Biology Wars: The Eukaryotes Strike Back

Cancer wars: natural products strike back

Natural products have historically been a mainstay source of anticancer drugs, but in the 90's they fell out of favor in pharmaceutical companies with the emergence of targeted therapies, which rely on antibodies or small synthetic molecules identified by high throughput screening. Although targeted therapies greatly improved the treatment of a few cancers, the benefit has remained disappointin...

The microbes strike back.

Charming Penguins Strike Back

By using the recent experimental measurements of B → ππ and B → Kπ branching ratios, we find that factorization is unable to reproduce the observed BRs even taking into account the uncertainties of the input parameters. Charming and GIM penguins allow to reconcile the theoretical predictions with the data. Because of these large effects, we conclude, however, that it is not possible, with the p...

Premature Ventricular Contractions strike Back

Address for reprints: Dr. Carlos Labadet Av. Almirante Brown 240 CABA e-mail: [email protected] A BIT OF HISTORY Historically, premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) were considered precursors of sudden cardiac death and, for many years, their mere presence was taken as an indication for prescribing antiarrhythmic agents. The concept that ventricular fibrillation (VF) and ventricular tachyc...

Next Plague: The Bacteria Strike Back

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause more than two million infections per year in the US, resulting in ~23,000 deaths. These infections incur an estimated $20 billion in direct healthcare costs and $35 billion in lost productivity, and these costs are expected to rise rapidly over the next several years. The threat of antibiotic resistance is especially critical in the case of Gram-negative bact...