Volume 28 Issue 3, March 2010

Editorial

America's got talent—can it keep it?

To remain competitive in biotech, policymakers should pay more attention to retaining skilled foreign workers than to fixating on illegal immigration.

Editorial 01 Mar 2010

Advertisement
H1N1dsight is a wonderful thing

Criticisms of the response of governments and of the pharmaceutical industry to the threat of the H1N1 epidemic are wide of the mark.

Editorial 01 Mar 2010

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News

Ark's gene therapy stumbles at the finish line

Peter Mitchell
News 01 Mar 2010
Monsanto's alfalfa reaches Supreme Court

Boonsri Dickinson
News 01 Mar 2010
GSK/Sirtris compounds dogged by assay artifacts

Charlie Schmidt
News 01 Mar 2010
US biodefense contracts continue to lure biotechs

Catherine Shaffer
News 01 Mar 2010
Ride 'n Drive on government waste

News 01 Mar 2010
Melanoma vaccine for dogs

Suzanne Elvidge
News 01 Mar 2010
Biotechs go virtual

Susan Aldridge
News 01 Mar 2010
Chinese institute makes bold sequencing play

John Fox
Jim Kling
News 01 Mar 2010
RNAi delivery shop

Nazlie Latefi
News 01 Mar 2010
Brazil boosts bioscience

Ricardo Bonalume Neto
News 01 Mar 2010
Patent income tax slashed

Asher Mullard
News 01 Mar 2010
Abbott hit with record fine

Michael Francisco
News 01 Mar 2010
Resuscitated deCODE refocuses on diagnostics

Mark Ratner
News 01 Mar 2010

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News Feature

One year in—Obama's biotech scorecard

As healthcare reform falters, the biotech industry awaits the fate of biosimilars and tax credits. Jeff Fox reports.

Jeffrey L Fox
News Feature 01 Mar 2010
The lengthening handshake

Although mergers and acquisitions (M&As) failed to hit the heights some analysts had predicted in 2009, a new type of tiered transaction rose to prominence—the structured deal. Randy Osborne reports.

Randy Osborne
News Feature 01 Mar 2010

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Correspondence

Oversulfated chondroitin sulfate is not the sole contaminant in heparin

Jing Pan
Yi Qian
Lijuan Zhang
Correspondence 01 Mar 2010
Reply to Oversulfated chondroitin sulfate is not the sole contaminant in heparin

Jing Pan
Yi Qian
Lijuan Zhang
Correspondence 01 Mar 2010
Why FDA recruitment of 'critics' is a problem

Henry I Miller
Correspondence 01 Mar 2010
Genetic exceptionalism

William Bains
Correspondence 01 Mar 2010

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Feature

Lost in migration

Combinations of cytostatic treatments and chemotherapies currently in clinical practice offer limited hope for patients whose cancers have spread. But increasing understanding of the processes underlying metastasis may one day provide other therapeutic options.

George S Mack
Andrew Marshall
Feature 01 Mar 2010

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Patents

Patenting biotech beyond the central dogma

Biotech inventors and patent practitioners alike need to be aware of new interpretations of what is considered patentable, and draft claims that extend beyond biological principles.

George Wu
Patents 01 Mar 2010
Recent patent applications in DNA diagnostics

Patents 01 Mar 2010

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News & Views

Genetic therapy for spinal muscular atrophy

A severe inherited neuromuscular disease is corrected in mice by intravenous gene delivery.

Alex MacKenzie
News & Views 01 Mar 2010
Targeting leukemia stem cells

Acute myeloid leukemia stem cells can be made susceptible to chemotherapy by inducing them to divide.

Hanna K A Mikkola
Caius G Radu
Owen N Witte
News & Views 01 Mar 2010
Cellular targets for influenza drugs

High-throughput RNAi screens in human cells suggest new approaches to curb influenza virus infection.

Ji-Young Min
Kanta Subbarao
News & Views 01 Mar 2010
Navigating genomic maps of cancer cells

What can we learn from the first genome sequences obtained from cancerous cells?

Marcel P van der Brug
Claes Wahlestedt
News & Views 01 Mar 2010
Grass genomics on the wild side

Craig Mak
News & Views 01 Mar 2010

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Research Highlights

Research highlights

Markus Elsner
Laura DeFrancesco
Craig Mak
Research Highlights 01 Mar 2010

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Primer

What is flux balance analysis?

Flux balance analysis is a mathematical approach for analyzing the flow of metabolites through a metabolic network. This primer covers the theoretical basis of the approach, several practical examples and a software toolbox for performing the calculations.

Jeffrey D Orth
Ines Thiele
Bernhard Ø Palsson

Collection:

Computational Biology
Primer 01 Mar 2010

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Article

Nutrient-sensitized screening for drugs that shift energy metabolism from mitochondrial respiration to glycolysis

Many diseases are characterized by shifts in cellular energy metabolism. Gohil et al. use a quantitative, nutrient-sensitized screen to identify drugs that affect the relative rates of glycolysis and mitochondrial respiration, and demonstrate the protective capacity of an approved antiemetic in models of cardiac and cerebral ischemia.

Vishal M Gohil
Sunil A Sheth
Vamsi K Mootha
Article 14 Feb 2010
Harnessing chaperone-mediated autophagy for the selective degradation of mutant huntingtin protein

Decreasing levels of mutant, but not normal, huntingtin (HTT) protein remains a major obstacle to treating Huntington's disease (HD). Bauer et al. show that a fusion of polyglutamine-and HSC70–binding motifs specifically targets mutant HTT for degradation by chaperone-mediated autophagy and ameliorates the phenotype of a mouse model of HD.

Peter O Bauer
Anand Goswami
Nobuyuki Nukina
Article 28 Feb 2010
Directed evolution of a magnetic resonance imaging contrast agent for noninvasive imaging of dopamine

Magnetic resonance imaging of hemoglobin in the brain can detect blood flow associated with neural activity, but direct imaging of neurotransmitters would provide a more sensitive measure of neural signal processing. Shapiro et al. use directed evolution to generate a protein probe that enables magnetic resonance imaging of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Mikhail G Shapiro
Gil G Westmeyer
Alan Jasanoff
Article 28 Feb 2010

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Letter

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Rescue of the spinal muscular atrophy phenotype in a mouse model by early postnatal delivery of SMN

Spinal muscular atrophy is an autosomal recessive disease of motor neurons caused by lack of the SMN gene. Foust et al. achieve long-term correction of the disease phenotype in a mouse model by intravenous delivery of SMN using the viral vector scAAV9.

Kevin D Foust
Xueyong Wang
Brian K Kaspar

Collection:

25th Anniversary Collection
Letter 28 Feb 2010
Induction of cell cycle entry eliminates human leukemia stem cells in a mouse model of AML

In acute myeloid leukemia, a sub-population of quiescent cancer cells, called leukemia stem cells, is thought to be responsible for chemotherapy resistance and eventual recurrence of the disease. Saito et al. show that treatment with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor can overcome resistance to standard therapy by inducing cell cycle entry of the leukemia stem cells.

Yoriko Saito
Naoyuki Uchida
Fumihiko Ishikawa
Letter 14 Feb 2010
Isotopic labeling of terminal amines in complex samples identifies protein N-termini and protease cleavage products

Many proteases are important drug targets, but identification of their substrates remains challenging. By using polymers to selectively isolate N-terminal peptides generated by proteolysis of complex samples, Kleifeld et al. identify substrates of clinically relevant proteases with broad specificity.

Oded Kleifeld
Alain Doucet
Christopher M Overall
Letter 07 Mar 2010

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Careers and Recruitment

The importance of foreign-born talent for US innovation

A survey suggests that foreign-born scientists and engineers play a major role in scientific and innovation output in the United States.

Yeonji No
John P Walsh
Careers and Recruitment 01 Mar 2010
People

Careers and Recruitment 01 Mar 2010

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Volume 28 Issue 3, March 2010

Editorial

News

News Feature

Correspondence

Feature

Patents

News & Views

Research Highlights

Primer

Article

Letter

Careers and Recruitment

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