The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory has publicly released a prototype of the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD). CTD aims to advance understanding about the impact of environmental chemicals on human health. It is the first database to provide centralized, integrated, and curated molecular and toxicology data from diverse organisms for scientists worldwide.

'Nanoshells' enhance sensitivity to chemical detection by factor of 10 billion New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science finds that tailored nanoparticles known as nanoshells can enhance chemical sensing by as much as 10 billion times. That makes them about 10,000 times more effective at Raman scattering than traditional methods.

Based on successful animal studies, a novel vaccine that uses immune cells as factories to produce Her2/neu protein may offer a way to treat some human breast cancers, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. [Ed : Her2/neu is a protein often present / surexpressed in breast cancer] Their study, published in the online journal, Breast Cancer Research, on Nov. 29, 2004, showed that the vaccine protected 86 percent of experimental mice against HER2/neu-associated breast cancer, even though the tumors were implanted directly into mice.

One of the most urgent problems in HIV/AIDS policy is in deciding how best to allocate resources toward preventing new infections or treating infected individuals. An analysis by Joshua Salomon and colleagues in the premier open-access journal PLoS Medicine, published online January 11, 2005, suggests that an exclusive focus on one or the other of these alternatives will yield minimal benefits--failing to integrate the two approaches could have a catastrophic effect on the global toll of HIV/AIDS by 2020. In this modeling study the authors analyze the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa (where three-fourths of deaths from AIDS occur). With no change in current levels of prevention and care, it is predicted that there will be 3.7 million new HIV infections and 2.6 million adults dying of AIDS in this region each year within the next two decades. The authors predict that combining effective prevention and treatment efforts, however, could yield substantially greater benefits than the sum of the two alone--lowering projected new infections by 74% and projected annual mortality by half. These percentages translate into 29 million new infections and 10 million deaths averted between 2004 and 2020. While treatment itself can be life-saving, long-term reductions in AIDS deaths will be achieved only if new infections are curbed. What is more, campaigns to expand treatment access in poor countries will only be sustainable if prevention efforts are strengthened at the same time. As the authors say: "Treatment can enable more effective prevention, and prevention makes treatment affordable. Sustained progress in the global fight against HIV/AIDS will be attained only through a comprehensive response."

Findings reported last week reveal how an evolutionary innovation involving the sharing of genes between two ant species has given rise to a deep-seated dependency between them for the survival of both species populations. The new work illustrates how genetic exchange through interbreeding between two species can give rise to a system of interdependence at a high level of biological organization - in this case, the production of worker ants for both species.