Links of note/Science/Strategy/The Narrative

Breast Cancer Drug Gets a Unanimous Thumbs Down – ScienceInsider

Posted on by charlie

“Some members of the advisory committee pointed to a downside in today’s decision to strip the drug of its breast cancer label: This could undermine the accelerated approval process under which Avastin first got FDA’s blessing. Accelerated approval is a way to get drugs to the sickest patients more quickly, with less clinical data. It’s virtually unheard of for FDA to reverse such an approval. In this case, FDA did so, agency officials said, after subsequent studies showed that the benefit was much less than initially thought.”

I’ve been following pharmacoepidemiology quite a lot lately, mostly because one of the product we sell (and I market) is used to look the effectiveness of drugs, help understand if there might be some off-label uses, and help drugs like Avastin succeed in their selected market and others that might also work. Of course, I’m now going to see how this deregulation can be avoided with better data analysis.

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Links of note/Science

Predicting a Human Gut Microbiota’s Response to Diet in Gnotobiotic Mice

Posted on by charlie

“A model community of 10 sequenced human gut bacteria was introduced into gnotobiotic mice, and changes in species abundance and microbial gene expression were measured in response to randomized perturbations of four defined ingredients in the host diet. From the responses, we developed a statistical model that predicted over 60% of the variation in species abundance evoked by diet perturbations, and we were able to identify which factors in the diet best explained changes seen for each community member. The approach is generally applicable, as shown by a follow-up study involving diets containing various mixtures of pureed human baby foods.”

Another great report I can’t read at the moment (no subscription). This sounds like a nice analysis of something everyone has been seeing. Looking to see effect of other diets, beyond the baby food tested.

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Innovation/Links of note/Science

DARPA to Offer $30 Million to Jump-Start Cellular Factories – ScienceInsider

Posted on by charlie

“Approved barely a month ago, the $30 million Living Foundries program should be sending out a request for proposals in the next few weeks and making awards several months from now. With its investment, over the next 3 years DARPA will support academic and corporate researchers for developing and applying an engineering framework to biology for biomanufacturing.”

Here’s a nice summary of the DARPA announcement made at the synthbio conference a few weeks back. Good to see the government funding agencies starting to pick up interest in synthbio and the practical uses of synthbio. The next 5 years should be quite interesting for those who are already doing synth bio. Also, big investments like this will get lots of students and post-docs flocking to synthbio, with a strong impact in 5-10 years. Yup. It’s gonna be great.

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Links of note/Science

anti-mega at Interesting 2011

Posted on by charlie

“The nature of the day was participatory, so instead of doing a presentation on stage (as I did at Interesting 2007), this time I attempted to get all 200ish people in the room trying, making and tasting things. By-the-by, this is also one of the hardest things I’ve done in years – scaling to 200 people took an awful amount of thinking and prep. Apologies if I’ve seemed scatty in the last few weeks.”

Always something fun and interesting from this guy. He’s a practical microbiologist too!

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Innovation/Links of note/Strategy

When big data meets journalism — Tech News and Analysis

Posted on by charlie

“The Knight Foundation noted in a blog post announcing the 16 winners that data and the use of it for journalism was a big theme among this year’s contestants. When the Knight competition first started five years ago, the idea of a “hacker/journalist” who developed applications and journalistic tools around data was unfamiliar one, but the foundation noted that this is now an established position at some media outlets.”

This is just great. This year is certainly turning out to be the year of Big Data coming on the scene – folks are finding all sorts of angles and insights in their own areas. This article lists a bunch in journalism.

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Links of note/Science

The Dirty 11: Panel Names Pathogens That Pose Biggest Security Risk for Research – ScienceInsider

Posted on by charlie

“A United States federal panel of scientists and security experts has identified 11 microorganisms that it wants designated as Tier 1 select agents, a new category of biological agents that would be subject to higher security standards than other pathogens and toxins used in biomedical research. The category would include anthrax, Ebola, Variola major and Variola minor, the Marburg virus, the virus that causes foot and mouth disease, and bacterial strains that produce the botulinum neurotoxin. At the same time, the panel has recommended dropping 19 pathogens and six toxins from the broader list of 82 agents that are currently governed by the select agent program.”

Fine by me. I’d never want to work with any of these in any case. And the “practical” uses aren’t necessarily the kinds of things I want to be practical with. Though, as with botox, what might we learn about medicine and biological mechanisms from these deadly bugs and viruses that might actually help us?

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Innovation/Links of note/Science

New battery design could give electric vehicles a jolt – MIT News Office

Posted on by charlie

“The new semi-solid flow batteries pioneered by Chiang and colleagues overcome this limitation, providing a 10-fold improvement in energy density over present liquid flow-batteries, and lower-cost manufacturing than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Because the material has such a high energy density, it does not need to be pumped rapidly to deliver its power. “It kind of oozes,” Chiang says. Because the suspensions look and flow like black goo and could end up used in place of petroleum for transportation, Carter says, “We call it ‘Cambridge crude.’””

Wicked cool. And I’ll point out that, yes, a company has licensed the tech. It’s yet another example of Rob Langer’s formula – proven tech, high impact paper, and passionate ex-grad students working on it.

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Links of note/Science

ScienceShot: Why Wallabies Don’t Pass Methane Gas – ScienceNOW

Posted on by charlie

“When cows digest food, they produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, but when kangaroos chow down, their digestive tract is relatively methane-free. The difference comes down to one group of bacteria, new research suggests.”

How will this be applied to cattle to cut down on methane generation? Also (a question I have because I don’t have access to the paper), are there energy, efficiency, or source material requirement differences between a succinate- or methane-producing bugs? There might be reasons why wallabies have one and cows have the other.

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Announcements/Science/The Narrative

Designing Biology at SXSW 2012?

Posted on by charlie

I’ve been thinking of what to do at SXSW Interactive next year around Biology.

Biology at SXSW? It’s not as far-fetched as you’d think. The trends I see are the new bio hackspaces popping up, all the open source feeling around sharing bio tools, and so much discussion around design in biology. While SXSW Interactive is really a digerati mecca, I think there’s space for spill over into biology.

And it’s not like SXSW hasn’t been courting the scientists. For example, in 2010, there was a panel on citizen science. Then in 2011, Craig Center spoke and there was a panel on biomimicry.

My current (very unformed) thoughts are that we could have a Designing Biology panel, covering synthbio, synthetic aesthetics, DIYbio, practical microbiology, folks biology, and food design. If we want to go further, we could organize some sort of workshop with folks from GenSpace, BioCurious, or the BioBus doing what they do well – getting folks excited about Biology (maybe even at a local Uni in case the BioBus can’t be there). We could also have a screening party of bio vids, such as the Synthbio Documentary.

Ambitious? Absolutely. But we need to shoot for something. And seems this might end up with many moving parts and need proper project management, marketing, and so forth (cross that bridge when we get there).

What do you folks think? Suggestions and comments, please!

I want to at least suggest something for the SXSW panel picker by July 15th (unless someone has already suggested something).

 

Innovation/Links of note/Strategy

Save $29,000 this year – The Scientist

Posted on by charlie

“The Scientist contacted researchers around the world, looking for their tips and tricks for saving money in the lab; here we present 15 of our favorites.”

I’ve been saying for years that biology has become a kit-based science, when lots of the stuff is easy to make yourself and really doesn’t waste time. Spend money where you need to and be creatively economical when you can.

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