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A magazine of biotechnology applications in health care, agriculture, the environment, and industry
Vol. 16, No. 2
How Biotech Can Help Those with Rare Diseases
CONTENTS
EXCITING TIMES!
Growing Old Too Fast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Putting Treatments on Trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
A Good Deal for Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
An Electric Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Scope It Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Kids and Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Welcome to this issue of Your World! In it, we show you
snapshots of research that involves biotechnology.
Our feature is on a very rare illness, progeria, that causes young
children to age very quickly. Often these children die from the same
things that kill old people—stroke or heart attack—because their
arteries clog up. A researcher whose son has progeria has pushed
hard to figure out what causes this, hoping to find a cure. She helped
discover a genetic link and now is helping with clinical trials.
We have a piece on clinical trials and a comic strip explaining how
government support of drugs for rare diseases encourages biotech
companies to take on this time-consuming research.
We want you to feel comfortable with biotechnology, so flip
through the issue and see the many ways scientists are using
technology to make our everyday lives better. While you’re at it,
think about how you could make a living applying biotech to
your interests.
We are pleased to announce that, beginning with this issue, we
are making Your World an online magazine. New and past issues are
available for free to view and download directly from our site. Feel free
to share the magazine with your friends, family, and teachers.
The Biotechnology Institute is an independent, national, nonprofit
organization dedicated to education and research about the present
and future impact of biotechnology. Our mission is to engage, excite,
and educate the public, particularly young people, about biotechnology
and its immense potential for solving human health, food, and environmental problems. Published biannually, Your World is the premier
biotechnology publication for 7th- to 12th-grade students. Each issue
looks at the science of biotechnology and its practical applications in
health care, agriculture, the environment, and industry. Some back
issues are available.
YOUR WORLD
Vol. 16, No. 2 Summer 2007
Publisher The Biotechnology Institute
Editor Kathy Frame
Managing Editor Lois M. Baron
Graphic Design Diahann Hill
Special Advisory Group
Michael Halpin, Genzyme Inc.
Jing Maran, Millennium Pharmaceuticals
Anna O’Rouke, Alkermes Inc.
Advisory Board
Don DeRosa, EdD, CityLab, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA
Lori Dodson, PhD, North Montco Technical Career Center, Landsdale, PA
Lucinda (Cindy) Elliott, PhD, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, PA
Mark Temons, Muncy Junior/Senior High School, Muncy, PA
Acknowledgments
The Biotechnology Institute would like to thank the Pennsylvania Biotechnology
Association, which originally developed Your World, and Jeff Alan Davidson,
founding editor.
For More Information
Biotechnology Institute
2000 N. 14th Street, Suite 700
Arlington, VA 22201
info@biotechinstitute.org
Phone: 703.248.8681 Fax: 703.248.8687
© 2007 Biotechnology Institute. All rights reserved.
The Biotechnology Institute acknowledges with deep gratitude
the financial support of Centocor, Inc., and Ortho Biotech.
Paul A. Hanle
President
Biotechnology Institute
ABOUT OUR AUTHORS
“Growing Old Too Fast”: Leslie B. Gordon, MD, PhD, is the
co-founder and medical director of the Progeria Research Foundation.
She is also the mother of a child with progeria. Dr. Gordon is principal
investigator overseeing the PRF Diagnostics Testing Program, Cell &
Tissue Bank, Medical & Research Database. She is an associate
investigator on the Natural History study of progeria at the NIH
and co-investigator for the clinical trial for progeria at Boston
Children’s Hospital. Dr. Gordon is assistant professor of pediatrics
research at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
and Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.
“A Good Deal for Research”: Jay Hosler, PhD, is an assistant
professor of biology at Juniata College. His comic books Clan Apis
(about honey bees) and The Sandwalk Adventures (a conversation
between Darwin and a follicle mite) were nominated for six prestigious
Eisner Awards, and he has won a Xeric Award. The National Science
Foundation funded his latest project, a comic book that teaches the
biology basics to first-year college students and high school students.
http://www.jayhosler.com/
“Putting Treatments on Trial”: Jeff Baron is an award-winning writer
who currently works at the Washington Post. Anna Wight O’Rourke
oversees clinical development at a Cambridge, Massachusetts,
biotech company.
“An Electric Approach”: Rebecca A. Clay is a medical writer who
has profiled many biotechnology professionals.
2 Your World
Progeria:
Growing
Old Too Fast
If you were in a room full of kids with a rare disease called
Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (progeria), you’d
believe you were in a room filled with sisters and brothers.
Children with progeria look almost identical. They’re short and
skinny and go bald by the age of 4. And worst of all, they die
really young of heart attacks. Their average life expectancy is 13
years. But emotionally and mentally, they’re like regular kids.
They are funny and smart and have lots of great friends.
Children with progeria get accelerated heart disease. They
suffer from the same strokes and heart attacks that affect millions of aging people throughout the world. But heart disease
in progeria is fast, and they can get strokes as early as 4
years old. Scientists are very interested in this disease
because it offers clues about the process of aging and heart
disease in all of us.
Very, very few children have progeria. Medical experts
estimate that only one in 4 million babies has progeria.
Right now, only 42 people in the world are known to have
it. My son, Sam, who is now 10, is one of them.
My husband and I both are doctors, and I do
research. When we learned that Sam had this disease,
we tried to find out everything we could about it. We
started an organization that brings together all of that
information. Our organization, the Progeria Research
Foundation, also encourages people to study the disease. We want to find a cure!
Before you can cure a disease, you often have to figure out what causes it. When Sam was diagnosed, no
one knew for sure what the cause was. Research is my
thing. I love doing it. So of course when Sam turned out
to have this disease, I started researching. In 2003, a
team of scientists, including myself, figured out what
makes a child have progeria. That discovery flung open
the doors of science, and we were catapulted into an era
where we have great hopes to find treatments and a cure
for progeria.
Your World 3
FIRST, A CAUSE
The Progeria Research Foundation (PRF) assembled a
group of brilliant scientists to search for the gene responsible
for progeria. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health,
together with colleagues at the Progeria Research
Foundation, the New York State Institute for Basic Research
in Developmental Disabilities, the University of Michigan, and
Brown University discovered that Hutchinson-Gilford progeria is caused by a tiny error (called a point mutation) in a single gene, known as lamin A (LMNA).
The normal LMNA gene produces a protein named
prelamin A. When the protein is made, at one end of it is a
molecule called a farnesyl group. The prelamin A protein
loses this molecule as it becomes a protein called lamin A
and attaches to the cell nucleus. As part of the cell’s “headquarters,” lamin A helps the cell keep its shape and work
properly.
In children with progeria, the gene mutation makes an
abnormal form of prelamin A, called progerin. I think of progerin as “the enemy protein.” Progerin doesn’t drop the farnesyl group molecule. When it hooks onto the nucleus, the
nucleus becomes misshapen. Often it looks like a bunch of
grapes or bubbles. Progerin causes many problems with the
cell’s normal functioning, including accelerated cellular
aging. It will take us many years to understand all of the
ways in which progerin causes heart disease and other problems in progeria. Much research still needs to be done.
TALK THE TALK
NEXT, A DIAGNOSTIC TEST
Blebbing: The
scientific term for
when a cell nucleus
forms into different
“lobes” making it
look like a cluster
of bubbles or
grapes.
Progeria: The word itself comes from the
Greek language for “prematurely old.” Many
other accelerated aging diseases, such as
Werner’s syndrome, Cockayne’s syndrome,
and xeroderma pigmentosum, are caused by
cells that make mistakes when they try to
repair their DNA. See
http://www.answers.com/topic/dna-repair.
4 Your World
“Before the gene
finding, doctors
diagnosed children
based on the way
they looked
and X-rays.”
Before finding the gene, doctors diagnosed children
based on the way they looked and X-rays. Sometimes children were misdiagnosed and did not receive proper medical
care. Sometimes the cells from children who were misdiagnosed were used in research on progeria, and the findings
were not accurate.
But after we found the genetic mutation that is responsible for progeria, we were able to develop the PRF Genetic
Testing Program. Since we now know that progeria is usually
caused by the change of only one letter in the billions of letters that make up a person’s DNA, we can use genetic
sequencing to find out if someone has this disease. In genetic
sequencing, the gene is “decoded” to see if a gene sequence
is abnormal. We use a small amount of blood or saliva (yes,
spit!). This contains cells that contain DNA. We sequence the
gene from the DNA. This can be done at any age.
Usually children are diagnosed when they are between a
year and a half and three years old. Being able to identify
progeria with certainty lets us find progeria earlier and give
these children proper care. This test helps scientists too.
They can now be sure they are working with progeria cells
to research the disease, aging, and heart disease.
THEN, TESTING A TREATMENT
Progeria is caused by an abnormality in lamin A.
Researchers have been studying prelamin A and lamin A for
years. They also studied a kind of drug called farnesyltransferase inhibitors (or FTIs). FTIs stop the farnesyl group from
attaching to the progerin protein. This prevents it from
hooking on to the nuclear membrane.
Many proteins use the farnesyl group to function. FTIs
were developed because they work not only on lamin A but
also on other proteins that are important in some types of
cancer. Progeria is not cancer. However, we are fortunate that
both cancer and progeria use proteins that may be affected
by using FTIs, because it took about 15 years to develop and
test FTIs. Lots of work was done before we even knew FTIs
might help children with progeria.
FTI Cell
Testing a New Drug
The Progeria Research Foundation has partnered with
Harvard hospitals in Boston and a drug company to conduct
a first-ever drug trial for children with progeria.
We will bring children with progeria (and their parents) to
Boston from all over the world. High-level specialists and the
latest technology will be used to
perform testing to understand as
much as possible about progeria.
These clinical experts represent
many specialties including cardiology, physical and occupational
therapy, dermatology, dentistry,
endocrinology, audiology, and
genetics. Then, the children will
start taking a drug called an FTI. The children will come back
to Boston every four months to see whether changes have
occurred that indicate whether the drug is having any effect
on progeria.
Used with permission. William Nenno.
In trying to find a drug to treat a specific disease, scientists test to see if a drug 1) is safe and 2) works.
The researchers first tested the FTIs on progeria cells and
then on mice that had been genetically altered so that they
had progeria. The results were exciting. In the progeria cells, we
saw that the FTIs can correct the oddly shaped cell nucleus.
The next step was to try the FTI treatment on progeria
mice. The mice received the treatment through their drinking
water for several months. The FTI reduced bone fractures,
postponed the start of the disease, helped the mice gain
weight, and kept the mice alive longer than the progeria mice
that didn’t receive the treatment.
Several researchers have published studies that support
the first-ever drug treatment for children with progeria. We’re
proud that the Progeria Research Foundation has funded or
participated in many of these studies. Now PRF is funding a
trial and working with Harvard hospitals to try this drug
treatment on people in what’s called a clinical trial. (See p. 6
for more about how clinical trials work.)
Progeria has directly affected my family and families in
every country in the world. With the help of thousands of
people, we’re looking for a cure. And while we’re at it, we
hope we’ll find information that will keep people who age
normally a lot healthier.
With a bit of inspiration, a lot of help, a ton of work, and a
healthy dose of luck thrown in, I think we can do just about
anything. Every day I think about the children, and I know
that together, we will find the cure.
Leslie B. Gordon, MD, PhD, is co-founder and medical director of
the Progeria Research Foundation, and she is an assistant professor
at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in
Providence, Rhode Island.
The Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome is
named after Dr. Jonathan Hutchinson, who first
described the disease in 1886, and Dr. Hastings
Gilford, who described the disease in 1904.
In a family where one child has progeria, the rest of the family
almost never has the disease.
Your World 5
If you build a better mousetrap, you can open your door and start selling it. (A
patent is a good idea, though, or your neighbor might start selling it, too.)
But if you build a better medicine, things aren’t so simple. Federal law says you
can’t sell a drug until you can prove that it’s safe and that it
works reasonably well.
Let’s say you’ve been working in the lab behind the
boiler in your cellar and you’ve come up with a pill
that cures ingrown toenails. How do you know?
Well, for one thing, you added the chemical to a
Petri dish with clippings from your own ingrown
toenail, and the toenail didn’t grow anymore. Then
you took a dose yourself, and a month later, your
ingrown toenail had healed. And finally, you gave it
a cool name: Nail-B-Gone. How could it not work?
Well, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a
government agency, needs to see the evidence, and
not just your old toenail.
You have to try the drug on animals and people in four phases of testing, called clinical trials.
The goal is to see whether the drug is safe in the amounts you want to give; whether it works;
and whether it would be a useful addition to what’s on the market.
So it’s time to put Nail-B-Gone to the first test, which is actually preclinical. Before you can
give Nail-B-Gone to humans, you have to give it to animals—two species to be exact. It’s not
enough to feed some to your dog. Extremely high doses of Nail-B-Gone are given to see if Nail-BGone causes cancer, makes internal organs stop working, or interferes with other drugs: things
you want to know before you give it to an otherwise healthy human being. The FDA also wants to
know how the animals made out. In fact, the agency requires this data before it gives you permission to enter into Phase I. If the FDA is satisfied with the data, it lets you go to Phase I by approving your investigational new drug application (IND). Once the IND is approved, Nail-B-Gone
becomes immortalized. How? The FDA assigns the Nail-B-Gone an official IND number, and it
remains on file forever.
Putting
Treatments
on Trial
Discovery
(2–10 years)
Preclinical Testing
(lab and animal testing)
Phase I
(20–30 healthy volunteers
used to check for safety and dosage)
Phase II
(100–300 patient volunteers used to
check for efficacy and side effects)
Phase III
(1,000–3,000 patient volunteers used to
monitor reactions to long-term drug use)
FDA Review and Approval
Postmarket Testing
0
6 Your World
2
4
6
8
Years
10
12
14
16
source: http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/info/whatis#types
Learn the Lingo
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/info/glossary
To Learn More
“Clinical Trials and the FDA,” Motley Fool,
http://www.fool.com/specials/2000/sp000405fda.htm
Clinical Trials for Rare Diseases
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/screen/BrowseAny?path=%2Fbrowse%2Fby-condition%
2Fhier%2FBXR.b&recruiting=true
Different Types of
Clinical Trials
● Treatment trials test
experimental treatments,
new combinations of drugs,
or new approaches to surgery
or radiation therapy.
Putting Nail-B-Gone to the second test (which is Phase I) requires you to pay
● Prevention trials look for beta Phase I unit to try your miracle drug out on people, and not just people with
ter ways to prevent disease in
ingrown toenails. Men, women, tall, short, young and old, about 20 to 80 of
people who have never had
them, try different doses of Nail-B-Gone and report on how it affected them. As
the disease or to prevent a
a general rule, the fewer who have nasty reactions (or keel over), the better
disease from returning. These
your chances of getting FDA approval to move on to the third round of testing,
approaches may include
which is Phase II.
medicines, vitamins, vaccines,
All right, let’s say nobody dies. Well, hardly anybody, and nobody dies from
minerals, or lifestyle changes.
Nail-B-Gone. (Somebody gets hit by a truck.) There are some side effects, maybe:
A few people said it made them feel queasy, which is understandable, because
● Diagnostic trials are
Nail-B-Gone tastes the way ingrown toenails smell. And two people reported that
conducted to find better tests
their toes fell off, just popped like little buttons—but this was at the highest dose,
or procedures for diagnosing a
one that you will, for obvious reasons, not develop into a commercial product.
particular disease or condition.
This is the sort of thing the FDA takes note of.
Nail-B-Gone moves on to Phase II testing. This time, you have to round up a
● Screening trials test the best
lot more people, 100 to 300. They have to be warned of the risks, and they all
way to detect certain diseases
have to have ingrown toenails. (Get the word out through foot doctors.)
or health conditions.
But not all of them get Nail-B-Gone; one group—the control group—gets
● Quality of Life trials (or
something that tastes just as nasty but doesn’t do anything. (You have to
Supportive Care trials) explore
account for the people who think they are getting better simply because they
ways to improve comfort and
are being treated.) The other groups (say three) get one of three different
the quality of life for individuals
doses of Nail-B-Gone. This helps determine which dose
offers the best result with the minimal number of toes
with a chronic illness.
popping off. At the least, the data should show whether
Nail-B-Gone works better than a pretend medicine.
Phase III is a lot more of the same: treating 1,000 to 3,000
patients. Some still get the fake medicine, called a placebo. Some
get the commercial dose of Nail-B-Gone—the dose that you
will sell to ingrown toenail sufferers. And some might get the
drug that’s already on the market (boo! hiss!) so researchers
can see which works better, or if one works better with some
patients than with others.
The longer the tests, and the more people
who take Nail-B-Gone, the more
researchers can say how safe and effective the drug is. And things are looking good: Only one more test
subject died—another truck—
and his toes looked gorgeous.
You’ll need a warning label: “May
cause nausea and toe loss.” But
with FDA approval, you can make a
—Jeff Baron works for the Washington Post.
major contribution in the fight against
—Anna Wight O’Rourke oversees clinical
the scourge of ingrown toenails.
development at a Cambridge biotech company.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine is
announced in the fall. Better start writing your
acceptance speech.
Your World 7
A Good Deal for Research
8 Your World
Your World 9
CAREER PROFILE
by Rebecca A. Clay
An ELECTRIC Approach
Chang Lu, PhD I Assistant Professor I Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
Department of Chemical Engineering (By Courtesy) I Purdue University
If test tubes and flasks are what
come to mind when you think about
the tools that biologists and other
scientists use, inventor Chang Lu, PhD,
wants to change that. He’s busy
creating new devices that use microor even nanotechnology to help
scientists work at the single-cell level.
Growing up in China, Lu dreamed of
being a chemist and making discoveries in the uncharted areas of the relatively young discipline. But after earning an undergraduate chemistry degree
at Peking University in 1998, he came
to the United States to attend the
University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, fell in love with engineering, and combined his two interests by
getting a PhD in chemical engineering
in 2002. He topped off his education
with a postdoctoral fellowship in applied
physics at Cornell.
Today Lu is still in school—this time
as a professor himself. “I’ve been in
school forever!” he laughs. He has taught
at Purdue since 2004.
Although a typical day combines conducting research, teaching undergraduates and graduate students, and writing
articles or funding proposals, Lu’s passion still lies in research. His latest
invention is a device that allows scientists to fuse cells faster and cheaper
than the standard technology can.
Say you’re using an antibody-producing cell in your research, but it grows
very slowly. Using a process called “electrofusion,” you could blend that cell with
another type of cell that grows quickly
to produce a hybrid combining the best
of both. With current technology, you’d
have to run small batches of cells
through a device that zaps them with an
electrical charge from a pulse generator
that can cost as much as $13,000.
Thanks to Lu’s invention, there’s now
an alternative: Cells are first chemically
treated to encourage bonding, then
placed into a fluid-filled chamber inside
a tiny microchip. There they assemble
into pairs, then flow toward the only
exit—a kind of electrified checkpoint
that fuses the pairs together.* The
advantages? The device allows continuous production of fused cells instead of
single batches. And it’s much cheaper,
since it relies on a common DC power
supply that costs just $100.
Now Lu is fine-tuning and trying to
find specific clinical applications for the
*E. Mirowski, J. Moreland, S. Russek, M. Donahue, and K. Hsieh, “Manipulation of Magnetic Particles by Patterned Arrays of Magnetic Spin-Valve Traps,”
Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 311 (2007): 401–4.
10 Your World
device, which can also be used by
researchers studying stem cells or even
creating clones. There’s a patent pending on the device, along with Lu’s first
invention—a device for separating
proteins.
“The process of creating knowledge
is so exciting,” says Lu. “You’re doing
something people didn’t previously
know how to do.” By following his
passions—chemistry, engineering,
physics—Lu has crafted a career he
loves.
And that’s just what he hopes
students will do.
“Don’t be too concerned about
income or job opportunities,” he urges.
“Follow your interests.”
That’s also the approach he plans to
use with the daughter he and his wife
just had this summer. “My daughter
doesn’t have to be an engineer unless
she wants to be,” says Lu, whose own
father is an engineer. “I’ll just ask her to
follow her dream.”
—Rebecca Clay lives in Washington, D.C.,
and writes about science and technology.
LEARN MORE ABOUT MICROFLUIDICS
Microfluidics is the science of designing,
manufacturing, and formulating devices
and processes that deal with volumes of
fluid on the order of nanoliters (symbolized
nl and representing units of 10-9 liter)
or picoliters.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/
0,,sid9_gci526632,00.html
TO VIEW SHORT VIDEO CLIP
of the device in use, see:
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/images/
spin_valve_array.avi
LEARN MORE
NIST was founded as the nation’s first
federal physical science research
laboratory.
IN THE NEWS
SCOPE
IT OUT
ID’ing a Killer
Infectious diseases are the biggest cause of death in the world. How do
doctors figure out what’s causing a terrible infection? They check for certain
viruses and bacteria. But this method doesn’t always work. Often the bacteria
or virus is not in the blood or in an area that’s easy to get to.
Now, infectious disease specialists have found a new way to ID the cause
of an infection. Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
Center, Children’s Medical Center Dallas, and Baylor Institute for Immunology
decided to analyze the telltale “fingerprints” that a disease leaves behind on
cells involved in the immune response.
Each virus and
bacteria trigger very
specific genes to produce different proteins called “receptors” in white blood
cells. White blood
cells are part of the
body’s immune system. The researchers
decided to study 35
genes to see which
receptors were produced. By detecting
the specific pattern
of receptors—a kind
of disease “fingerprint”—they could
tell which infections
came from influenza,
E. coli, and strep 95
percent of the time.
They could tell the
difference between
E. coli and staph
infections 85 percent
of the time.
Pediatrician Dr. Octavio Ramilo is among the infectious
The goal is to
disease specialists who have discovered a new method for
identifying viruses and bacteria that cause some of the most determine which
children with fevers
common infections in children.
have viruses (which
can’t be treated) and those who need antibiotics or a stay in the hospital. The
process could also help identify previously unknown diseases or biological
weapons, since it will be possible to tell which family or group the virus or
bacteria is in; researchers will have hints that it’s close to something that
is known.
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept37389/files/347196.html
Your World 11
IN THE NEWS
Same Trigger for
Death and Repair
Nanocrystals being taken up by cancer cells.
A New Delivery Service
Getting medicine to its target in a
body without being weakened by the
body’s chemistry has challenged scientists for a long time. Scientists in the
University of Buffalo’s Institute for
Lasers, Photonics, and Biophotonics and
Roswell Park Cancer Institute have
developed a system in which the delivery carrier is the drug itself.
The system involves the use of
nanocrystals measuring about 100
nanometers of HPPH (2-devinyl-2(1’-hexyloxyethyl pyropheophorbide).
HPPH is a substance that makes things
sensitive to radiant energy, especially
light (photosensitizer). It is being tested
in laser treatments of various cancers.
The tumors absorb the nanocrystals
of HPPH. Treatment delivered this way
is as efficient as conventional delivery
systems, researchers say.
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/fast-execute.
cgi/article-page.html?article=84900009
12 Your World
A part of the liver cell that tells
it when to die seems to be a necessary part of tissue repair and regeneration right after the liver is
injured. This discovery could make
a difference in the early treatment
of liver diseases such as cirrhosis
or hepatitis.
Researchers at the University of
California, San Diego, School of
Medicine describe the way cells
associated with liver damage, called
hepatic stellate cells, are activated
by a cell surface molecule called the
p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR)
to promote repair in the liver.
Many treatments for liver disease
try to kill the hepatic stellate cells,
but this study shows that, in animals, the initial activity of HSCs
could benefit the liver.
A hepatic stellate cell activated by the p75
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/he neurotrophin receptor promotes repair in the
liver (UCSD image).
alth/03-07Liver.asp
Drinking Alcohol Linked to Cancer
In 1910, a study in Paris showed that 80 percent of patients with cancer of the
esophagus or gastric tract were alcoholics. But this year, a researcher focusing on
something else finally described the way by which drinking alcohol causes tumors
to grow.
The problem in all the studies trying to figure out that mechanism is that the
researchers were using too much alcohol. With a 20 percent concentration, lab
animals wasted away but didn’t show unusual tumor growth.
Dr. Jian-Wei Gu found that, in mice, alcohol concentrations of 1 percent in their
water, equal to about one or two drinks a day in humans, caused tumors to grow
faster than in the control group of mice, which received plain water.
http://info.umc.edu/news/?n=mcnews&id=3127
IN THE NEWS
Weapon Against
Superbugs
‘Take a Left at the Corner …’: Gene Mapping
Researchers in Houston are using
powerful computers to refine their
search for the genetic causes of disease.
Statisticians and genetic epidemiologists from Rice University and the
University of Texas M. D. Anderson
Cancer Center took a crack at finding out
whether the tools that statistical geneticists use to pinpoint disease genes are up
to the task of identifying multiple genes
that cause complex diseases like cancer.
To do so, they used computer simulations to trace genetic changes over thousands of generations in a simulated population of hundreds of thousands of people. To simulate the evolution of complex
human diseases, Bo Peng of M. D.
Anderson developed a program that generates genetic profiles for large multigeneration populations. Using this computer
program, the researchers could sample
individuals from the simulation and see
whether statistical methods could accurately identify genes that interact to
cause diseases. In a real population, it’s
impossible to get the complete genetic
picture, especially for complex diseases
where more than one gene is involved
and the environment plays a role.
Gene mapping is the subject of different fields—statistical genetics, population genetics, molecular genetics, and
genetic epidemiology—that have various
tools and techniques.
The study’s preliminary findings
show that known statistical genetic
methods are limited in being able to
accurately identify the genetic interactions in complex diseases. The study
also helped identify which methods
work best with different types of
populations.
http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsB
ot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=9418
Boosting the body’s own immune system might be the answer to the deadly
infections that antibiotics no longer can
handle.
Public health officials have been worrying about the increase of “hospital
superbugs,” bacteria that current treatments don’t affect. Researchers estimate
that 2 million cases of antibiotic-resistant
infection in hospitals kill approximately
70,000 people each year in North America.
A research team at the University of
British Columbia, working with Inimex
Pharmaceuticals, has discovered a chain
of amino acids—called a peptide—that
can increase innate immunity without
causing harmful inflammation.
Because the peptide doesn’t act on
the bacteria directly, researchers believe
it’s unlikely that the bacteria will
become resistant to this approach. The
peptide offers protection before and
after infection is present, at least in animals that have been studied.
The therapy may be used as a supplement to antibiotics in fighting common
hospital-based problems such as pneumonia caused by being on a ventilator,
postsurgical infections, high-dose
chemotherapy, and infections arising
from insertion of tubes.
Researchers expect it to be a year or
so before the treatment can be tested on
humans. http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/
media/releases/2007/mr-07-030.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_
releases/2007-03/uobc-urf032007.php
Summaries have been based on reports
released by the research organizations.
Your World 13
NEWS
FROM
THE
INSTITUTE
KIDS+TEACHERS
BIOTECH’S POSTER CHILDREN Dow AgroSciences, Lilly Announce
Winners of National Biotechnology Poster Competition
Four students from across the nation
won $500 each for their posters showing
the promise and achievements of
biotechnology.
The Dow AgroSciences-Lilly
BioDreaming Poster Competition
awards ceremony was held June 26 at
the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
The national competition celebrates
young people’s ability to recognize
biotechnology’s immense potential to
enhance human health, food supply,
and the environment.
The first-place winners were:
● Shefali Chopra, 2nd grade, I. W. Eleanor
Hyde Elementary School, League City,
Texas; K–3rd grade category.
● Akshay Kumar, sixth grade, Clay
Middle School, Carmel, Indiana;
4th–6th grade category.
● Daniel Hong, ninth grade, McKinley
High School, Honolulu, Hawaii;
7th–9th grade category.
● Christine Hazlett, 12th grade,
Whitman-Hanson Regional High
School, Whitman, Massachusetts;
10th–12th category.
Second- and third-place winners
received $250 and $100, respectively.
More than 400 students from more
than 100 K-12 schools in 32 U.S. states
and Canadian provinces and territories
submitted posters. The top 14 posters
were shown at the Biotechnology
Daniel Hong
14 Your World
Akshay Kumar
Institute’s Conference on Biotechnology
Education in May in Boston and during
the BIO 2007 International Convention,
which was attended by 22,000 people
from around the world.
Dow AgroSciences and Eli Lilly and
Company sponsored the competition,
which was started in 2004 by the
Biotechnology Institute, the national
biotechnology education organization.
For more about the Dow AgroSciences-Lilly
BioDreaming Poster Competition, visit
http://www.biotechinstitute.org/programs/
biodreaming.html.
NEWS
FROM
THE
INSTITUTE
SCIENCE PROJECT PAYS OFF
Winnipeg High School
Student Wins sanofiaventis International
BioGENEius Challenge
receive the fourth-place award and $500.
All cash awards are shared equally
between the school and each of the
members of the winning teams.
For more information about the
sanofi-aventis International BioGENEius
Challenge and names of the other finalists, visit http://www.biotechinstitute.org/
Ted Paranjothy’s science project has a programs/2007BGWinners.html.
title that might make you go cross-eyed.
But “Novel Tumour-Specific ApoptosisInducing Derivatives of Apoptin” won
him $7,500. Can your science project do
that for you?
Paranjothy, 17, a senior at Fort
Richmond Collegiate in Winnipeg,
Some lucky kids will soon have a sciManitoba, has
entist helping their teachers teach them
won the 2007
biotechnology. Think of it like an astrosanofi-aventis
naut coming in to lend your teacher a
International
hand on a unit about space.
BioGENEius
The Biotechnology Institute (the nonChallenge, an annual
profit
organization that puts out this
competition for
magazine)
and Wyeth Biotech, a leading
high school stupharmaceutical
and health-care proddents whose science research proj- ucts company, have teamed up to form
the Wyeth Scholars Program. A high
ects show they
know a heckuva lot about biotechnology. school science teacher with less than
three years’ experience will work for a
The project, “Novel Tumour-Specific
year with a company scientist and a
Apoptosis-Inducing Derivatives of
teacher from the institute’s National
Apoptin,” demonstrated that, uh, brace
yourself, “peptide derivatives of apoptin, Biotechnology Teacher-Leader program.
The four-year program calls for five
a small amino acid protein extracted
three-person teams each year. The profrom the chicken anemia virus, can be
gram will be in Princeton, New Jersey,
used to induce programmed cell death
in cancer cells without harming healthy, and Collegeville, Pennsylvania, where
normal cells.” In other words, he showed Wyeth has offices. A particular focus of
the project is to serve schools with
that these small bits of apoptin can kill
diverse student bodies.
cancer cells without hurting the surrounding healthy cells.
At the regional and international competition, students are evaluated not only
on the quality of their research and display, but also on their responses to
questions relating to their scientific
knowledge and potential commercial
applications of their research.
An expert panel of judges selects the
winners from among 14 finalists, two
representing each of the six U.S. regions
and Canada. The first-place-winner
Mary Ann Murrow, a teacher at Spring-Ford
received an award of $7,500; second
place receives $5,000; $2,500 is awarded Area High School in Royersford, Pa.,
to third place, and the honorary mention benefited from a mentoring program that
matched teachers with Wyeth scientists.
award is $1,000. The other finalists
HANGING WITH THE PROS
Wyeth Scientists
Partnering with Teachers
In Diverse Communities
LeeAnn Vaughan (center) receives her
award from Michael Wyzga (left) of
Genzyme and Pete Leddy (right) of
Invitrogen.
TEACHER OF THE YEAR
Nebraska Teacher Wins
Genzyme-Invitrogen
Biotech Educator Award
LeeAnn Vaughan, a teacher at Omaha
North High School in Nebraska received
an award of $10,000. She was chosen by
a panel of judges for her proven leadership and excellence as an educator, her
commitment to furthering the teaching
of biotechnology by outreach to other
educators, and the development of innovative ways to teach biotechnology.
The Biotechnology Institute presented the Genzyme-Invitrogen Biotech
Educator Award. It is the nation’s top
award for biotechnology education and
is sponsored by Genzyme Corporation
and Invitrogen Corporation.
Established by the Biotechnology
Institute, the national biotechnology
education organization, the award recognizes premier high school–level educators who provide an array of expertise
to help improve the teaching and learning of biotechnology in their classrooms.
For more about the GenzymeInvitrogen Biotech Educator Award, visit
http://www.biotechinstitute.org/programs
/biotecheducatoraward.html.
Your World 15
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YOUR WORLD visit us online at www.biotechinstitute.org/yourworld.html
A magazine of biotechnology applications in health care, agriculture, the environment, and industry
Online you’ll find
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Vol. 14, No. 3
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A magazine of biotechnology applications in health care, agriculture, the environment, and industry
Most past issues of YOUR WORLD are available
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