Each month brings new investigative tools, as well as commercial and therapeutic applications of existing technologies. No one can predict which of today’s discoveries will most shape tomorrow’s industries, but these synopses describe recent research that warrants attention.

Better Than Fasting

Studies find ways to prolong youth—at least for yeast and flies.

Context: In many species, eating less lengthens life. The effect is well documented in yeast, roundworms, fruit flies, and rodents, and anecdotal evidence indicates that it applies to humans as well. The reason, many say, is that the very chemical processes that release the energy in food molecules also damage cells. Theories abound to explain these effects, but few means have emerged to put such concepts into practice. Now two studies show the benefits of calorie restriction may be much easier to realize than previously thought. Howitz et al. postulate that sirtuins help cells live through times of short-term stress, and Mair et al. show that calorie restriction increases flies’ chances of living from one day to the next.

Synopses

Better Than Fasting

Policy Takes a Back Seat

Taking the Cut

So the Genes Say

Reigning Rats and Dogs

A Better Frame of Reference

Howitz, K.T. et al. (2003) Small molecule activators of sirtuins extend Saccharomyces cerevisiae lifespan. Nature 425:191–6.

Mair, W. et al. (2003) Demography of dietary restriction and death in Drosophila. Science 301:1731–3.

Policy Takes a Back Seat

Impressive gains in drug approvals have not been sustained.

Context: Governmental policies in the ’80s aimed to encourage drug companies to produce more and better treatments: the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 extended some patent protections while promoting research on rare diseases, and the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 eased approval of generics. In the ’90s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration codified ways to speed approval of life-saving therapies. But a recent survey of clinical and drug approval times for 554 therapies approved by the FDA from 1980 to 2001, conducted by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, reveals that while more drugs made it to market in less time in the ’90s, these gains have not continued into the new century.

Taking the Cut

Computer model shows that surgery is more effective than stents.

Context: When arteries supplying blood to the heart are in jeopardy of becoming too narrow, many people opt for stents over surgery. To insert a stent, a doctor first places a tiny device containing the stent and a small balloon into a large artery and guides it into the part of the vessel that has narrowed. Then he inflates the balloon in order to expand the stent and the artery. The stent, a tiny scaffold, remains to prevent the vessel’s renarrowing. This procedure is less invasive and cheaper than bypass surgery, in which a longer section of a blocked blood vessel is replaced—but that’s true only for the short term, according to Stanford University research.

So the Genes Say

Profiling leads to more accurate diagnoses.

Context: For an increasing number of diseases, a scan of a few thousand genes can determine the severity or type of illness and show how to treat it. For example, the leprosy-causing pathogen elicits two immune responses: one resulting in a mild form of the disease and another in the extreme form of biblical infamy. Each requires different treatments. Similarly, treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia depends on which of the six or so subtypes a patient has. Recent studies show that gene expression profiling can distinguish among the various forms of leprosy and leukemia.

Reigning Rats and Dogs

Genetics’ toolbox swells.

Context: The sequence of the human genome is just a starting point; the real journey is figuring out what human genes do, how they are regulated, and how this information can be used. The completion of two projects will speed these efforts. First, the partial sequence of a poodle belonging to Celera Genomics founder Craig Venter, as reported by Kirkness et al., will allow researchers to compare the genomes of mice, dogs, and humans and to uncover the workings common to mammals and unique to humans. Second, the ability to clone rats, as reported by Zhou et al., means that scientists will soon be able to probe the function and behavior of rat genes that merit further study in this valuable animal model.

A Better Frame of Reference

Database tracks protein-protein interactions.

Context: As data on proteins and their interactions expands, uncovering the meaning behind the information becomes increasingly difficult. Enter the Human Protein Reference Database (HPRD), a new online database that distinguishes experiment-based information from computer-generated predictions and integrates a host of information about proteins’ functions.