a famous 'Colonel'. Everyone seems to have a strong feeling about this, and none of the three lead characters in this soap opera have too many fans. Ego is the word being used to describe Djerassi, Trost and Pettit, so perhaps we should leave them to it.

But does Djerassi have a point, or is it up to the peer-review process to pick up on sloppy referencing? It would have been interesting if Djerassi had been one of the referees for the paper in question.

It also occurs to me that, if they're both at Stanford, why doesn't Djerassi just wander down the corridor and challenge Trost to a fight? A duel for Pettit's honour, perhaps? Maybe that's just stupid. Everyone loves a fight, though.

Image: Punchstock (appropriately)

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on February 02, 2009
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I think I’m beginning to get RSI from typing the phrase “more woe in the pharmaceutical industry”.

AstraZeneca has now announced it is cutting more jobs. Most reports put the number of job losses at 6,000. However AstraZeneca’s statement says that that “business reshaping activities” would deliver “a reduction of approximately 15,000 positions by 2013”, this includes 7,600 redundancies announced in 2007 meaning around 7,400 new cuts.

Continue reading "Pharma Phynancial Phaliure" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 30, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Chemicals company Rohm and Haas is trying to force Dow Chemical to finish its billion dollar acquisition of the firm.

Andrew Liveris, Dow’s chief executive, announced at the end of last week that the takeover would not be completed by the end of today (Tuesday 27th January). In a statement Rohm and Haas says it will “pursue all available alternatives” to make sure the $15.3 billion deal goes through.

It has already asked a Delaware court to force Dow to finish the buy up, which Dow says is proving difficult due to the current financial situation (court document). In its statement last week Dow said “recent events have made closing untenable at this time”.

More below the fold…

Continue reading "Rohm to Dow: Du Haas mich" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 27, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The US Food and Drug Administration is taking a kicking this week after a report found its oversight of potential conflicts of interest for clinical trial researchers was really not up to scratch.

An assessment of the financial interests of researchers disclosed as part of 118 drug marketing applications approved in 2007 certainly does not reflect well on the FDA (report pdf).

The Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, which undertook the assessment, found that the FDA could not even determine whether clinical trial sponsors had submitted financial information for all clinical investigators. Some 42% of approved marketing applications were missing information.

Continue reading "FDA = Failed Diligence Agency" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 15, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Drug giant Pfizer is to slash up to 8% of its research staff, the company has announced.

This follows on from last year’s announcement that the pharma company would be narrowing its focus onto certain specific disease areas such as diabetes, and cutting and running from others, such as heart disease.

“R&D is the lifeblood of pharma but Pfizer has not been that productive. So it may be a case that they are trying to eliminate non-productive assets,” Les Funtleyder, an analyst for Miller Tabak, told CNN. “I would imagine the scientists would say the problem is with management.”

By the end of 2009, between 5% and 8% of Pfizer’s 10,000 researchers will have to have started looking for new jobs (Financial Times). They’re going to have to look hard, as other pharma companies are also laying people off.

Continue reading "Pfizer to fire hundreds of scientists" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 14, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma company Bristol-Myers Squibb has announced it is shedding another 10% of its staff.

This time last year the company announced 4,300 positions – 10% of its workforce –would go. Now it says that an additional 10% will get the chop, bringing the total to 8,000 losses by 2010 (WSJ).

Commenting on what now looks like a worrying new pre-Christmas tradition for the company, David Moskowitz, an analyst with Caris & Co, told Reuters, “Overall it’s just getting tougher in the new environment for pharmaceutical companies with increasing generic competition and insurance companies clamping down on what drug companies can charge. As a result, this is the natural consequence.”

As the FiercePharma blog notes, it’s time to round up the usual suspects: the layoffs are “likely due to weak pipelines, increasing regulatory burdens, looming generic competition and (do we even need to say it?) the economy”.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 18, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After a protracted battle, US chemicals companies Huntsman and Hexion have reached an agreement over the proposed buyout by Hexion of Huntsman.

This ‘agreement’ means that Hexion, owned by Apollo Management, has to stump up $1 billion to pay off Huntsman and the deal, which was meant to see Hexion pay $6.5 billion for Huntsman, is off.

Huntsman is glad of the cash, according to CEO Peter R. Huntsman (press release) and so they should be, because their shares dropped by either 40% (Times) or 51% (Forbes) depending which story you read. This means that the cash they’re getting from Hexion is more than the company’s current value. Nice work Huntsman!

Continue reading "Huntsman terminates deal, gets cash" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 16, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just three months after the stores put up their decorations, the Great Beyond’s first Christmas blog post has arrived. Brady Haran, the University of Nottingham’s film-maker in residence, has been asking people at the School of Chemistry what element they want for Christmas.

“I think the elements have a special mystique because they're nature's building blocks at the purest form,” he says. “But there are still 118 of them, and each is totally unique. So we thought it would be fun to ask ‘which one would you like under the Christmas tree?’”

Haran says, “I think I'd choose francium. It’s extremely rare, very dangerous and totally radioactive, which means we've not been able to film it for the Periodic Table of Videos. Being able to make that video would be my ideal Christmas present!”

Nature’s chemistry correspondent Katharine Sanderson wants molybdenum. “I like the name, you can abbreviate it to Molly,” she says

Personally, I’d go with something from group one that you could throw into a lake, but remember kids: an element is for life, not just for Christmas. Unless you’ve got something like Seaborgium of course...

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 15, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The scourge of the pharmaceutical industry has struck again in the United States.

Senator Charles ‘Chuck’ Grassley has been hounding big-pharma over perceived bad-behaviour in an ongoing and wide-ranging investigation. Now he is demanding Wyeth cough up details of its ‘ghost-writing’ activities.

“I have been informed that this practice involves marketing and/or medical education companies that draft outlines and/or manuscripts of review articles, editorials, and/or research papers,” writes Grassley in a letter released Friday.

“This information is then presented to prominent doctors and scientists, particularly those affiliated with academic institutions, to review, edit and sign on as authors, whether or not they are intimately familiar with the underlying data and relevant documentation.”

Continue reading "Wyeth ghost-writing: Grassley rides again" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 15, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Consumer groups are warning the Europe could be in line for American-style direct to consumer drug adverts after the European Commission released proposals to increase “information provision”.

Although Europe insists that an advertising ban will remain in force it wants companies to be able to provide information on drug characteristics, prices and research studies to the general public.

“EU citizens have unequal access to information across the EU,” says the commission. “Although advertising of prescription-only medicines to the general public is forbidden, a lack of detail on information provision has led to a situation in which Member States interpret EU legislation in very different ways.”

UK consumer group Which? says the changes – which have to be approved by Europe’s parliament and council – are a bad move (AP). “Without a clear distinction between ‘information’ and advertising, allowing direct to consumer information is like letting advertising in through the backdoor,” says public affairs manager Peter Moorey (PA).

European consumer group BECU says the plans could open a ‘Pandora’s box’. Monique Goyens, BEUC Director General, says, “The proposal on information to patients is just a disguised way of giving pharmaceutical companies greater flexibility to provide the information they want on prescription medicines directly to the public, namely direct-to-consumer communication strategies - the goal of which in our view is to boost sales.”

Meanwhile, across the pond, Dow Jones Newswires reports things are going the other way:

Drug makers have agreed to new voluntary restrictions on how they conduct direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs in the U.S. - a response to recent government scrutiny of the ads and feedback from doctors.

Image: Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 11, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chemical company Dow has announced “a series of aggressive actions to accelerate its transformational strategy in light of current economic realities”. For those baffled by this new low in corporate speak: it is laying off thousands of employees after being credit crunched.

Dow is closing 20 facilities in what it calls “high-cost locations” and will shed 5,000 employees, around 11% of its total workforce, as part of a $700 million annual cost saving (press release).

Andrew Liveris, the company’s chairman and CEO, told a conference call Dow was also “temporarily idling” around 180 production plants, 30% of its total. This will mean a reduction in contractor numbers of around 6,000.

Just in case he hadn’t used enough jargon, Liveris added “Today’s restructuring is designed to support the Dow of Tomorrow. However, we are accelerating the implementation of these measures as the current world economy has deteriorated sharply, and we must adjust ourselves to the severity of this downturn.”

Reaction below the fold.

Continue reading "Welcome to the Dow of Tomorrow!" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 09, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Heidi Ledford

Nervous Genentech employees can stop eyeing the door -- for a little while at least. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, which announced its intention to acquire the California biotech in July, may not be able to get that $45 billion loan it has asked for to complete the offer, according to Reuters.

While the financial crisis has left tiny biotechs gasping for air, big pharma with its big reservoirs of cash is predicted to fare relatively well. But even the mighty Roche doesn’t have $43.7 billion* lying around, and according to a few anonymous but seemingly well-placed sources talking to Reuters, no bank is likely to lend it to them in the current economic morass.

That doesn’t mean that Roche’s bid is over – they’ll just have to work a little harder to raise the funds, possibly by selling corporate bonds. Roche, meanwhile, has pledged as recently as last week that its pursuit of Genentech is on track. But just a day earlier, Pharmalot entertained a little speculation that Roche may have scrapped plans for a swanky new helix-shaped, $450 million R&D center in Basel amid concerns over how the company would finance the Genentech takeover. And remember, at the end of it all, Genentech wanted more than $43.7 billion anyway.

* How big a loan Roche wants is unclear. The offer for Genentech is $43.7 billion but a loan of $45 billion is often mentioned.
Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 02, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A major report has been released demanding that the UK government keeps closer tabs on makers of nanomaterials, and products containing nanomaterials.

No, you don’t have a weird sense of deja vu. This is yet another report saying that we don’t know enough about nanomaterials, and this needs to be addressed now, before anything bad happens.

But this latest report is one of the UK’s strongest yet. It is from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Like the report produced in 2004 by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, the latest report lays out the problems we face from the teeny tiny particles that are making it into sunscreen, cosmetics, tennis racquets, even antibacterial dressings.

Continue reading "Be scared. A little bit." »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 12, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Solar panels seem like an obvious way to generate electricity on the cheap, but they are flawed in a number of ways. They’re pretty inefficient, and they need to be pointed right at the sun to take advantage of its rays.

So it is good to learn of a new coating made from nanometre sized rods that helps solar panels soak up almost 100% of the sun rays that hit them. This is a big improvement on losing a third of the rays such as happens in conventional solar panels. The news comes out of Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy New York, and a team led by Shawn-Yu Lin. (Press release)

The coating is actually seven layers of carpets made from tiny silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide rods. The rods sit at different angles so can capture sunlight from anywhere. Each layer transmits a different wavelength of light, so that the whole spectrum is covered.

Clever, eh? Clever enough to hit the headlines. The typical blue tinge of solar panels is a direct indication that not all the light is being used, Lin explains to Reuters. What we want is dark, black panels. It doesn't say what colour panels that have a few layers of nanorods slapped on them are, but I'm guessing it's very close to blackest black. The DailyTech calls the design ‘nearly perfect’.

The rods are not unique, though. Other groups are working on similar systems. Nate Lewis and Harry Atwater at Caltech have been working on nanocarpets for a while, as part of a bigger project to help split water using sunlight (see this feature)

Image: Rensselaer/Shawn Lin

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 05, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AstraZeneca announced a rather rosy set of third-quarter results yesterday. The company also said it will stop buying up its own shares in order to have more free cash for snapping up smaller firms.

At the moment Simon Lowth, its chief financial officer, says, “we don’t have any specific targets in mind” (Financial Times).

As the credit crunch hits smaller companies this could be an ideal time to buy them and AstraZeneca is not the only one hoping to profit from the world’s financial woes.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that, “small drug companies squeezed by the credit crunch are turning to GlaxoSmithKline PLC to discuss being acquired, Glaxo Chief Executive Andrew Witty said, adding that Glaxo may step up its acquisition activity in the coming months”.

Bloomberg says AstraZeneca’s results put it as “the best performing stock among European drugmakers this year”. It adds:

AstraZeneca joins GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Novo Nordisk A/S in seeking bargains as the financial crisis forces cash-strapped companies to seek buyouts. Glaxo last week said it plans to scrap its stock repurchasing program in 2009 to free up funds for more purchases. Novo CFO Jesper Brandgaard said today that the Danish drugmaker is earmarking as much as $2 billion for takeovers. AstraZeneca will not seek a 'large scale' purchase and will reconsider share buybacks in January, Lowth said.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 31, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Financial Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Uh-oh, more trouble at t’mill for pharma. Wyeth, a company that comes under the “drugs giant” moniker, has announced it will stop pursuing R&D in eight of its 14 therapeutic areas, and will ‘focus’ on oncology, inflammation, neuroscience, vaccines, metabolic disorders and musculoskeletal disorders.

The story hasn’t been posted on Wyeth’s website yet but has hit a number of serious news outfits (Bloomberg, WSJ, Reuters).

“This is not a cost-reduction effort at all; the dollars spent and number of personnel won't change," said Wyeth spokesman Michael Lampe in the Reuters report. All the areas that Wyeth is dropping are early stage developments. This announcement, dubbed ‘Project impact’ will see the number of diseases Wyeth is targeting specifically drop from 55 to 27.

The news is also being discussed in the blogosphere (Pharmalot, In the pipeline). According to the comments on one of these blogs 60 job losses are predicted. Which is better than the news from Pfizer and Merck lately – Merck slashed 7.200 jobs last week and Pfizer recently announced it was stopping its cardio research. We watch the pharma industry with interest to see how many other companies continue this trend.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on October 29, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma giant Merck is cutting 7,200 jobs after its profits this year dropped 28% in the third quarter.

The job cuts, which amount to around 12% of the total workforce, will hit all areas of the company. Merck does say it will be “enhancing its research operations” but this will be via expanding what it calls “access to worldwide external science” (statement).

More external science is not necessarily good for researchers inside Merck, and the company says three basic research sites will close by the end of 2009: Tsukuba in Japan, Pomezia in Italy and Seattle in the United States.

Continue reading "Merck cuts 7,200 jobs" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 23, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Big-pharma is in the dock again today as Pfizer stands accused of manipulating publication of data on its drug Neurontin. This is according to experts who have combed through company documents for plantiffs who are suing the company. Pfizer has denied the plantiffs charges, says the Boston Globe.

Kay Dickersin, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the documents show “a publication strategy meant to convince physicians of Neurontin’s effectiveness and misrepresent or suppress negative findings” (NY Times).

Reuters says:

The documents suggest that Pfizer's marketers influenced Neurontin's scientific record to boost sales at least until 2003 by delaying the publication or altering the conclusions of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for various conditions besides epilepsy.

As news breaks of another potential pharma scandal, The Great Beyond is resurrecting our interactive political interference story. We present to you: The Interactive Pharma Scandal Story.

NOTE: ALL DATA IN THIS IS DRAWN FROM ACTUAL CASES. HOWEVER IT IS NOT TRUE IN ALL COMBINATIONS AND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN TO REPRESENT ACTUAL PAST OR FUTURE SCANDALS.

The Interactive Pharma Scandal Story

It was revealed today by

an anonymous sourcecourt documentsa paper in JAMAan whistleblowera paper in the NEJM

that

PfizerMerckEli Lilly

had

suppressed datamanipulated publicationhired ghostwritersmis-marketed

in relation to its drug

Vytorin. Neurontin.Vioxx. Zyprexa.

Commentators expressed their

outrage.
surprise.
apathy.

The company has

denied the claims.
made no comment.
criticised the research.
made massive profits anyway.

Let us know if you'd like more options added...

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 08, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE: see also Great glowing jellyfish! It's the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

In a storming comeback for the United States three of its researchers have snagged the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien take the prize for the Queen of the Sciences “for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP”. Without this work we’d never have got the ‘Brainbow’ that Nature published last year.

Nature News’s chemistry guru Katharine Sanderson will have the full story for you soon. If you can’t wait, below the fold is the outline of a blog drafted on this victory by Nature editor Oli ‘Nostradamus’ Morton last year, who scores 2 out of 3 for prediction (albeit out by a year).

America 4 : Europe 3 : Japan 2

More Nobel news
Nobel Prize week: and we’re off!
Virus discoveries secure Nobel prize in medicine
And the physics prize goes to...
Nobel Prize in Physics for symmetry breakdown

Continue reading "US takes 2008 chemistry prize, Nobel league lead" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 08, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The ‘mystery buyer’ waiting to pounce on biotech firm ImClone has been revealed as Eli Lilly.

Lilly has trumped rival firm Bristol-Myers Squibb with an offer of $70 per share, or $6.5 billion all told. The offer has been approved by the directors of both companies. In the month before Bristol-Myers made its move with an initial $60 a share offer (later raised to $62) ImClone stock was trading at around $40-45.

“We think very highly of ImClone’s ground-breaking work in oncology, particularly its success with ERBITUX, a blockbuster targeted cancer therapy, and its ability to advance promising biotech molecules in its pipeline,” says John Lechleiter, Lilly’s president and CEO (press release).

Writing in Nature last week about the struggle for the company, Derek Lowe said:

Erbitux and its potential progeny lie at the intersection of two areas of great interest to the drug industry: oncology and biological products. Both are potentially very profitable. Oncology is an area of huge unmet medical need (as the phrase has it, accurately), and the few therapies that actually show a benefit command a high price.

But David Moskowitz, an analyst for Caris & Co. in Washington, told Bloomberg, “This is an act of desperation on the part of Eli Lilly. Lilly will drain substantially all of its cash on the deal. Lilly is already bidding outside the range of what you think would be rational, but these companies are losing big products early next decade.”

However Bristol-Myers already owns 17% of ImClone’s stock and may come back with a new offer. “Bristol is very keen on acquiring this company,” Cowen & Co analyst Eric Schmidt told Reuters. “I think the Lilly thing probably came to them out of left field and I'm not sure that they are going to take it lying down.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 06, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Senator Charles Grassley’s conflict of interest inquiry in the United States has scored its biggest victory to date, with the media full of revelations about psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff of Emory University.

“After questioning about 20 doctors and research institutions, it looks like problems with transparency are everywhere,” says Grassley (NY Times). “The current system for tracking financial relationships isn’t working.”

Grassley alleges that Nemeroff he received half a million dollars from GlaxoSmithKline while leading a federal research study on GSK drugs (WSJ). Overall Nemeroff failed to declare more than a million dollars of income from pharmaceutical companies, he alleges (Inside Higher Ed).

Continue reading "Conflict of interest inquiry claims psychiatrist scalp" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 06, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A new first for Pharma; Eli Lilly, Indianapolis-based pharmaceuticals company, will be the first among its industry stable-mates to publicly disclose how much it pays in fees and royalties to doctors who give talks for it or advise it about patients. (press release, AP story)

This step will probably see names and home towns of doctors disclosed, says this Indystar report.

Over at Pharmalot, there’s a good run down on the back story, and the Physicians Payments Sunshine Act, which would set up a US-wide registry of cash going to medical practitioners from pharma companies. The story is getting lots of pick up in the US (New York Times, Wall Street Journal)

It’s not clear whether this is going to spill over to academic researchers as well, but the US Senate Finance Committee is still continuing its probe into conflict of interest in academic research. This report from Brown University mentions Martin Keller, embroiled in a controversial antidepressant drug trial of Paxil, made by GlaxoSmithKline. Keller faces accusations that some of his reports were ghost-written.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on September 24, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The media feeding frenzy that is the British Association Festival of Science has kicked off. Katrina Charles is there for Nature and has thus far enlightened us about fossilised forests in Illinois coal mines and why science in science fiction films is a bit silly.

There’s far more to cover than one person alone can manage. Here’s a round up of the rest...

Continue reading "BA Festival of Science round up" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 09, 2008
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Health and medicine, Neat technologies, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A grand jury in the US has indicted a man amid allegations he posed as a researcher to acquire a deadly toxin found in pufferfish.

In a joint statement, US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and FBI agent Robert Grant announced that Edward Bachner IV had been indicted on ten counts; five of acquiring Tetrodotoxin to use as a weapon and five of possessing Tetrodotoxin “in a quantity that was not reasonably justified by a prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose” (press release pdf, indictment pdf).

From the Chicago Tribune:

Authorities said Bachner, posing as a researcher, ordered the toxin from a California company since 2006 — enough to kill 100 people. Another order from a New Jersey company was intercepted by the FBI, which set up an undercover delivery to Bachner, authorities said.

Continue reading "Indictment in pufferfish toxin case" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 27, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the weekend the Great Beyond went to the seaside, where – alongside the tooth-rotting food, psychotic sea-gulls and overpriced fairground rides – a number of psychics and tarot readers can also be found. One of these modern-day Nostradamuses had a particularly interesting client list on display.

We can exclusively reveal to you the pharma industry’s latest advisor...

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 26, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow

Another popular press release to help us through August.

Today it is being widely reported (BBC, CBS, CTV) that fruit juices, including grapefruit, orange and apple, can reduce the effectiveness of medication, potentially wiping out the beneficial effects.

The “new evidence” is attributed to a presentation by David Bailey from the University of Western Ontario at the American Chemical Society conference in Philadelphia, although even the abstract indicates that this was a review presentation.

Continue reading "Fruit juice keeps journalists busy " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 20, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Merck is back in the media glare for alleged shady practices this week. This time round it’s for a sneaky trick known as ‘a seeding trial’: you pay for a randomized trial to get hundreds of doctors using your new drug.

“This practice—a seeding trial—is marketing in the guise of science,” write Harold Sox and Drummond Rennie, in an editorial in Annals of Internal Medicine. “The apparent purpose is to test a hypothesis. The true purpose is to get physicians in the habit of prescribing a new drug.”

In that journal researchers - led by Kevin Hill, of McLean Hospital, Belmont - use documents obtained through litigation to analyse the ADVANTAGE trial of drug Vioxx and to show that it was "designed and executed" by Merck's marketing division. These documents have previously been the source of other damaging allegations against Merck (see this Nature story).

The researchers’ paper notes:

Although billed as a gastrointestinal safety study, ADVANTAGE was actually a sophisticated marketing tool designed to allow optimal "seeding" of positive experiences with Vioxx among customers—primary care physicians—before its approval. As a result, 5557 participants received Vioxx and 600 investigators prescribed it just before it became available on the market, which generated positive publicity and anecdotes from physicians and patients

Continue reading "Merck under fire for ‘seeding trial’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 19, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over in Philly a whole bunch of Nature people are at this year’s meeting of the American Chemical Society. They’re blogging the whole thing on both In the Field and The Sceptical Chymist.

So far Katharine Sanderson found “blue skies, hot sunshine and a summery feeling in the air” and has confirmed the heavy-drinking journalist stereotype by celebrating the fact that “following years of disappointment, members of the press have been given drinks tickets”.

Meanwhile Andrew Mitchinson has been watching movies. Chemical movies of course.

Gavin Armstrong isn’t getting into the ACS groove though. He opening his conference blogging thus: “I spent the day and night cursing chemistry”.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 18, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

China fired over a thousand rockets into the sky last week at the climax of its efforts to ensure a rain free opening ceremony for the Olympic games. No rain fell during the ceremony, although some showers disrupted other events.

“We fired a total of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city between 4 pm and 11.39 pm on Friday, which successfully intercepted a stretch of rain belt from moving towards the stadium,” Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau, told state news service Xinhua.

The NY Times has reporter George Vecsey on the scene. As well as worrying about misuse of weather modification by US baseball teams he says:

Meanwhile, the weather forecast is for storms Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There is muddy scum on sidewalks and streets – from the skies, not the ground – but street cleaners come by and clean it up, and workers mop the entrances to the Water Cube.

On Sunday night, polite young workers stood outside the south entrance of of the main press center and smiled and told people in English, “Watch your step” before the slippery marble entrance. The young people took umbrellas from soaked guests and shook them out and put them in plastic bags. What hath the rockets wrought?

Continue reading "Who’ll stop the rain? China will" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 11, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands have launched a test of ‘air-purifying’ concrete.

Titanium dioxide in the bricks helps sunlight convert nitrogen oxides into “harmless nitrate”. When the rains come this then washes the bricks clear (press release). It’s not clear if the amount of nitrate being produced would be a pollution problem, as is the case with nitrates in agriculture.

The bricks are based on Japanese technology (possibly this tech) which has been further developed by the Twente researchers, says the university. One road in the town of Hengelo will be paved with the eco-bricks and another with normal bricks. The researchers will monitor pollution on both roads.

This isn’t the first set of air-scrubbing concrete out there. The idea has popped up in Italy, where it featured at the Venice Biennale.

Want to know more? Check out this paper from Belgian researcher Anne Beeldens: An environmental friendly solution for air purification and self-cleaning effect: the application of TIO2 as photocatalyst in concrete (PDF).

Image: U Twente

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 07, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow

There has been a lot of press in the USA in the last few days about the risk from radiation from granite countertops. Rice University physics professor William Llope says 3 out of 95 samples of granite he’s looked at had radiation levels above US EPA guidelines, although his data is as yet unpublished (Houston Chronicle).

Granite and other volcanic rocks are known to have higher than average levels of uranium. As uranium decays one of the things you’ll find in its place is radon gas. Inhaling this gas is unsurprisingly bad for your lungs’ health.

So if there are high levels of uranium in the granite used for countertops, they can give off high levels of radon. While marble manufacturers are citing the EPA assurances that granite countertops pose no significant health risk, some people are already ripping them out (NY Times).

Continue reading "America frets over ‘radioactive kitchens’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 28, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Analysis of the armour of a ‘living fossil’ may help the military build better body armour, according to researchers from MIT.

The Polypterus senegalus fish lurks in pools in Africa, protected from attacks by its scaley suit of armour. Known as the ‘dinosaur eel’ its scales each have multiple layers 100 microns thick.

By working out the properties of one of these scales Christine Ortiz and colleagues think they can build better armour for humans.

“Such fundamental knowledge holds great potential for the development of improved biologically inspired structural materials, for example soldier, first-responder and military vehicle armour applications,” she says (press release). “Many of the design principles we describe - durable interfaces and energy-dissipating mechanisms, for instance - may be translatable to human armour systems.”

In a paper in Nature Materials the team report their simulated biting attack on scales removed from a living fish. They found that the different layers combine their different properties to create something much greater than the sum of its parts:

The junctions between material layers are clearly ‘functionally graded’, that is, they possess a gradual spatial change in properties motivated by the performance requirements and are able to promote load transfer and stress redistribution, thereby suppressing plasticity, arresting cracks, improving adhesion and preventing delamination between dissimilar material layers.

More
"Dinosaur eel" points to body armour of the future – AFP
Armour tips from a scaly era – The Boston Globe
Interview with Ortiz on WBUR
Headline watch: Who dares swims? Fish armour could provide better protection (Scotsman)

Image: photo courtesy Christine Ortiz

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 28, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline has hired a former FDA man as its new chief lawyer.

Daniel Troy was chief counsel for the Food and Drug Administration and its main link with the White House. Now he has signed on to be general counsel for GSK (press release).

This is a canny move because, as the Wall Street Journal notes, GSK is “facing various federal and congressional investigations”. As the rather-excellently named Pharma Giles comments on The Lawyer’s item: “That’s a good hire from GSK, getting closer to the regulator will make a big difference.”

Continue reading "It’s that man again..." »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 23, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s chemistry video feature hour again.

Here’s a neat paper, from the Journal of the American Chemical Society and also reported in their magazine Chemical and Engineering News, including a really good video for you to click through to gaze in wonderment at.

If you can't wait that long to find out what happens, let me help... The vid shows a sample of an innocuous looking powder, sitting in a dish. Then a UV light is shone on it, at which point a spatula appears from stage left, and starts smooshing the powder up. But wait! What is that I see happening? Why, there are some bright green streaks forming under the spatula's point. It is very exciting.

Continue reading "Chemistry geekery continues its attempt to conquer the internet" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 18, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m covering for the great leader of the Great Beyond Daniel, while he attends the Euroscience Open Forum, ESOF in Barcelona. Check out updates from Daniel over at In the field. http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/ .

In my capacity as fellow periodic-table-admirer, I think Daniel will approve of this latest venture from Nottingham University, already blogged over at the Skeptical Chymist .

It is the periodic table of videos!

It’s still a work in progress, but at the moment involves short videos describing each element, featuring Nottingham chemists; postdocs, lecturers, and starring professor Martyn Poliakoff, brother of filmmaker Stephen, who obviously has an astounding knowledge of his field.

I recommend looking at a few elements – I love the hydrogen one. And the brilliant way of remember the chemical symbol for mercury is worth a look. (You can also track Martyn Poliakoff’s haircut status by swapping between these two elements. Also well worth seeing is the inside of Poliakoff’s office. Now that’s what a chemistry professor’s office should look like.)

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 17, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There are two clear front runners in Russian state TV’s ‘greatest Russian’ contest. So far Josef Stalin and Tsar Nicholas II are way ahead in the poll, which is being decided by that arbiter of our age: online voting.

But what about Russia’s great scientists? How are they faring? It is quite impressive how many scientists have actually made the voting shortlist.

Continue reading "Who’s the greatest Russian (scientist)?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 16, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Avoiding conflicts of interest is presumably something that executives in pharma companies get very good at. I’d be willing to bet Paul Blackburn didn’t see this one coming though.

Blackburn, a senior vice president at GlaxoSmithKline, has been forced to resign his position on the non-executive board of the UK body responsible for school standards. He survived just weeks in the role, reports the Financial Times today.

The problem? GSK makes drugs. Some drugs are used for children. And children go to schools.

Pharma bashing seems to have reached a new low.

Continue reading "Hey! Pharma! Leave those kids alone..." »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 11, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is another brilliant example for our occasional periodic table series. This beast is currently residing outside the American Chemical Society building in Washington.

More Great Beyond elements
Elementary mistakes
Periodic Table Printmaking Project

Image: courtesy of Emily Unell

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 03, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This is one of the best chemistry videos, nay one of the best videos, full stop, I’ve ever seen.

The video accompanies a paper (abstract here, subscription needed for full paper) in Organic Letters about a photochromic molecule (one that can change between different forms when hit by light of some kind) that flips back and forth really quickly when UV light is shone on it.

The molecule changes from colourless to green, and that’s pretty much the best thing about it – so look at the video.

If you want to know more about the chemistry, which you might, then I can tell you that the molecules are hexaaryldiimidazole derivatives, and are a cyclic systems containing naphthalene units.

These kind of materials are used in spectacle lenses that change colour in bright lights. But really, just watch the video, that’s all you need to know.

[Hat tip: The Chem Blog]

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 25, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Best song of the 80s? Gold by Spandau Ballet. But it seems that the frilly-collared Spandau boys were far from original in their lyrical choice. According to a survey undertaken by Santiago Alvarez, in the department of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, the most popular elements referred to in music are, from the top; silver, gold, tin and oxygen.

I was amazed to hear that tin was so high in the elemental hit parade, until a quick survey of the Nature News team opened my eyes to its prevalence elsewhere than in the Wizard of Oz (incidentally the tin man’s song never mentions his eponymous metal).

How could I have forgotten the brilliant And the band played Waltzing Matilda, by Eric Bogle (and also performed by the ever-slurry Pogues), with the line “They gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun”. And a quick google search shows that even soft-focussed Katie Melua mentions tin in her song What it says on the tin. I’m not sure that the suggestion that tin’s ranking was due to the Belgian cartoon character Tintin is right, though.

Other gems plucked from the minds of the Nature News team include: platinum wheels in Minnie The Moocher; lithium in Nirvana’s Lithium; silicon in the Boomtown Rats' I don't like Mondays; hydrogen and helium in They might be giants' Why does the sun shine? and almost every single element there is in the genius elements song by Tom Lehrer.

Iron has to be way up there too, what with all those rockers – "Iron man, by Ozzie and friends,” one Japan-based member of the team enthused when asked what element-containing song sprang to mind.

I’m very impressed that the New Journal of Chemistry published this comprehensive opinion piece, which goes much further than simply being a survey of a “musical cyberstore”, as suggested in the press release.

Continue reading "Name that tune in three elements" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 12, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into pharma company Sanofi-Aventis, over allegations the company obstructed its investigators.

According to the Commission, the company refused to let its investigators examine and copy certain Aventis documents at one of its French sites without a search warrant. Under EU law, it says, such a warrant is not required.

“An initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of an infringement [of the law],” says a press release.

The investigation itself was announced in January and centres on “whether agreements between pharmaceutical companies, such as settlements in patent disputes, may infringe the EC Treaty's prohibition on restrictive business practices”. In addition it is looking at whether misuse of patent rights and vexatious litigation is creating “artificial barriers to entry”, ie stopping other companies getting involved in the market (press release 2).

Pharma Times notes:

Commissioner Kroes’ investigators have now questioned around 100 companies. Then, in mid-May it was announced that the probe was being broadened to include approximately 80 other bodies, including associations of doctors, pharmacists and patients, and the drug price regulators of the EU member states, thus making this potentially the widest antitrust investigation ever conducted by the EU.

The Times thinks Sanofi-Aventis could be fined 1% of its 2007 sales, some £221 million, if found guilty. AFP has a different take, saying:

Sanofi can look at a precedent in January when the European Commission slapped a 38-million-euro (56-million-dollar) fine on German energy group EON for breaking a seal on a room that contained confiscated papers.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 03, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Creative Review has an awesome video vaguely reminiscent of Spike Jonze which was apparently made for the European Union’s Marie Curie programme, which funds researchers to work in countries outside their own.

According to the visual communication magazine’s blog it was directed by Roderick Fenske:

Apparently, Fenske’s father was a scientist who impressed upon the young lad that science was never boring if you just talked about it in the right terms. And so he created a humorous metaphor that was not only educational but reminded people about how much fun science could be. Thus was “Chemical Party/Electricity” born.

More proof that chemistry is the greatest of the sciences…

You can also watch the video on the World’s Fair blog.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 19, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Monday UK newspaper the Guardian, known to many as the Grauniad due to its penchant for mistakes, ran the following correction:

We misspelled a number of elements in the periodic table printed in part VI of the Science Course supplement distributed with the paper on May 1. We meant Iron (not Irone); Praseodymium (not Praseodynium); Neodymium (not Neodynium); Neptunium (not Neptuniam); Americium (not Americum); Seaborgium (not Seoborgium); and Darmstadtium (not Darmstadium).

Oh how we chortled. Then someone suggested I check if Nature has ever made similar boobs...

Continue reading "Elementary mistakes" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 13, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chemist Albert Hofmann has died at the age of 102.

In 1938 Hofmann isolated lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, while working for the Sandoz chemical company. As he notes in his book LSD: My Problem Child, not a lot happened immediately:

The research report also noted, in passing, that the experimental animals became restless during the narcosis. The new substance, however, aroused no special interest in our pharmacologists and physicians; testing was therefore discontinued.

However five years later he found himself in a dreamlike state. After concluding this was related to the lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate he had just started working with again, possibly through accidental absorption through his fingernails, he notes:

There seemed to be only one way of getting to the bottom of this. I decided on a self-experiment.

Continue reading "RIP Albert Hofmann" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 30, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

A number of headlines today will surprise those who thought an iceberg sank the Titanic. ‘Low-grade rivets sank Titanic, claim scientists’, says one example.

What Jennifer Hooper McCarty and Timothy Foecke are actually claiming is that duff rivets used to hold bits of the ship together meant it sinking faster than it should have done. If the Titanic’s builder had used better materials, they argue, it would have stayed afloat longer after hitting the ’berg, allowing rescuers to arrive.

In their new book McCarty and Foecke say that builder Harland and Wolff used iron rather than steel rivets for key sections of the bow and stern. The bow is where the iceberg hit and Foecke tells the New York Times that damage “ends close to where the rivets transition from iron to steel”.

Foecke also says the iron used was not rivet quality, based on documents from Harland and Wolff and from analysis of rivets recovered from the wreck.

Continue reading "Riveting science from the Titanic" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 16, 2008
Categories: Chemistry, Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A surprising number of quite dramatic stories today – one big round-up post will have to do for them all.

Dextre, the Canadian space agency’s new robot, is meant to be helping construct the ISS. Instead it’s making outlandish demands:
In a surprising and potentially troubling request, the new space station robot known as Dextre demanded that astronauts refer to it in the future at ‘Dextre the Magnificent.’ Brandishing power tools that would make any handyperson blush, the mobile servicing system thanked humans for creating it and promised a glorious future where humans would retain an important role in the new robot order.

Virgin and Google are going to Mars. They want YOU to join them (if you can score highly enough on their selection questionnaire that is).

Continue reading "A chemist, a physicist, and a biologist walk into a bar" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 01, 2008
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Health and medicine, Neat technologies, Physics & Mathematics, Policy, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A mystery involving Napoleon, Humphry Davy, warring countries and an apparently angry spouse is nearing resolution.

Last week the Royal Society of Chemistry revealed a letter detailing the trouble Davy had getting to Paris to collect a medal from Napoleon at a time when France was fighting a protracted war with Britain. The letter, from a French navy officer to the general secretary of the Institut de France, explained that the British blockade of French ports made it impossible to tell Davy he had been awarded the medal to “promote and share scientific knowledge” (RSC press release).

Davy did eventually travel to France and claim his medal and the RSC wanted to know where it was. After asking the public this question a relative of Davy came forward to say Davy’s wife had thrown it into the sea after his death.

Continue reading "Where’s Humphry’s medal?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 17, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Scientists have for the first time measured the force needed to move one individual atom.

In the latest issue of Science, researchers from IBM and the University of Regensburg in Germany detail how they used an atomic force microscope to measure the vertical and lateral forces exerted on individual atoms by the probe tip of the microscope probe (research paper, related perspective paper, IBM press release, Regensburg press release).

It seems to move a cobalt atom over a smooth platinum surface requires a force of 210 piconewtons. Moving a cobalt atom over a copper surface takes only 17 piconewtons. By contrast, IBM’s press release points out lifting a penny requires nearly 30 billion piconewtons.

Continue reading "Moving atoms is easy, measuring the moves less so" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 22, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s always nice to see science becoming art, especially when it’s done as nicely as this. Jenn Schmitt has got 96 different printmakers to come up with their own visual interpretations of various elements and put them together into a periodic table (hat tip: Good Morning Silicon Valley). They’ve even tackled the elements for which no obvious picture suggests itself.

You can view the full table in its glory on the Periodic Table Printmaking Project website.

Individual element pictures range from charming and literal (a balloon and the Sun for Helium) to rather more abstract (a rooster for Gallium). It’s also nice to see that artists can also be geeks – the picture for Nickel is a graph of the value of the amount of Nickel in a nickel over six months of 2007.

Images above: hydrogen and helium.

“Knowing how the world around you works makes life so much richer. So the connection of art and science is an important one to me,” Schmitt says in an interview.

Other periodic tables we like
It’s a table, and a periodic table
Comic book periodic table
BBC’s ‘Look Around You’ spoof
Chemsoc’s Visual Elements table
CSRRI’s x-ray properties table

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 30, 2008
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The history of chocolate will have to be revised following a new discovery, along with the history of humanity’s troubled relationship with alcohol. Archaeologists working in Honduras detected residues from cacao plants in liquid holding vessels from 500 years earlier than beverages of the chocolate precursor have previously been found. John Henderson and colleagues think the beverages in question were more like beer than a hot chocolate-type drink and could have been as potent at 5% alcohol by volume (BBC, LA Times, Telegraph, NY Times, Times).

In this week’s PNAS, they report detecting theobromine in vessels dating from about 1150 BC, half a century earlier than previous finds. Theobromine occurs only in cacao. Beverages drunk at the Puerto Escondido site in Honduras were probably produced by fermenting the sweet pulp that surrounds cacao seeds. “Fermentation is also an early step in the process used to produce the better-known nonalcoholic chocolate beverage in Mesoamerica. We argue that this is a secondary use of a by-product, fermented cacao seeds, and that an alcoholic beverage made from the pulp was originally the primary consumable,” the paper states.

Co-author Patrick McGovern, of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, was amazed by how many of the samples he tested were positive for theobromine. “The results were astounding. Every vessel that he [Henderson] had chosen and was tested gave a positive signal for theobromine," he said (LA Times).

UPDATE – 14/11/07

I may have slightly misled you. This is a new comment by Patrick McGovern:

It should be noted that the use of “beer” in many of the media articles is confusing. The confusion has arisen because “chichi” has two usages:

Continue reading "‘Chocolate beer’ is older than we thought" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 13, 2007
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Leslie Orgel, head of the Chemical Evolution Laboratory at the Salk Institute, has died. Orgel pioneered the theory that RNA preceded DNA as a replicating molecule. At the time of his death his work was focused on searching for a precursor to RNA

He was also one of the first to suggest that life on Earth might have been seeded by extraterrestrials. His name is attached to Orgel’s rules:
“Whenever a spontaneous process is too slow or too inefficient a protein will evolve to speed it up or make it more efficient.”
&
“Evolution is cleverer than you are.”

LA Times obituary
Salk Institute statement
The Scientist obituary

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 31, 2007
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Biochemist Arthur Kornberg has died at the age of 89. Kornberg won a Nobel prize for medicine in 1959 for his work with Severo Ochoa on the biological synthesis of DNA. His contribution to his field is detailed in a Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology piece from 2006 (subscription required).

“Dr Kornberg was one of the most distinguished and remarkable scientists in American medicine,” said Philip Pizzo, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine where he worked for many years (Stanford press release).

“Fellow scientists say in 200 years, the world will remember the name of medical researcher Dr Arthur Kornberg ... the same way it does Albert Einstein and Nicolaus Copernicus,” says the Democrat and Chronicle, local paper of Rochester. Kornberg studied at the University of Rochester as an undergraduate.

Kornberg’s son Roger is also a Nobel recipient, having won the chemistry prize in 2006 (Nobel citation, Nature – subscription required).

More Coverage
SF Chronicle
Arizona Republic
San Jose Mercury
Daily Telegraph
The Scientist

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 29, 2007
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And the Nobel goes to Gerhard Ertl of the Max Planck Society's Fritz-Habert Institute for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces (announcement). On his birthday, too!

According to the press release

Ertl was one of the first to see the potential of new techniques [developed in the semiconductor industry]. Step by step he has created a methodology for surface chemistry by demonstrating how different experimental procedures can be used to provide a complete picture of a surface reaction. This science requires advanced high-vacuum experimental equipment as the aim is to observe how individual layers of atoms and molecules behave on the extremely pure surface of a metal, for instance. It must therefore be possible to determine exactly which element is admitted to the system. Contamination could jeopardize all the measurements. Acquiring a complete picture of the reaction requires great precision and a combination of many different experimental techniques.

Chemists will presumably be happy that this year's prize goes to one of their own -- there have been dark murmurs about chemistry prizes going to biologists in recent years. Anyone with a bet on the prize at the Chembark blog can expect a 15 to 1 payoff.

See below the fold for more coverage as it happens.

For coverage of yesterday's Nobel for Physics, awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg of the Jülich Research Centre for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance, see this post.

For coverage of Monday's Nobel for Physiology or Medicine, awarded to Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies for knockout mice, see this post.

Continue reading "Chemistry Nobel announced" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on October 10, 2007
Categories: Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Analysis of child sacrifice victims found on an Andean volcano has shed new light on the selection and grooming of those chosen as offerings. Hairs from sacrifices found on the Llullaillaco volcano show marked changes in diet, suggesting victims were being prepared for their fate for at least a year before they were killed in an Inca ritual (Times, Daily Telegraph, AP, Reuters). Analysis of isotopes in hair from one victim – called the Llullaillaco Maiden – shows standard peasant vegetables of her diet being enriched with the ‘elite food’ maize and animal protein. These changes, states the research paper, “can be taken to indicate that the Maiden had been raised in status, presumably for the express purpose of making her an appropriate sacrifice” (abstract).

Study author Andrew Wilson, of the University of Bradford, said: “By examining hair samples from these unfortunate children, a chilling story has started to emerge of how the children were ‘fattened up’ for sacrifice. Given the surprising change in their diets and the symbolic cutting of their hair, it appears that various events were staged in which the status of the children was raised. In effect, their countdown to sacrifice had begun some considerable time prior to death.” (Press release.)

Taking each 10mm of hair as being one month and working backward from the point of death Wilson and colleagues analysed changes in the chemical isotopes present. Different types of plants use different types of photosynthesis and therefore end up with different ratios of the carbon 12 and carbon 13 isotopes – the latter being heavier as it has an extra neutron. This allowed the team to distinguish between plants such as roots and tubers and other plants such as maize. Other isotope variations can track changes in temperature and altitude and whether diets are marine or terrestrial in origin.

Image: Earth observation of Andes Mountains / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 02, 2007
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A giant X-ray machine in Oxfordshire is going to peer inside unopened manuscripts too fragile to unfurl. Tim Wess from the University of Cardiff has worked out that X-rays from the Diamond synchrotron can be used to image the writing on ancient parchments. Now he wants to look at some of the Dead Sea Scrolls that have so far been deemed too brittle to read, he told the British Association Festival of Science in York (covered by the Daily Telegraph, Times, Daily Mail, Guardian, and the BA). “We’ve folded up a real piece of parchment and then done a process of X-ray tomography on it. We’ve been able to recover the structure where we can see the words that are written inside the document,” says Wess (BBC).

Collagen in animal skins used to write on turns to gelatine when wet, making the documents sticky and hard to read. Drying makes them brittle and equally, if differently, problematic. But iron in the ink used shows up on X-rays and, using computers, different layers of folded or rolled documents can be read. Wess is currently perfecting his technique on documents less valuable than the Dead Sea Scrolls and he believes in three or four years it will be good enough to read text in pamphlets and thin books. Unread works by Beethoven and Mozart would then be accessible (The Daily Telegraph, Times). So far his team has been able to read 80% of the text from 18th century legal documents they have been studying (Guardian).

This is actually the latest development in a great tradition of using X-rays to analyse valuable artefacts. They have previously peered under the surface of paintings to detect images hidden beneath, helped date and conserve sculptures and even detected fraud.

Image: unrolled parchment X-ray / Cardiff University

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 13, 2007
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