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Volume 14 Issue 5, May 2008

Studies of pancreatic islets in vitro lack a physiological environment, including vascularization and innervation. In this issue, Stephan Speier et al. have solved this problem by transplanting islets into the eye, which allows for in vivo noninvasive imaging under more natural conditions. The cover, courtesy of Per-Olof Berggren, shows an islet (red) engrafted on the vascular bed (green) of the iris.

Volume 14 Issue 5

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Editorial

  • Embryonic stem cell therapy may soon enter clinical trials. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will need to provide clear guidance on how it will regulate such trials and ensure that politics will not cloud the regulatory process.

    Editorial

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  • The use of ghostwriters to pen scientific papers is nothing new, but if we want to get rid of them, stricter authorship rules may not be sufficient for a successful exorcism.

    Editorial

  • In this issue of the journal, we introduce some changes to underscore our long-standing interest in translational research.

    Editorial
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News

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News Feature

  • For many years, epidemiologists have linked sleep deprivation to poor health. Now, even as the average amount of shuteye people get continues to diminish, new evidence from biological research helps explain how missing out on sleep might contribute to obesity and diabetes. Cassandra Willyard asks what happens when we ignore the sandman.

    • Cassandra Willyard
    News Feature
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Book Review

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News & Views

  • Three postmortem studies examine long-term fetal transplants in subjects with advanced Parkinson's disease. The findings—such as the development of parkinsonian pathology in some transplanted neurons—underscore the limitations of this approach.

    • Heiko Braak
    • Kelly Del Tredici
    News & Views

  • Allergens stimulate lymphocytes to become factories for secreted proteins that cause organ dysfunction in allergic diseases. Allergens are now shown to target dendritic cells, the cells responsible for processing and presenting antigens to T cells (pages 565–573).

    • Dean Sheppard
    News & Views

  • The search is on for for vaccine adjuvants that boost the innate immune response and complement existing adjuvants. Mast cell activators may be one option (pages 536–541).

    • Bali Pulendran
    • Santa J Ono
    News & Views

  • Kinase inhibitors such as imatinib (Gleevec) have improved the outlook for many people with chronic myeloid leukemia and related blood disorders. But such drugs do not target the leukemia stem cell population and may not be curative. Krause and Van Etten discuss several clinical studies that suggest that interferon-α may provide a solution by selectively eliminating leukemic stem cells—although only more basic research will tell us whether this is true and how it may happen.

    • Daniela S Krause
    • Richard A Van Etten
    News & Views

  • Three studies examine how resistance to chemotherapy develops in cancers deficient in BRCA1 and BRCA2. The mechanism involves restoration of BRCA1 and BRCA2 activity. Shah examines the implications for the clinic, such as the potential value of continuing treatment with cisplatin and similar agents even after drug resistance develops.

    • Neil P Shah
    News & Views
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Perspective

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Brief Communication

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Article

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Technical Report

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Corrigendum

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Erratum

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