The pharmaceutical industry is currently facing some key challenges, like an increase in drug development costs, a decrease in the number of drugs being approved and scrutiny from regulatory authorities. Patients themselves are also demanding more effective and safer drugs.

Pharmacogenomics says they can help to guide drug development and therapy by correlating gene expression with a drug's efficacy.

A researcher from the University of Leicester has identified what looks to be the oldest archaeological evidence for chemical warfare--from Roman times.  At the meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, Simon James presented CSI-style arguments that about twenty Roman soldiers, found in a siege-mine at the city of Dura-Europos, Syria, met their deaths not as a result of sword or spear, but through asphyxiation.

Adelaide researchers say they have made a world breakthrough in treating premature babies at risk of developmental disorders.  A six-year study led by Dr Maria Makrides from the Women's and Children's Health Research Institute and Professor Bob Gibson from the University of Adelaide has demonstrated that high doses of fatty acids administered to pre-term infants via their mother's breast milk or infant formula can help their mental development.

The findings were published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Last year a  study by Mathews, Johnson and Neil (2008) in their article "You are What your Mother Eats" that was published in the April 22, 2008 Proceedings of the Royal Society B implied that children of women who eat breakfast cereal are more likely to be boys than girls.

Forsyth Institute scientist Peter Jezewski, DDS, Ph.D., says that duplication and diversification of protein regions ('modules') within ancient master control genes is key to the understanding of certain birth disorders. Tracing the history of these changes within the proteins coded by the Msx gene family over the past 600 million years has also provided additional evidence for the ancient origin of the human mouth. 

Researchers have discovered that the mysterious overweight stars known as blue stragglers are the result of 'stellar cannibalism', where plasma is gradually pulled from one star to another to form a massive, unusually hot star that appears younger than it is. The process takes place in binary stars ­ star systems consisting of two stars orbiting around their common centre of mass. This helps to resolve a long standing mystery in stellar evolution.

Two University of Toronto quantum physicists, Jeff Lundeen and Aephraim Steinberg, say they have shown that Hardy's paradox(1), a proposal that has confounded physicists and science journalists trying to explain it since the 1990s, can be both confirmed and resolved.    So take one more quantum problem out of the realm of 'impossible.'

A series of papers in the journal Zebrafish provides a comprehensive look at future directions of research on pigment biology, stating that model organisms such as zebrafish can advance the scientific understanding of the genetic basis of human skin color and race.

Guest Editors Keith C. Cheng, MD, PhD, Department of Pathology, Penn State College of Medicine, and David M. Parichy, PhD, Department of Biology, University of Washington, have compiled a  collection of scientific papers and historical perspectives on the study of pigmentation in zebrafish, a vertebrate that shares genetic mechanisms of skin color with humans.

Women appear to suffer more from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) than men, according to research published in Arthritis Research and Therapy.

A genetic variation involving the brain chemical serotonin has been found to shape the social behavior of rhesus macaque monkeys, which could provide researchers with a new model for studying autism, social anxiety and schizophrenia. Humans and macaques are the only members of the primate family to have this particular genetic trait. 

"We have found very similar gene-based disruptions in social rewards shared by monkeys and by humans," said Michael Platt, Ph.D., associate professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center and author of the study in PLoS One.