The herbicide Roundup® is widely used to eradicate weeds. But a study published today by a University of Pittsburgh researcher finds that the chemical may be eradicating much more than that.

A team of researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has developed new miniature sensors for analysing DNA. The sensors have the same size and thickness as a fingernail and reduce the time needed to identify DNA chains to several minutes or a few hours, depending on each chain. These sensors can be applied to many different tasks, ranging from paternity tests and identifying people to detecting genetically modified food, identifying bacterial strains in foodborne illnesses and testing genetic toxicity in new drugs. Once mass production of the sensors begins, their cost and availability will be similar to that of pregnancy test kits found in pharmacies.

The researchers Salvador Alegret, Manuel del Valle and Maria Isabel Pividori, all of whom are members of the Sensors and Biosensors Group at the UAB's Department of Chemistry, developed the new sensors based on their experience in research with electrochemical sensors. These can identify a substance by chemically interacting with it and converting this interaction into an electrical current that they measure.

A team of researchers, led by Steven A. Rosenberg, M.D., at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, have found that patients with advanced melanoma who had not responded to previous therapies experienced a significant reduction in the size of their cancers as a result of receiving a new immunotherapy. This immunotherapy consisted of a combination of chemotherapy and reintroduction of their own (autologous) activated lymphocytes. Autologous lymphocytes are white blood cells that have been removed from the patient, activated or re-educated to attack the tumor, then reintroduced into the patient. The promise of this therapy is that a patient's own immune system can be used to effectively treat existing tumors. Results are reported in the April 2005 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

An early type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that caused a global epidemic of infections in the 1950s has re-emerged as one of the community-acquired MRSA 'superbugs', according to a study published in The Lancet tomorrow (Saturday 2 April 2005).