The BioWizard Times

The NIH Budget-- a call for action

In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Joseph Loscalzo, MD PhD, the case for securing funding for biomedical research is made.  Dr. Loscalzo states " We have recently entered another period of stagnant funding for the NIH. Having doubled between 1998 and 2003, the NIH budget is expected to be $28.6 billion for fiscal year 2007, a 0.1 percent decrease from last year, or a 3.8 percent decrease after adjustment for inflation — the first true budgeted reduction in NIH support since 1970. Whereas national defense spending has reached approximately $1,600 per capita, federal spending for biomedical research now amounts to about $97 per capita — a rather modest investment in "advancing the health, safety, and well-being of our people...

Meanwhile, for more than 10 years, the pharmaceutical industry has been investing larger amounts in research and development than the federal government — $51.3 billion in fiscal year 2005,for instance, or 78 percent more than NIH funding that year."

There is a pressing need to advance life science research.  As a society, we must find a way to secure the resources necessary to advance biomedical research.   

Circos: Visually Comparing Genomes

Martin Krzywinski, a scientist in British Columbia, has developed a unique way to visualize and compare genomes of different species.  The program, called Circos (circularly composited genomic data and annotation generator), is designed for visualizing alignments, conservation and intra- and inter-chromosomal relationships within a genome, between genomes, or between any two or more sets of objects with a corresponding distance scale.

Go to his site to find out more and download Circos. 

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

"This year marks the 25th anniversary of two papers reporting the first isolation of mouse ES cells.  The first impact of the mouse ES papers was enabling targeted gene knock outs in mice, a technology which has revolutionized mouse genetics and developmental biology.  It took seventeen more years for Jamie Thomson to isolate ES cells from human embryos, one of the great milestones in human biomedical research.

Isolation of ES cells was built on a body of work on teratocarcinomas, a rare and bizarre type of tumor that contains stem cells. Efforts to isolate and culture these stem cells, and study their differentiation into adult cell types, laid the groundwork from which ES cell research emerged.

To mark this anniversary, Nature is featuring papers that show the progression of ES cell research, as well as a perspective by Davor Solter, recapitulating this fascinating history.  We hope you find it a compelling story."  Nature Magazine

Learn more about the US Federal Policy on Stem Cell Research by clicking here.

House Passes New Stem Cell Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a bill that would lift President Bush's funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.  The Senate has yet to vote on the bill.  However, even if the bill passes the Senate vote,  President Bush is expected to veto it.  He vetoed a similar bill in 2006, the only veto of his presidency.  Keep up to date with the latest stem cell news on the New York Times Stem Cell Page. 

Cancer Treatment Gets Personal

A special interactive issue in Science shows how advances in molecular biology have paved the way for a potential new model of cancer treatment that puts the individual patient at the center.  Their podcast focuses on the new cancer science, including interviews with Sridhar Ramaswamy on the new patient-centered model of cancer treatment, Steven Friend on biomarkers, Ken Garber on cancer bioenergetics, and Mina Bissell on the role of the tissue microenvironment in tumor growth.

Islam and Science

"In many countries with large Muslim populations the pendulum of power is swinging  away from secular (but mostly undemocratic) government back to where it was for many centuries: to Islamist regimes, and Islamic law.  What does this mean for Muslim scientists and science?  For a very long time, Muslim states have scored badly on measures of science and technology. Will things be any better or worse under the new Islamist governments?"  Visit Nature's Islam and Science Special to learn more.

The Medical Year: A to Z

A great article in this weeks Time Magazine outlines this year in medicine from A-Z.   

Vaccine to "cure every strain of flu..."

An article in today's Daily Mail notes that scientists at Acambis (Cambridge, UK) and Cytos Biotechnology (Zuric, Swizerland) are on the verge of producing a revolutionary flu vaccine that works against all major types of the disease.  The article states that "Just a couple of injections could give long-lasting immunity - unlike the current vaccine which has to be given every year."  The implications of such a vaccine could be vast in the battle against a potential flu pandemic. Such a vaccine could also save millions in healthcare dollars through the efficient production of vaccine and decreased medical costs. 

An interesting site to keep up to date with the latest Flu research is Nature's Avian flu Web focus.  It presents a comprehensive time line and archive of features, commentaries, letters and news, examining the threat of a new human flu pandemic in the near future, and what can be done to prevent it.

The risk of a flu pandemic brings to light an often underscored conflict between healthcare spending in prevention versus acute medical conditions.  Though there are thousands of medical and health care issues that require society's attention and resources, one may argue that reshifting focus on more basic public health issues such as sanitation and vaccines will do more for the health of society than any breakthrough drug discovery or interventional procedure. 

Science Magazine features BioWizard

Just to let our users know, our site was featured in Science Magazine in their Netwatch Section. We hope to continue to innovate and make our site useful for the life science and medical communities. Please post comments on anything about our website.

Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction

This is a preview from "Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction," a feature documentary now in production. The following content is from the site www.speciesalliance.org/, and aims to bring to light the fears many scientists have that human development at our current pace may lead to the extinction of possibly half of the worlds total species relatively soon. The loss of biodiversity on earth has become so acute that scientists are now calling it a "mass extinction event." The crisis has many causes, all of which are related to human activity. Through interviews with eminent biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, and many others, the film not only presents the facts of the shocking decline, it also explores the ways in which culture and psychology have conspired to determine our collective and individual response to this situation, and how the latest insights into natural systems could help us turn back the tide. The film weaves biology, psychology, and cultural history into a clear and accessible story of our changing world. The audience is taken into the depths of the human psyche, through the toughest problems of our times and into the cutting edge of what nature has to teach us. The mass extinction is quite possibly the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. Those of us alive today have been given a choice—one last opportunity to save the diversity of our planet. The decisions we make or fail to make in the next few years will affect the habitability of earth for millennia to come. This is the greatest adventure of all time—with the future of life itself in the balance.