British Biotech, the former flagship of the UK's biotechnology industry, is to pay a six-figure sum to settle its legal wrangles with Andrew Millar, the company's former director of clinical research who claimed that the company had made misleading statements about the effectiveness of its drugs. The company has also...
Donna Shalala, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, will be advised on genetic testing issues by members of the new Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing. The 13 members, selected from almost 200 nominees, were announced recently. The committee will be chaired by Edward McCabe, chairman of the department...
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, have reported the identification of a gene that plays an important role in the development of cells essential to hearing. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers describe how they found that mice without the Math1 gene never developed hair-cell bundles...
A team of scientists has reported the discovery of a genetic mechanism that controls the shape of organs. Reporting in Nature, researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison describe a protein that regulates organ shape in the microscopic worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. Judith Kimble, a...
Young girls suffering from cancer may be able to have radiation treatment without forfeiting their chance of having children in later life. The process of freezing ovarian tissue has so far only been used for research purposes but it will now be available at three hospitals in the UK - Glasgow...
The association of foundations that promote the sciences and humanities in Germany, the Stifterverband fur die Deutsche Wissenschaft, has launched a DM500,000 (US$260,000) programme called the Public Understanding of Sciences and Humanities - modelled on a similar scheme in the UK. This is the first move made by a group...
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Ovarian tissue promises
by Juliet Tizzard
This week's BioNews includes news that three British hospitals will begin offering the option of ovarian tissue freezing to women or girls undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Because chemotherapy almost always destroys fertility, the ovarian tissue is harvested before treatment in the hope that when it is grafted back on at a...