Cell signaling news
Here we present recent news items specially selected from Nature, Nature Medicine and Nature Biotechnology.
June 2008
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News | News in brief | News Features
News
Gene-testing firms face legal battle
The state of California is clamping down on companies that offer direct-to-consumer genetic testing, posing a serious challenge to the burgeoning industry.
Nature News (26 June 2008)
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Biogen fights takeover bid
Shareholders of the prominent biotechnology firm Biogen Idec rejected billionaire investor Carl Icahn's bid to oust three members of the company's board of directors — a victory in Biogen's struggle to remain independent.
Nature News (26 June 2008)
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Scientists get online news aggregator
A news aggregator especially for scientists called e! Science News was created by a Canadian graduate student dissatisfied with science coverage on online sites such as Google News and Yahoo News.
Nature News (26 June 2008)
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Payback time
There is growing concern in the UK research community that the Treasury is using its influence to favor commercially appealing programs at the expense of fundamental research.
Nature News (26 June 2008)
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Anaesthetics worsen post-operative pain
General anesthetics can worsen post-operative pain as they act on TRP ion channels, which activate pain-sensing nerves throughout the body as well as GABA receptors, which induce unconsciousness.
Nature News (23 June 2008)
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UK universities in bed with the military
Universities in the United Kingdom may be doing far more research for the military than official estimates acknowledge – out of 13 universities surveyed, 12 had received US $4.7 million each to conduct military and security-related research between 2005 and 2006.
Nature News (19 June 2008)
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Japan ramps up patent effort to keep iPS lead
'iPS Academia Japan' – a company set up to manage Kyoto University's induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell patents – was created with an aim to "prevent some group or company from monopolizing iPS technology" according to Kyoto University executive vice-president Hiroshi Matsumoto.
Nature News (19 June 2008)
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Institutes in pharma cash probe
Pressure has been mounting on universities and hospitals to crack down on conflicts of interest after US Senator Charles Grassley (Republican, Iowa) informed Congress that three high-profile psychiatrists at Harvard Medical School may have failed to disclose a total of about US $4 million of industry earnings over the course of seven years.
Nature News (19 June 2008)
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Egg shortage hits race to clone human stem cells
US stem-cell researchers are calling for changes to state laws that prohibit compensating women who donate eggs for research, saying that such laws are crippling the promising field of 'therapeutic cloning'.
Nature News (12 June 2008)
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The winding road from ideas to income
A multi-continental chorus of academic researchers argues that the technology transfer offices (TTOs) that have been established over the past decades to help university researchers take their discoveries from the lab to the clinic are at best a mixed blessing to researchers in the life sciences.
Nature News (12 June 2008)
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Swiss court bans work on macaque brains
Zurich's two largest institutes are appealing a ruling that banned two experiments studying how the primate brain adapts to change; the decision follows a challenge from an external advisory committee on animal experimentation, which argued that the proposed experiments would offend the dignity of the animals.
Nature News (12 June 2008)
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NIH responds to critics on peer review
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reversed several controversial proposals made in February as part of a year-long effort to overhaul the agency's peer-review system.
Nature News (12 June 2008)
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New effort seeks to unravel the mystery of undiagnosed disease
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) plans to launch an Undiagnosed Diseases Program that will bring together a team of 25 NIH multidisciplinary experts to evaluate and treat patients with mysterious diseases that defy diagnosis.
Nature Medicine (June 2008)
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International effort seeks to identify mutations that drive cancer
The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) aims to catalogue every genetic mutation in 50 different cancers, with each member nation – currently ten and counting – tackling at least one disease type.
Nature Medicine (June 2008)
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Britain moves toward loosening embryo laws despite objections
Britain's parliament has begun voting on the most controversial and divisive aspects of its new draft laws governing embryology and reproductive medicine, including the creation of 'cybrid' embryos.
Nature Medicine (June 2008)
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Agency on hiring spree
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced an ambitious plan to hire more than 1,300 staff – mostly biologists, epidemiologists, pharmacologists and medical officers – by the end of September 2008.
Nature Biotechnology (June 2008)
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Patent reform stalls
A ruling by the US District Court in favor of GlaxoSmithKline has put the proposed changes to the US patent system to rest; the changes were fiercely opposed by the biotech and pharma industries.
Nature Biotechnology (June 2008)
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Russian science academy rejects Putin ally
The general assembly of the Russian Academy of Sciences has thwarted plans for Mikhail Kovalchuk — the head of its newly established division for nanosciences — to become the influential academy's new president.
Nature News (5 June 2008)
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The four-year fight for biological art
Steven Kurtz, an art professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, was cleared in April of wire and mail fraud charges, four years after the FBI seized art supplies from his home that included laboratory equipment and bacterial cultures.
Nature News (5 June 2008)
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Biological tools revamp disease classification
Just as different genes can contribute to similar diseases, so the same genes and families of genes can play a part in a range of different diseases.
Nature News (5 June 2008)
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How cells save their energy
Researchers have found a protein complex called eNoSC that slows down a cell's protein-production machinery when energy is running low.
Nature News (30 May 2008)
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News in brief
| US Congress signals new funds for key science areas
| Boost biosafety funding to cut risks, say UK officials
| International stem-cell collaborations launched
| Massachusetts finally passes life-sciences bill
| Stem-cell society condemns medical tourism
| Lab-equipment giants set to merge
| Panel urges further review of controversial NIH lab
| Publications follow policy on stem-cell research
| US genomics leader bows out from institute
| Merck scores victory in three Vioxx appeals
News Features
Funding: The research revolution
The European Research Council (ERC), a semi-autonomous agency that awards grants based on the quality of scientific proposals as judged by an international group of peer-reviewers, has funded its first round of grants and looks forward to awarding a separate round of 300 'advanced grants' for senior researchers.
Nature News (19 June 2008)
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Translational research: Crossing the valley of death
In an effort to increase translational research, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has established a consortium of 60 Clinical and Translational Science Centers (CTSCs) at universities and medical centers across the country, which will share some $500 million annually when they are all in operation.
Nature News (12 June 2008)
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Translational Research: The full cycle
Many scientists are now challenging the idea that translational research is just about carrying results from bench to bedside, arguing that the importance of reversing that polarity has been overlooked.
Nature News (12 June 2008)
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When animal rights turns ugly
The number of incidents in which researchers have been stalked, harassed and visited at their homes by animal rights activists is on the rise.
Nature Biotechnology (June 2008)
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