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Behind the news, there are always the newsmakers. Inspired by the high school yearbook tradition, we have rounded up a few such individuals worthy of notice in 2009. Some stepped into the spotlight eagerly, whereas others operated behind the scenes.
There are many ways to modulate the immune response in a therapeutic setting. Drugs that target the proinflammatory mediator IL-1, for instance, can counteract disease in certain types of inflammatory conditions. But such drugs do not work well for other conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. New clinical studies, examined by Kingston Mills and Aisling Dunne, provide insight into this discrepancy. Another approach that has worked well in mice harnesses the ability of regulatory T cells to dampen the immune response. But one barrier in the way of successful application to people is the ability of such cells to change their character for the worse. Massimo Gadina and John O'Shea take a look at a basic research study that highlights this dilemma and examine what it means for the future of human trials.
In June 2006, Warwick Anderson became chief executive of Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) as the institution gained new status as a fully independent agency. He talked to Simon Grose about his first three years in the job and the NHMRC’s accelerated evolution.
Innovation in translational research has often emerged from the biotechnology industry. In a climate in which it is increasingly hard to found a successful company, direct technology transfer from academia to the pharmaceutical industry poses an additional threat to small biotechs.
This year witnessed both surprising successes and unexpected failures in basic and clinical drug development. There were also mixed results for some newly tested drugs, which will probably prompt a careful reassessment of their therapeutic value. Our drug watch compilation summarizes the most talked about therapies of the year.
The gold standard for early detection of prostate cancer, PSA, has recently come under fire for its high rate of false positives. Virginia Hughes investigates some of the researchers hunting for better alternatives and asks whether their promises of creating viable—and profitable—biomarker tests will ever be realized.
