138 In an extremely lively and well-organized meeting, the university of Konstanz welcomed between 500 and 600 cell biologists during 3 days. The meeting had a very broad scientific basis, and not a specific focus on the use of cells for alternative methods. However, it provided a very good opportunity to learn more about high-throughput methods, high content imaging, signalling pathways and sy...

In today’s competitive world, there are several strategies to deal with the fast changing environment, among which New product development (NPD) is a common strategy. However, almost half of the resources that companies devote to NPD are spent on products that may fail. This issue is particularly highlighted in the pharmaceutical industry mainly because of a long development-time, low success r...

PROBLEM A multinational company with operations in several African countries was committed to offer antiretroviral treatment to its employees and their dependants. APPROACH The Accelerating Access Initiative (AAI), an initiative of six pharmaceutical companies and five United Nations' agencies, offered the possibility of obtaining brand antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) at 10% of the commercial pri...

There is a lack of effective, safe, and affordable pharmaceuticals to control infectious diseases that cause high mortality and morbidity among poor people in the developing world. We analysed outcomes of pharmaceutical research and development over the past 25 years, and reviewed current public and private initiatives aimed at correcting the imbalance in research and development that leaves di...

Forced expression of certain transcription factors in somatic cells results in generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which differentiate into various cell types. We investigated T-cell and B-cell lineage differentiation from iPS cells in vitro. To evaluate the impact of iPS cell source, murine splenic B-cell-derived iPS (B-iPS) cells were generated after retroviral transduction of...

RATIONALE Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can differentiate into multiple cell types, including cardiomyocytes and have tremendous potential for drug discovery and regenerative therapies. However, it is unknown how much variability exists between differentiated lineages from independent iPS cell lines and, specifically, how similar iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPS-CMs) are to embryonic...

Human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells hold great promise for cardiovascular research and therapeutic applications, but the ability of human iPS cells to differentiate into functional cardiomyocytes has not yet been demonstrated. The aim of this study was to characterize the cardiac differentiation potential of human iPS cells generated using OCT4, SOX2, NANOG, and LIN28 transgenes compared...

The present essay reviews a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies conducted in parallel in humans and awake monkeys, concentrating on the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). MR responses to a range of visual stimuli indicate that the human IPS contains more functional regions along its anterior-posterior extent than are known in the monkey. Human IPS includes four motion sensit...

toxicology, as a multidisciplinary field, provides career opportunities for graduates with medical, or veterinarian, pharmacological, pharmaceutical, biological, microbiological, molecular biological, chemical, biochemical, and genetic backgrounds. today, however, specialists with a university degree in toxicology or a postgraduate training in toxicology have a clear advantage. postgraduate dip...

The pharmaceutical sector has traditionally played a predominant role in screening compounds against a molecular target and optimizing chemistry to develop drugs. The basic research studies in the academic sector have provided the pharmaceutical companies with many biological targets with potential impact on therapeutics. These welldefined contributions of the pharmaceutical and academic sector...