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Sometimes the retraction of a paper can be as noteworthy as the publication of one. Here we list some of the take-backs of 2010 that left the biomedical community most taken aback.
The recent global campaign launched against a select number of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is a welcome development. But we should be as careful about measuring progress toward the control or elimination of these diseases as we are about choosing which ones to target.
Here's the skinny on the weight loss drugs that disappointed, the hepatitis drugs that matched the hype and others as we look back on the major headlines relating to medications in 2010.
In July, the global health financing mechanism UNITAID established an intellectual property–sharing scheme focused on scaling up access to new and lower-priced antiretroviral drugs in the developing world. Ellen 't Hoen, a lawyer who became executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) last month, spoke with Asher Mullard about the challenges of encouraging companies to share their intellectual property in a normally guarded sector.
To truly know whether a stem cell has the developmental flexibility to give rise to new, therapeutic tissue types, the cells must undergo a definitive test in which they are injected into mice and observed. Yet many say this measure is too slow, too expensive and too unreliable. Elie Dolgin goes in search of a replacement.