Decoding of Neanderthal genome……

Lactose intolerance, bulging brains in humans and lacking of a mutation associated with increased fertility - the answers for all these questions are being answered by microcephaln – a gene mutation. Neanderthal genome researchers, have half done the job and I am sure this will shed light on the evolution of modern humans after their ancestors split from Neanderthals, more than 600,000 years ago and hope they will achieve the success soon.....

Euphoria over Stem Cell Therapy.....

Now a days, I have seen many advertisements in papers, news channels and web sites regarding many clinics claiming to treat multiple diseases with the stem cells, boasting that there is no risk. And I have heard from one of my close friend, that a clinic from US claimed to treat a paraplegia patient suffering for 4 years. He spent lot of money without any result and with lots of physical and mental trauma. Its really interesting now ISSCR, (International Society for Stem Cell Research) has come to the rescue of many patients with its novel idea, by publishing the guidelines for the clinics In my opinion, the awareness should first start from medical practitioners…..

Can Antisense drugs revolutionize the drug discovery ?

Antisense therapy, is an important technology for drug discovery and development. It is broadly used by the pharmaceutical industry as a tool for functional genomics and as highly specific drugs for a wide range of diseases (Anticancer, anti-inflammatory, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases) The most interesting factor of antisense drugs is “specificity” in contrast to the traditional drugs (which binds to the proteins and charge interactions so often ending with undesirable side effects). With the combined efforts of human genome programme and bioinformatics, we may soon have a lesser number of targets, I think this interesting field may revolutionize the drug discovery. But the real concern is, there are a few players as of now. In my opinion, something like High Throughput Screening (HTS), with co-ordination of educational and private institutes may help to have more drug contenders (as for as my knowledge goes, Southern Research Institute, Birmingham did try for antitubercular drugs, for the drug resistant strain). Let us hope, something happen in the near future…..