Science and Enterprise

Category: Regulations

  • NIH Stops HIV Vaccine Immunizations in Clinical Trial

    National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, will stop testing an HIV vaccine candidate, after interim results showed the vaccine stopped neither HIV infections nor the amount of HIV in the blood. The HVTN 505 study, a phase 2 clinical trial of safety and efficacy begun in…

  • FDA Designates Orphan Drug for Rare Pain Condition

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration designated as an orphan drug the compound XEN402 to treat erythromelalgia, a rare disease that causes a burning pain in the feet and hands. XEN402 is being developed Xenon Pharmaceuticals in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Erythromelalgia is a disorder that affects the skin of the feet or hands or…

  • Solar Nanoscale Protein Filter Cleans Antibiotics from Water

    Engineers at University of Cincinnati in Ohio developed a nanoscale filter powered by sunlight that can clean biochemical compounds, such as antibiotics, from lakes and rivers. Environmental engineering professor David Wendell and Ph.D. candidate Vikram Kapoor published their findings online last week in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). The presence of antibiotics from…

  • Early Trial Shows Arthritis Drug Can Treat Dry Eye Disease

    Researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear hospital, Brigham and Women’s hospital, and Harvard Medical School, found eye drops made of anakinra, a biologic agent to treat arthritis, could safely reduce symptoms associated with dry eye disease. The team led by Mass Eye and Ear ophthalmologist and immunologist Reza Dana published its findings yesterday in the…

  • University, Resorts Partner on Sun Safety Campaign

    Researchers at San Diego State University are partnering with vacation resorts in the U.S. and Canada to encourage their guests to practice smart sun protection. The San Diego team is headed by health communications professor Peter Andersen and funded by National Institutes of Health. “More than two million new cases of skin cancer are reported…

  • Trial Shows Smartphone App Effective for Weight Loss

    Food scientists at University of Leeds in the U.K. found a smartphone app helped participants in a clinical trial better manage their food intake and lose weight compared to a food diary on a Web site or on paper. The findings of the team led by Leeds’s epidemiology professor Janet Cade, appear online in today’s…

  • One in Five Seniors Found Taking High Risk Medications

    A study by public health researchers at Brown University in Providence finds about one in five older citizens in the U.S. are taking medications considered potentially harmful to people in that age group. Danya Qato, a practicing pharmacist and doctoral candidate, with Amal Trivedi, a general internist and health services researcher at Brown, published their…

  • Challenge Seeks Answers for Recycling Cathode Ray Tubes

    A new challenge on InnoCentive seeks proposals for recycling the lead in glass found in old cathode ray tubes (CRTs) into new products. The competition, sponsored by Consumer Electronics Association and Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, has a prize of $10,000 and a deadline of 1 July 2013. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowd-sourcing…

  • FDA OKs Trial of Biopolymer to Treat Spinal Cord Injury

    InVivo Therapeutics, a medical device developer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin a clinical trial to test the company’s bio-based polymer scaffolding as a treatment for acute traumatic spinal cord injury. The agency’s approval came in the form of an Investigational Device Exemption that allows…

  • Synthetic Tissue Created with Water, Lipids, 3-D Printing

    Biochemical researchers at University of Oxford in the U.K. developed materials from networks of water droplets inside lipid films to perform functions similar to human tissue. The team led by Oxford chemistry professor Hagan Bayley published its findings as the cover story in this week’s issue of the journal Science (paid subscription required). The researchers…