Tuberculosis: Old war new battles

Upcoming battles in the war on cancer.

The vision has been clear for more than a decade: Some day, a cancer patient will have her germline DNA decoded and compared with the genetic material in her tumor cells. Treatment will be based on the molecular make-up of the tumor, not its organ of origin. To that end, researchers around the world have made extraordinary discoveries and scientific advances. They have unmasked oncogenes and tu...

Old war, new battle, new fighters!

Since the discovery of penicillin, antibiotics have been of critical importance in the control of infectious diseases. However, the extensive use and misuse of antibiotics during recent decades led to the widespread development and distribution of resistance to multiple drugs among bacteria. With the alarming levels of antibiotic resistance and the difficulties associated with discovering novel...

Dr. Mark Wainberg on old battles and new frontiers in HIV.

CMAJ, January 5, 2016, 188(1) E11 Few Canadian researchers were interested in HIV when Dr. Mark Wainberg started working in the field in the 1980s. “In the early days of the epidemic, there were a lot of naysayers and people who thought this would never be important.” Wainberg’s achievements in HIV research, including the 1989 identification of lamivudine, or 3TC, one of the most widely used HI...

Commentary Tuberculosis: Old problems and new approaches

In New York City from 1985 to 1992, reported cases of tuberculosis rose by more than 20%. This followed a 30-year period of decline in the incidence of the disease. The reasons for the reversal are many and include the role of HIV-1 infection in enhancing disease progression and transmission, homelessness in the city, the emergence of multi-drug-resistant strains of the etiological agent (Mycob...

Tuberculosis: new facets of an old disease.