Can people be vaccinated against high blood pressure? I wrote about two companies that think it's a viable therapy for Nature Biotechnology (subscription only). The vaccine stimulates the body to make antibodies against angiotensin -- a circulating hormone that tightens blood vessels -- and the target of most current antihypertensive medications. Early results in small studies have shown the vaccine to be safe and to have some efficacy. However, the products are up against two hurdles: showing they work better than standard treatments and overcoming physician skittishness about biologic products (as opposed to traditional pharmaceuticals).

One group of doctors who are very comfortable with biologics are rheumatologists. A biologic drug that has offered real hope for people suffering rheumatoid arthritis is infliximab (Remicade®), which is an antibody against an inflammatory mediator called tumor necrosis factor or TNF. I covered the Janssen Award symposium for the New York Academy of Sciences (subscription only) honoring the drug's inventors, Marc Feldmann and Ravinder Maini of Imperial College London. Their first success was reported in 1993 in a small study of 20 patients, whom Maini described described as “train wrecks—severely disabled people who had been through the gamut of therapies with no hope of benefit.”

I profiled Dave Tapolczay, the new chief of technology transfer at the UK's Medical Research Council (MRC), for Nature. This is no small shakes, as licensing revenue from MRC intellectual property ran to $92 million last year, and start-up companies based on ideas developed by MRC-supported scientists the (17 in the last two decades) create both jobs and revenue for the country.

I covered a symposium on predictive toxicology, diagnostics, and personalized medicine, all under the rubric of Toxicogenomics for the New York Academy of Sciences. The symposium was fascinating, with five speakers covering a wide array of practical applications of human genetics. For example, using a genetic marker to predict which patients will suffer a serious side effect -- even so-called idiosyncratic ones -- after taking a pharmaceutical. Also in breast cancer patients , predicting who will benefit from chemotherapy and who will not -- and therefore shouldn't be subjected to its side effects. Unfortunately for you NYAS nonmembers, you can only view the opening screen of the web presentation (the e-briefing).

My favorite article of the week is Nurturing Women Scientists for Science magazine. It's about institutional efforts to increase the numbers of women in science in both academia and industry. What used to be a pipeline problem (fewer women with science degrees) has become a hiring and retention problem. Women in science is a perennial feature for the magazine and I've read many of them over the years. I was pleased to have the opportunity to write it.

I profiled Sir Leszek Borysiewicz a couple weeks ago in Nature. He's the new head of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom (analogous to the US National Institutes of Health).

I covered a scientific conference on Inflammation in the Central Nervous System for the New York Academy of Sciences about the double-edge nature of the immune system. With very different examples, the three speakers described how therapies targeting immune function produce problematic effects, secondary consequences of tinkering with a very complex system. (Only the introductory page is accessible to nonmembers.)

I wrote two stories for my local newsweekly, the Spotlight. One piece was about online dating (but it's not available online!). It was part of a package on finding love; the reporter I partnered with, Jennifer Farnsworth, wrote about speed dating and other offline ways to meet people. A second piece profiled a military catholic boys school here in Albany: the Christian Brothers Academy. I spoke to Brother Aloysius who has work at the school for 50 years (talk about perspective).