Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Custom-Built Pathogens Raise Bioterror Fears
- Flick Of A Protein Switches Immune Response
- Mix of bird flu-human flu viruses doesn’t transmit easily in…
- Multi-billion-dollar problem: medication errors come under the…
- Soundtrack to a teenager’s life.
- In The Interests Of Patients, Roche Will Consider All Options…

Custom-Built Pathogens Raise Bioterror Fears
Washington Post - Jul 31, 2006
"There’s a name for fixed defenses that can easily be outflanked: They are called Maginot lines," said Roger Brent, a California molecular biologist and former biodefense adviser to the Defense Department, referring to the elaborate but short-sighted network of border fortifications built by France after World War I to prevent future invasions by Germany. "By themselves," Brent said, "stockpiled defenses against specific threats will be no more effective to the defense of the United States than the Maginot line was to the defense of France in 1940. "How to Make a VirusWimmer’s artificial virus looks and behaves like its natural cousin — but with a far reduced ability to maim or kill — and could be used to make a safer polio vaccine. But it was Wimmer’s techniques, not his aims, that sparked controversy when news of his achievement hit the scientific journals. As the creator of the world’s first "de novo" virus — a human virus, at that — Wimmer came under attack from other scientists who said his experiment was a dangerous stunt. He was accused of giving ideas to terrorists, or, even worse, of inviting a backlash that could result in new laws restricting scientific freedom. Wimmer counters that he didn’t invent the technology that made his experiment possible… "It is possible to engineer living organisms the way people now engineer electronic circuits," Tucker said. In the future, he said, these microbes could produce cheap drugs, detect toxic chemicals, break down pollutants, repair defective genes, destroy cancer cells and generate hydrogen for fuel. In less than five years, synthetic biology has gone from a kind of scientific parlor trick, useful for such things as creating glow-in-the-dark fish, to a cutting-edge bioscience with enormous commercial potential, said Eileen Choffnes, an expert on microbial threats with the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine. "Now the technology can be even done at the lab bench in high school," she said. Along with synthetic biologists, a separate but equally ardent group is pursuing DNA shuffling, a kind of directed evolution that imbues microbes with new traits. Another faction seeks novel ways to deliver chemicals and medicines, using ultra-fine aerosols that penetrate deeply into the lungs or new forms of microencapsulated packaging that control how drugs are released in the body. Still another group is discovering ways to manipulate the essential biological circuitry of humans, using chemicals or engineered microbes to shut down defective genes or regulate the production of hormones controlling such functions as metabolism and mood.

Flick Of A Protein Switches Immune Response
Medical News Today - Jul 31, 2006
FOXP3 and NFAT are two such factors; the human body contains around 3,000. “The work provides a structural demonstration of combinatorial control of gene expression,” Chen said. “This is, in my view, the most direct demonstration that this is indeed happening in nature. The researchers were able to identify single genes that were activated by NFAT in combination with AP-1 and suppressed by NFAT with FOXP3. Beyond shedding light on the immune system, the Cell paper may advance biology and medicine toward a much larger goal: how to turn single genes on or off. “This [result] has far-reaching implications for understanding the principles of signal transduction and transcriptional networks of living cells,” Chen said. The Cell paper, which Chen describes as spanning 14 years of laboratory work, builds on a result his group published in Nature in 1998… “This is, in my view, the most direct demonstration that this is indeed happening in nature. The researchers were able to identify single genes that were activated by NFAT in combination with AP-1 and suppressed by NFAT with FOXP3. Beyond shedding light on the immune system, the Cell paper may advance biology and medicine toward a much larger goal: how to turn single genes on or off. “This [result] has far-reaching implications for understanding the principles of signal transduction and transcriptional networks of living cells,” Chen said. The Cell paper, which Chen describes as spanning 14 years of laboratory work, builds on a result his group published in Nature in 1998. —————————-Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. —————————-Chen’s postdoctoral associates Yongqing Wu and Aidong Han are co-authors on the Cell paper.

Mix of bird flu-human flu viruses doesn’t transmit easily in…
Free with registration - America's Intelligence Wire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Jul 31, 2006
(From AP Worldstream) Byline: RANDOLPH E. SCHMID Scientists combined genes from the notorious Asian bird flu with human flu but weren’t able to create a strain that could be easily spread. Still, that doesn’t mean Mother Nature won’t find a way for the virus to create a pandemic. While one leading expert called the test result a “small dose of reassurance,” that sentiment wasn’t shared by the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Let’s not use the word reassuring,” Dr. Julie Gerberding said at a briefing on the study. “This virus is still out there, it’s still evolving.

Multi-billion-dollar problem: medication errors come under the…
Free with registration - Medicine & Health - AccessMyLibrary.com - Jul 31, 2006
–> COPYRIGHT 2006 Eli Research, Inc. 5 million adverse drug events occur every year from preventable medication errors, making medication errors “surprisingly common,” a new Institute of Medicine study reveals. Although the IOM discovered that data on costs relating to medication errors is limited, “one study estimates the cost in the hospital setting alone at $3. 5 billion,” according to a July 20 statement from the Senate Finance Committee, which sponsored the IOM study, along with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “The IOM found that hospital patients are subjected to at least one medication error per day,” the committee adds. The medication errors stem from mostly.

Soundtrack to a teenager’s life.
Free with registration - Europe Intelligence Wire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Jul 31, 2006
It meant she got to realise her long-held dream of a “musical pilgrimage” to this country, which she wrote of in her essay, staying with an Irish family and also attending a number of summer school courses. Aysser’s entry, entitled Song of Days Gone By, centred around the music of U2 and Westlife, and was the unanimous choice of four judges at this year’s Rodney Walshe Annual Ireland essay competition in New Zealand. She has spent the past four weeks in Ireland and says: “I think I want to stay here for the rest of my life. “There’s an incredible friendliness about the place. People are so chatty and interested in others. ” Coming from a country “that’s still so young”, she is fascinated by Ireland’s history. “There’s so much to see, so much to learn about.

In The Interests Of Patients, Roche Will Consider All Options…
Medical News Today - Jul 31, 2006
Taken as an oral, once-daily therapy, Tarceva is the onlyEGFR-inhibitor to have demonstrated a survival benefit in lung cancer - astriking 42. Currently most lung cancer patients are treated withchemotherapy which can be very debilitating due to its toxic nature. Tarceva works differently to chemotherapy by specifically targeting tumourcells, and avoids the typical side-effects of chemotherapy. Tarceva is approved in the US and across the EU for patients withlocally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) afterfailure of at least one prior chemotherapy regimen. Tarceva has been approved by the FDA since November 2, 2005 fortreatment of locally advanced, unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancerin combination with gemcitabine chemotherapy. Tarceva is currently being evaluated in an extensive clinicaldevelopment programme by a global alliance among OSI Pharmaceuticals,Genentech, and Roche, focussing on earlier stages of NSCLC.