AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, May 26 /PRNewswire/ --

- Production Increase Brings Large Disease Areas Within Reach

Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics (Euronext: AMT), a leader in the field of human gene therapy, today announced that it obtained a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, that promises to substantially enhance the power of AMT's gene therapy platform.

The Agreement

By adding an enzyme to adult stem cells 'in vitro', remarkable results can be booked 'in vivo', say scientists of the University of Twente in The Netherlands. Up to now, so-called mesenchymal stem cells could not succesfully be used to create new bone tissue, e.g. for repair. By adding PKA enzyme to the stem cells beforehand, a substantial amount of bone is grown after implanting the cells.

Hitherto it has been difficult to induce adult human stem cells to produce bone, e.g. in order to repair bone tissue. Researchers at the University of Twente have shown that if the enzyme PKA is previously activated in the stem cells in the lab, following implantation this results in substantial bone formation. This opens up new ways of repairing bone tissue using cell material from the patient.

In animals, ‘adult’ mesenchymal stem cells have already been used successfully to grow fresh bone. Bone formation using human adult stem cells, e.g. from bone marrow, has been less successful, which has hitherto limited the alternatives hospitals can offer for repairing damaged tissue other than spontaneous healing. Activating the PKA enzyme prior to implantation, however, produces a dramatic improvement in ‘in vivo’ bone growth. The cells can be observed maturing into bone cells already in the lab; once sown on a carrier and implanted in a mouse, the bone grows well.

People love Top 10 lists and a Top 10 list of new species is no exception. We love the idea so much we took the 2007 choices from the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists and made them ... funnier.

We know you have other things to read, like a Top 10 list of String Theory jokes, somewhere so we'll get right to it.

10. Tecticornia bibenda. One of two on this list that seems to have made it for no other reason than that press releases gave it a catchy nickname, in this case the "Michelin Man™" plant, and that really appeals to fame-seeking biologists who want to have mass appeal. If this actually looks like the Michelin Man™ to you, you're just being argumentative.

The nomination process for Raytheon's 2008 Math Hero Awards has now opened. These annual awards reward and celebrate teachers and tutors for promoting math achievement to students in a fun and challenging learning environment.

The MathMovesU program grants $1 million annually to students, teachers and schools in scholarships, grants and awards. Based on a nomination process, math teachers and volunteers who work with students are eligible to receive a $2,500 Math Hero award, and their schools or an approved math-related nonprofit organization of their choice receive a $2,500 matching grant.

Math Heroes demonstrate an enthusiastic and creative approach to math, often using new and innovative ideas in working with their students. Parents, students or other teachers are now invited to nominate their Math Hero for 2008. Submissions are due by July 15 and winners will be announced on November 15.

By using a specialized microscope that only illuminates the cell’s surface, a virologist and a biophysicist at Rockefeller University have made history by becoming the first to see, in real time and in plain view, hundreds of thousands of molecules coming together in a living cell to form a single particle of the virus that has, in less than 25 years, claimed more than 25 million lives: HIV.

This work, may not only prove useful in developing treatments for the millions around the globe still living with the lethal virus but the technique created to image its assembly may also change the way scientists think about and approach their own research.

“The use of this technique is almost unlimited,” says Nolwenn Jouvenet, a postdoc who spearheaded this project under the direction of HIV expert Paul Bieniasz and cellular biophysicist Sandy Simon, who has been developing the imaging technique since 1992. “Now that we can actually see a virus being born, it gives us the opportunity to answer previously unanswered questions, not only in virology but in biology in general.”

NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars Sunday to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later Sunday night.

Scientists like order and structure and methodology. Repeatability is even better, though that often requires additional grant funding. It's no different when it comes to weekends, bars and picking up science groupies.

But it's not so simple, even for scientists. The perfect world of methodology and repeatability is instead replaced by linguistic voodoo and trial and error regarding alcohol. Science, as always, is here to help.

There are rules, you see, but they are unwritten. By taking a broad cross-section of shared experiences we can establish a baseline and go from there. That is good science.

When it comes to the original migration to the Islands of Southeast Asia (ISEA - namely, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo), the prevailing theory has been the "out of Taiwan" model - a Neolithic expansion from Taiwan driven by rice agriculture about 4,000 years ago.

Researchers say they have discovered genetic evidence that overturns that theory and takes the timeline back by nearly 10,000 years.

The international research team, led by the UK’s first Professor of Archaeogenetics, Martin Richards, has shown that a substantial fraction of their mitochondrial DNA lineages (inherited down the female line of descent), have been evolving within ISEA for a much longer period, possibly since modern humans arrived some 50,000 years ago.