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High Fidelity will be off tanning at the beach next weekend for Memorial Day, so will see you again in June.
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Big research funders agree to clinical trial transparency
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Many of the world’s largest research funders agreed yesterday on new clinical trial registration and reporting standards–that all clinical trials they fund must be registered and the results must be publically disclosed. About 50% of today’s clinical trial go unreported, leading to a misunderstanding of the risks and benefits of drugs, medical devices, and vaccines. In a joint statement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Wellcome Trust, the Institute Pasteur, the UK Medical Research Council, the Norwegian Research Council, the Indian Council of Medical Research, PATH and the Médecins Sans Frontières and Epicentre all greed to develop policies and implement this within the next 12 months. They also agreed to monitor compliance with these policies. Supporters of sharing data and registering trials including Ben Goldacre have taken to Twitter to proclaim their support: “[t]ruly this is massive. @gatesfoundation @The_MRC @wellcometrust and more commit to trials transparency, and audit thereof. Bravo! #AllTrials”. Keeping with clinical trials, some patient advocacy groups are suggesting that trial volunteers should have a say in how much the drugs will cost when they hit the market.
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If the estimates that 50% of preclinical research is not reproducible, and that a major reason is poor quality reagents such as cells or antibodies, then thanks to a recent report, Chinese researchers may be in deep trouble. Normally, a bad antibody may not be as specific or as sensitive as expected – but at least it’s in the same game – not necessarily so in China. Nature News reports that counterfeiters are printing near-perfect labels from legit western antibody companies like Abcam or Cell Signaling Technology and sticking them on containers of who knows what, and selling them to the booming Chinese market. Supply chain issues with getting and selling international reagents and products has given fraudsters another opportunity to profit, but some scientists are fighting back. Beijing’s National Institute of Biological Sciences has centralized ordering directly from licensed distributors to prevent the use of counterfeit reagents. How this whole thing came to light was totally by accident – read and see.
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As you may have read in The Atlantic, the Huffington Post, StatNews, and others, the GP-write meeting was held last week at the New York Genome Center and had over 250 scientists in attendance. Genome project write focuses on using synthesis and genome editing technologies to understand, engineer and test living systems of model organizations. A Grand Challenge, several very neat pilot projects were pitched, including a DARPA-funded project to engineer human cells into self-sufficient nutrient factories, resulting in more affordable cell growth in labs.
Ebola doesn’t seem to be going away, as new reports of 29 suspected cases in Democratic Republic of Congo was in the news yesterday, and there are no approved vaccines or treatments to protect humans. A team lead by the US Army have discovered the first natural human antibody, and has shown to neutralize and protect animals against the three strains of Ebola. Published in Cell, this antibody was isolated from a survivor of the 2016 Ebola outbreak in Africa, and could lead to the first broadly effective treatment and vaccine.
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Not really biology news, but Tesla has begun taking orders for their solar panel roof tiles. After resetting the electric car market with the Tesla Roadster and Model S, which are some of the most powerful and efficient cars on the road and are entirely battery powered, the Tesla roof tiles promise more efficient energy conversion, and, at $46k to cover 2,500 square feet of roof, financing plans. Think about it as you are out in the hot sun today.
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