UCL scientists have found a protein that could unlock the secret to quicker, more effective treatment of TB by waking TB bacteria in the body. Once the TB bacteria are active again, the disease becomes treatable using common drugs like antibiotics. Scientists believe that uncovering the molecular structure of this protein will lead the way to designing drugs which enable treatment of dormant and multidrug resistant TB.

A genetic tool with the potential to identify which trauma and burn patients are most likely to become seriously ill has worked consistently in a wide range of experimental clinical settings — an important hurdle to overcome before the method is routinely used in emergency rooms and intensive care units.

In a report published today (March 7) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from eight institutions, including the University of Florida, describe how they were able to consistently analyze which genes are active in patients with serious infections or traumatic injuries.

A landmark South African legal complaint against British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) over its AIDS drug pricing and policies in that country will proceed following an order late last week by South Africa's Competition Tribunal that will allow the complaint to go forward. GSK has sought outright dismissal of the case; however, the Competition Tribunal issued an order last week giving the complainants, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) and several South African AIDS advocates, 10 days to present further evidence & arguments regarding the damages they claim to have sustained as a result of what they claim are GSK's illegal drug pricing and policies. The order also states that the parties will come back in late April or the first week of May 2005 to present oral arguments on these issues.

Skin cancer is on the increase. Recent statistics for Germany show that some 10 to 12 people in every 100,000 get the disease every year. Alarmingly, this figure is growing at the rate of five to ten per cent annually. From the same group, some 140 will also get non-melanoma or less serious skin cancers.

“Diagnosis of skin cancers can take weeks, depending on the health system,” says Dr Jafer Sheblee, coordinator of the IST project EDISCIM. “The process involves visits to a general practitioner and a hospital specialist. With our new system, we hope to replace these visits with just one visit and by detecting skin cancer as early as possible, to offer patients the most complete treatment.”

In the realm of nanotechnology, or study of the tiny, scientists often aim to safely deliver and leave material in the human body without causing harm. A big challenge is how to design a package for this biomaterial that will be compatible with living cells and will not provoke an immune reaction. Previous efforts have relied upon viruses or artificial chemicals to house and deliver drugs or other substances to targeted cells.

An international team led by researchers at the Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Liepzig, Germany and Washington University in St. Louis, has extracted and sequenced protein from a Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave, Iraq dating to approximately 75,000 years old.

This is the oldest fossil human protein ever sequenced. The research will be published the week of March 7-11 in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A majority of traveler's diarrhea cases among U.S. travelers to Mexico and Guatemala were attributed to Norovirus, a common cause of nonbacterial gastroenteritis outbreaks usually associated with developed countries, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions. The researchers also found that the longer travelers stayed at their destination, the more likely they were to contract Norovirus infections. The study is published in the March 2005 issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

One of nature's most versatile microorganisms – a bacterium called Pseudomonas putida – could help mop up the toxic by-products caused by the destruction of the chemical weapon mustard, write Russian researchers in Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jctb) this month.

At 40,000 tonnes, Russia houses the world's largest stockpile of chemical warfare agents (CWAs). The country faces a race against time to dispose of the stockpile by 2007, in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). This disposal must be achieved in an ecologically-sound manner.

Researchers at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), in Montreal, have identified a new gene to combat cancer. In a new study, published in the on-line edition of the journal Clinical Cancer Research this week, the researchers document a reduction in the growth of both colon and lung cancer tumors with inhibition of the gene.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today announced that countries are on target to halve deaths from measles, a leading vaccine-preventable killer, by the end of this year. Global measles deaths have plummeted by 39%, from 873 000 in 1999 to an estimated 530 000 in 2003.

The largest reduction occurred in Africa, the region with the highest burden of the disease, where estimated measles deaths decreased by 46%.