Portuguese businessman António Champalimaud surprised his family when his will, opened after his 2004 death, revealed that he was bequeathing €500 million ($690 million), about a quarter of his estate, to establish a foundation for applied biomedical research. He also surprised law professor and one-time Portuguese Health Minister Leonor Beleza, whom he named to lead the foundation. Beleza, who met Champalimaud just once, agreed in principle to run his proposed foundation during a phone call in 2000 but did not hear any further until his death. She has now returned from a global tour of medical research institutions and foundations lasting over a year to determine how best to spend Champalimaud’s millions.

On 5 October, the Champalimaud Foundation opened its seaside Center for the Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal. The center will host about 600 researchers and physicians and 300 patients when it reaches full staffing levels. Lucas Laursen recently called Beleza to ask how she laid the groundwork and what lies ahead. (Click here to continue reading)

Image courtesy the Champalimaud Foundation

Over the past decade, federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in the US has been held up continuously by rogue players—first by former President George W. Bush who established an executive order in 2001 limiting funding and twice vetoed legislation to expand the scope of such research, and now by a US district court judge’s decision that threatens to halt taxpayer supported embryonic stem cell science altogether.

But these actions do not reflect the will of the US public. In fact, nowadays a majority of Americans think research involving stem cells derived from embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures is acceptable. “It underscores the fact that disease and disability are not partisan,” says Mary Woolley, president of Research!America, an advocacy group based in Alexandria, Virginia. “The American public doesn’t see it that way, even if on occasion their elected officials take sides in a partisan way.” (Click here to continue reading)

By Tikki Pang, Nils Daulaire, Gerald Keusch, Rose Leke, Peter Piot, Srinath Reddy, Andrzej Rys and Nicole Szlezak

The recognition that many diseases present worldwide challenges has spurred nations and institutions to participate in the development of what is known as ‘global health governance’. But this new form of governance will only succeed with strengthened country commitment, collaborations across disparate sectors and improved accountability.

In an era of rapid globalization, the world faces serious global threats to human health, including infectious and chronic diseases, antimicrobial resistance and inequitable access to medicines. Fortunately, since the mid-1990s, recognition of a need for action on global health has led to the creation of many new initiatives and mobilization of unprecedented resources.

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Former US President George Bush has been making the talk show rounds to promote his new memoir, Decision Points. Rather than a chronological chronicle, Bush takes a more thematic approach, explaining the motivation behind some of his more controversial policy decisions. One telling anecdote describes how his mother, Barbara Bush, miscarried and enlisted her eldest son to drive her to the hospital. She brought the fetus in a jar with her (as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynocologists recommends, incidentally). Seeing the remains of his unborn sibling, Bush says, helped foment his pro-life worldview, which led to the compromise of funding stem cell research only for lines that had already been created by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“She says to her teenage kid, ’Here’s a fetus,’” Bush told NBC’s Matt Lauer. “No question that affected… my philosophy that we should respect life.”

In the controversy over stem cells, imagery is everything. When Bush vetoed a 2006 bill that increased funding for stem cell research, he surrounded himself with a group of families with ‘snowflake babies’ — adopted embryos from IVF clinics who, their presence implied, might have been candidates for use in stem cell research. To counter, stem cell research supporters have found it much more effective to punt on the moral issue, highlighting sick humans and pointing to promising research, rather than attempting to dehumanize the embryo. When Nancy Reagan appealed to Bush in 2004 to fund stem cell research, she made no mention of embryos, only of her husband, the former president, then wasting away with Alzheimer’s: “Ronnie’s long journey has finally taken him to a place where I can no longer reach him,” she wrote.

Image by Beverly & Pack via Flickr Creative Commons

By Elie Dolgin

Drug companies in the EU are increasingly turning to nonanimal strategies to test medicines, but the number of animals used for basic research is on the rise, according to statistics published 30 September by the European Commission.

Although the total number of animals used for scientific purposes in the EU’s 27 member states has held steady at around 12 million per year, this overall figure masks shifting trends in animal experimentation. The European Commission report, which documents data submitted for 2008, shows that studies investigating basic biological principles used approximately 4.5 million research animals—up by more than half a million from 2005. In contrast, the number of animals used in the drug discovery pipeline for human and veterinary medicines dropped by more than a million to 2.7 million animals over the same period. Toxicology testing remained constant at about 1 million animals. (Click here to continue reading)

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By Daniel Cressey

Despite its value to clinical practice and medical research, use of the autopsy is in decline worldwide, in part as a result of changing attitudes and cost cutting. Researchers met in London last month to discuss how body scans can enhance and possibly one day replace some forms of one of the oldest medical practices.

The issue is of particular interest in the UK, which has one of the highest rates of autopsy in the Western world but where public confidence was severely damaged by a scandal at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, when it emerged a decade ago that organs from children had been removed and stockpiled after autopsies. There is also reluctance among members of some religious groups to consent to the procedure, although consent is not required for autopsies ordered by a coroner. (Click here to continue reading)

Image by brittgow via Flickr Creative Commons

Mobile phones can already function as a stethoscope or a microscope; soon they could diagnose sexually transmitted infections as well. The UK Clinical Research Collaboration has spent £4 million ($6.4 million) developing mobile phone test kits for STIs. The kit, which would be sold in vending machines for as little as £1, is a computer chip that can be urinated or spit on and then plugged into a cell phone or computer. A diagnosis pops up in minutes, and depending on the results, you either schedule a doctor’s appointment or get right back to a game of “”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_Birds">Angry Birds".

This mobile phone platform approach for STIs is particularly apropos, given a recent headline-grabbing study suggesting that ‘hyper-texting’ teens who send more than 120 messages a day are more likely to have sex and use drugs or alcohol than their less gabby peers. But text messaging can also be beneficial, according to a study of HIV patients in The Lancet. A clinical trial of 538 Kenyans found that receiving a weekly text message increased patients’ adherence to anti-retroviral therapy (ART) by 12%.

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Clinical psychiatrist Barbara Gracious had a month to spare over the summer while transitioning to her new job at Ohio State University in Columbus. But, instead of jetting off to a vacation spot, she packed her bags for Bethesda, Maryland, home of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center, to go on sabbatical.

This past summer, Gracious, together with three other researchers, was part of a pilot training program in clinical trial management. The investigators took courses in introductory protocol writing, patient tracking and safety management, among other issues. They also met with program officers at the NIH and made contacts at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to better understand regulatory issues associated with clinical research. (Click here to continue reading)

With Republicans set to take control of the US House of Representatives next year, the Democratic-led Congress has entered the awkward end of its life cycle — technically still in power, but lacking the clout to push forward any major initiatives. But even a lame duck can attempt a short flight, and the 111th Congress may still be able to pass legislation with implications for biomedical research.

One such bill is the Stem Cell Research Advancement Act, which authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to ‘conduct and support research that utilizes human stem cells, including human embryonic stem cells’ — albeit only for projects that use stem cells derived from embryos obtained through in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics that would otherwise have been discarded. Such a move could provide grounds for lifting a federal injunction against stem cell research that has been in place since late August (the injunction is technically still in effect, but has been stayed since 9 September). On Friday, the heads of dozens of American medical colleges sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to pass the act.

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