Cell signaling news
Here we present recent news items specially selected from Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
October 2008
2008:
December |
November |
October |
September |
August |
July |
June |
May |
April |
March |
February |
January
Other years: 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007
News | News in brief | News Features
News
Stem-cell law goes to the polls
On November 4th, residents of Michigan will vote on a state ballot measure that would allow state researchers to derive new human embryonic stem-cell lines.
Nature News (30 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Alzheimer's tests under fire
Smart Genetics, based in Philadelphia, has stopped offering its controversial genetic test for Alzheimer's disease just eight months after introducing it.
Nature News (30 October 2008)
| Full Text |
German authority halts primate work
Local authorities in the northern German city of Bremen are forcing a leading neuroscientist to halt his primate experiments, after the Social Democrat–Green coalition government agreed not to reapprove his experiments when his current license expires.
Nature News (30 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Older scientists publish more papers
A survey of nearly 14,000 professors has found that older scientists publish nearly twice as many papers per year than their younger counterparts.
Nature News (30 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Biosafety lab passes disaster test
A new research complex with biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) labs for containment of deadly pathogens in Galveston, Texas was left intact after Hurricane Ike devastated Galveston Island.
Nature News (23 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Accessible genomes move closer
The Personal Genome Project and the 1,000 Genomes Project may soon enable researchers to start linking the flood of personal genomic data to the biology of individual humans.
Nature News (23 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Iranian paper sparks sense of déjà vu
A review paper by Massoumeh Ebtekar, the former vice-president of Iran and an immunologist at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, is to be retracted from an Iranian journal following allegations that it was almost entirely stitched together from other scientists' papers.
Nature News (23 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Give me my genome
Eight of the ten people taking part in the Personal Genome Project, which aims to increase understanding about the usefulness of individual genetic data and the effects on patients' lives and society, have said that they would post all of their genetic and medical data on the Internet for anyone to see.
Nature News (21 October 2008)
| Full Text |
New law threatens Italian research jobs
Nearly 2,000 Italian researchers will lose their permanent positions under a proposed new law that is intended to reduce public spending by streamlining the civil service.
Nature News (16 October 2008)
| Full Text |
No more third time lucky
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced that biomedical researchers will have just one chance to amend and resubmit a failed funding application.
Nature News (16 October 2008)
| Full Text |
The death of microarrays?
Scientists are adopting high-throughput DNA sequencers to tackle a wide range of research applications, including monitoring gene expression, mapping where proteins bind to the genome and cataloguing sites at which the DNA has been chemically modified.
Nature News (16 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Icelandic biotech feels the pinch
Iceland's deCode Genetics faces serious problems stemming from investment decisions made by its bankers, and from a stock price that has plunged 54% in the past month.
Nature News (14 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Glowing with pride
Nature News talks to Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York, who was recently awarded a share of the 2008 Nobel prize in chemistry for showing that the gene for GFP could be expressed in other organisms.
Nature News (13 October 2008)
| Full Text |
CD20 blockers eye crowded rheumatology market
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that target the CD20 molecule on B lymphocytes have been used to treat leukemias and lymphomas for the past decade, but emerging evidence now points to an important role for these mAbs in treating rheumatoid arthritis.
Nature Biotechnology (October 2008)
| Full Text |
Roche consolidates grip on anti-angiogenesis market
A wave of second-generation anti-angiogenesis drugs, including small molecules that target proteins and receptors other than VEGF, may soon reach clinics.
Nature Biotechnology (October 2008)
| Full Text |
London forges £2 billion research cluster
Five London-based medical research centers have partnered to become Europe's largest Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) with a combined annual budget of around £2 billion.
Nature Biotechnology (October 2008)
| Full Text |
Revamped guidelines aim to keep pace with stem cell advances
The US National Academies and the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) have released recommendations and guidelines for induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell research.
Nature Medicine (October 2008)
| Full Text |
Experts point to concerning disparities within MD-PhD programs
A close look at the elite physician-scientist programs in the US has found that women and minorities are under-represented in such programs.
Nature Medicine (October 2008)
| Full Text |
Multi-million dollar grants give 'Broadies' a lasting home
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard will receive US$86 million from the US National Institutes of Health for its molecular screening program, which is aimed at developing chemical probes for disease.
Nature Medicine (October 2008)
| Full Text |
2008 US election special
Nature Medicine has compiled information from Barack Obama's and John McCain's campaign platforms, surveys and debates to shed light on where the candidates and their running partners stand.
Nature Medicine (October 2008)
| Full Text |
Straight talk with...Charles Grassley
Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, who has carved out a role as a relentless government watchdog, is now focusing on university researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who haven't been properly reporting income from drug companies.
Nature Medicine (October 2008)
| Full Text |
Nobel for AIDS virus discovery, finally
Two French virologists who discovered HIV and a German oncovirologist who showed that human papilloma virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer share this year's Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Charitable bodies hit by credit crisis
The ongoing financial crisis in the United States and Europe is hitting major research charities and institutions — organizations such as the Wellcome Trust in London and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York say that their endowments have dropped for the first time in years.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Kavli invests in institutes
US philanthropist Fred Kavli has granted US$5 million to each of the 15 research institutes that were established in his name.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Slime and fleas feature in Ig Nobel awards
The tongue-in-cheek 2008 Ig Nobel prizes have recognized improbable research, from the cognitive feats of slime mold to the physical prowess of fleas.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Entire-paper plagiarism caught by software
The Deja Vu database lists dozens of papers that are nearly identical to previously published papers.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Change of guard for Australian science
Astronomer Penny Sackett and geologist Megan Clark have been selected to fill two of Australia's top science jobs.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
The future for Howard Hughes
Robert Tjian speaks to Nature about his plans as the new president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Great glowing jellyfish! It's the Nobel prize in chemistry
Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien share the 2008 Nobel prize in chemistry for their discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP).
Nature News (8 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Wellcome boost for open-access chemistry
The Wellcome Trust has recently awarded a 5-year, £4.7 million grant to transfer well-structured chemogenomics data from the publicly listed company Galapagos to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (October 2008)
| Full Text |
NIH soon to be leaderless
Elias Zerhouni, the director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), has announced that he plans to leave the agency by the end of October.
Nature News (2 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Hwang work granted patent
Australia is to grant a patent for Woo Suk Hwang's cloning method, even though the Korean scientist lied about using it to create human embryonic stem cells.
Nature News (2 October 2008)
| Full Text |
News in brief
| Fall in profits prompts major job cuts at Merck
| Swedish basic research receives funding boost
| Canada bans bisphenol A in baby products
| Initiative waives human life in favour of life on humans
| US agencies struggle over public relations
| Snapshot: Green ham (no eggs)
| Pakistan's education head is asked to resign
| 'Manipulated' stem-cell paper faces retraction
| Harvard gift paves way for bioengineering institute
| Italy to create biomedical-research funding system
| Eli Lilly wins race to take control of ImClone
| Molecular libraries programme begins
| Broad Institute receives $400 million
| South Africa replaces its health minister
| US Congress approves funding bill for science
News Features
Pharmaceutical futures: A fiendish puzzle
Pharmaceutical firms are increasingly adopting a 'systems biology' approach to drug development, as they hope to piece together a meaningful biological picture from colossal amounts of high-throughput study data.
Nature News (30 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Pharmaceutical futures: Made in China?
As pharmaceutical companies face shrinking incomes and soaring costs, major firms have begun to open research operations in China, where a vibrant contract research organization industry and inexpensive clinical trials may help pharma's bottom line.
Nature News (30 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Language: Disputed definitions
Nature searches for definitions of several frustratingly vague and variable terms, such as 'paradigm shift' and 'epigenetic'.
Nature News (23 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Collaboration: Group theory
The availability of online databases containing millions of papers, as well as analytical tools from network science, has fueled the growth of scientific collaborations that reach across universities and disciplines.
Nature News (9 October 2008)
| Full Text |
Cell therapy: Being patient
Nature talks to two stem-cell researchers who believe that the best way to ensure that stem-cell therapies are 'translated' into patients is to be as close as possible to the patients themselves.
Nature News (2 October 2008)
| Full Text |
|
