Internal Medicine

Affymetrix recently announced a new program that is designed to provide GeneChip users with the assurance that the genetic data they derive from its use can be directly applied to compatible software and informatics tools. Called the GeneChip-compatible Applications Program, the program already counted 19 software providers including Genedata, GeneGo, IMC, Rosetta Biosoftware and Stragene, among others when launched in the middle of September.

A recent study by the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) showed a correlation between levels of certain proteins in human tumor cells and the effectiveness of two of the most common chemotherapy drugs for lung, prostate and breast cancer. The findings, published in the July-August issue of Cancer Genomics & Proteomics could suggest future methods for both determining an individual patient’s susceptibility to cancer and to help design the most effective treatment regimen for individual patients.

Novartis AG jumped feet first into the RNAi fray early last month with the announcement that it would make initial payments of $56.8 million to RNAi specialist Alnylam consisting of both an upfront payment and a 19.9 percent stake in the company via the purchase of company stock. The three-year deal, with provisions for two additional single-year terms, could eventually pump as much as $700 million dollars into Alnylam coffers based on the development and commercialization of multiple products and other performance conditions.

Scientists at the University of Warwick, led by Dr. Gregory Challis, may be unlocking the door to new drugs and therapeutic targets by mining the genome of microorganisms for hidden metabolic keys. They published their work in the October issue of Nature Chemical Biology. Applied widely, genome mining should provide access to new natural products with molecular diversity unmatched by synthetic chemical techniques.

Simplifying the use of microarrays and increasing the reproducibility of experiment results are two of the rationales behind a new co-marketing agreement that bundles Eppendorf’s DualChip microarray slides and PerkinElmer’s ScanArray GX microarray analysis system.

The commercial microarray industry is a little over a decade old. While gene expression studies are still a mainstay in the search for blockbuster drugs and novel biomarkers, this is a good time to look at some of the emerging trends that are changing the face of microarray research. When combined with gene expression analysis, these new applications can play a crucial role in unraveling complex molecular pathways.

Biomolecular technology and pharmaceutical company Odyssey Thera announced recently it had signed an agreement to provide the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) with a cell-based compound screening system that will be used to further the NIH Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative. The technology, protein-fragment complementation assay (PCA), will allow NCGC to screen human cell lines for the impact of potential drugs on biochemical pathways. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Thermo Electron Corp. announced in early August it had acquired Ottawa-based Ionalytics Corp. whose key technology is an ion filtering device used with mass spectrometers in bioanalysis, proteomics and drug discovery. The purchase comes amid Thermo’s continued bolstering of its LC-MS portfolio, that has also included the recent release of the LTQ Orbitrap at ASMS in June.

University of Cin-cinnati scientists have discovered how blood-regenerating stem cells move from bone marrow into the blood stream. This finding, in turn, has led to the development of a new chemical compound that can accelerate the process of stem cell mobilization in mice—a technique that could eventually lead to more efficient stem cell harvesting for human use and potential therapeutics.

With the publication of the August 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientific community got a sneak peek of a discovery at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), that led to the development of what are being referred to as smart bio-nanotubes.

Tra-ditionally, the Texas A&M University system’s health sciences program hasn’t exactly been a darling in terms of getting research grants, particularly from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But the university aims to change that with the founding of the Texas Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM).