One Genomics Project In Gates Foundation Global Challenges Funding

Dominic Kwiatkowski, research professor at the Center for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, has received a $16.4 million, five-year grant as part of an ambitious program announced yesterday by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Kwiatkowski’s lab will use the funds to form the Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network to integrate the work of research groups in 14 malaria-endemic countries and explore variations in the human genome that determine an individual’s ability to resist infection.

The foundation yesterday announced some $450 million in grants to 43 projects as part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health program, which funds research for problems in the developing world. Kwiatkowski's project appears to be one of the few to directly address genomics, but, no doubt. other projects will apply biotechnical strategies in seeking advances.

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In the Houston Chronicle newspaper, an article published yesterday critically explores the rush to genomic determinism in cancer – the idea that there is a gene-based silver bullet out there for unraveling the cancer puzzle.

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An editorial in the National Post of Canada today says the G8 countries should consider spending 5 percent of their research and development funding to develop technologies for the third world.

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An article by The Associated Press and widely published in member newspapers over the weekend describes the study of the genetics of the Amish and Mennonite people in Pennsylvania.

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In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a paper on a new mouse model, created by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, suggests that what researchers have learned about the regulation of p53 activity from in vitro studies “may not be relevant to living, breathing organisms.”

If the p53 tumor suppressor gene is inactivated, as it is in over half of all human cancers, checks and balances on cell growth fail to operate, and body cells start to accumulate mutations, which ultimately may lead to cancer.This safeguard has been intensly studied but mainly in tissue culture, or in vitro, models.

"This study caused a big shift in how we think about p53," Salk scientist and first author Kurt Krummel, said in a statement. "You have to look at all interacting partners because after all, modifications of p53 itself might not be so important as modifications of negative regulators and co-activators."

Many chemotherapeutical drugs used to treat cancer exert their biological effects on tumor cells through activation of the p53 pathway. Having an accurate view of how p53 is regulated will allow the development of specific drugs that unleash the killing power of p53 by interfering with its negative regulators, a statement said.

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In a study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the sequencing of the genome of the Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf-5 microbe is seen as a potential benefit to crops. The bacterium safeguards roots and seeds from infection by harmful microbes that cause plant diseases.

"The genome sequence has helped us identify new chemical pathways that the microbe apparently uses to create what are known as 'secondary metabolites' – possibly including new antibiotic compounds," says Ian Paulsen, who led the sequencing of the organism at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), Rockville, Md., and is the study's first author.

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Rudolf Grimm, development manager for the Integrated Biology Solutions group of Agilent Technologies is interviewed in India's Express Pharma Pulse, a weekly news publication. Agilent is one of the largest life sciences tools providers in India and has recently announced an expansion of its efforts to sell advanced molecular biology tools there.

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Geoffrey Karny, an attorney in the Reston, Va., law firm of Cooley Godward, writes a how-to article on patent strategy in the online publication Mondaq.