Which is more important for universities and colleges-Teaching or Research?

In universities here, research is the main criterion for appointment as well as promotion and  good researchers generally pay less attention to teaching. However, I feel one cannot remain abreast with recent developments in the field without being involved in research and the teaching will be very dogmatic. Also, only researchers can infuse a spirit of enquiry and innovation in their students.So, there is a need to balance the 2, not their separation. Quality of teaching must be an equal, if not more important, criterion for grading and promotion of teachers. What do you say?

New screening method for Anticancer drugs

Many researchers believe tumour growth is driven by cancerous stem cells that, for reasons not yet understood, are highly resistant to standard treatments. Chemotherapeutic agents may kill off 99 percent of the cells in a tumor, but the stem cells that remain can make the cancer recur or spread to other tissues in the body to cause new cancers.

Stem cells, unlike mature cells, can constantly renew themselves and are thought to be the source of cancers when, through mutations in their DNA, they throw off their natural restraints.
a team at the Broad Institute devised a way of screening for drugs that attack cancer stem cells but leave ordinary cells unharmed.

Cancer stem cells are hard to maintain in sufficient numbers, but the Broad Institute team devised a genetic manipulation to keep breast cancer stem cells trapped in the stem cell state.

The team, led by Piyush B. Gupta, screened some 16,000 chemicals, including all known chemotherapeutic agents approved by the FDA. The team reported in the Cell that 32 of the chemicals selectively went after cancer stem cells. The screening system proves for the first time that it is possible to single out cancer stem cells with drugs that leave ordinary cells alone. Only one of the 32 chemicals is approved as a drug for cancer.

Another approach to concentrating on cancer stem cells, based on the use of antibodies, was reported this month by OncoMed Pharmaceuticals.

The cancer stem cell theory has been thrust into the spotlight in the last five years with the discovery of stem cells in many types of solid tumors, including those of the breast, brain, prostate, colon, bladder and pancreas.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health/research/14cancer.html?_r=1&8au&emc=au

A Guide to the Alternatives to Animal Experimentation

Authors: Dr Syed Ziaur Rahman, MD, Dr Mohd Tariq Salman, MD
Publisher: Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine and Sciences
1st Edition: 2009, ISBN 978-81-906070-8-7

We teach animal experimentation in all science disciplines. However, since it is now not possible to sacrifice and demonstrate the effects of drugs on animals in large numbers due to ethical considerations; we in medical colleges in India are either shifting or planning to move to alternatives of these experiments. Simulations of many conventional experiments through CAL are now available. "A Guide to the Alternatives to Animal Experimentation” helps students to handle these softwares and see the effects of drugs. This is a remarkable achievement as there is still no such specific guide available in India as far as I know. In the guide, softwares including ExPharm have all been explained very well.While the book by InterNICHE entitled "From guinea pig to computer mouse" is an excellent one meant for faculty and research scientists, this particular guide by Dr Rahman (and myself as co-author) is basically aimed at undergraduate students in pharmacology to help them use the freely available downloadable softwares such as ExPharm, Ep_Dog, Organ Bath Simulation and ReMe independently and learn the effects of drugs. When the students are themselves able handle the softwares (with an instructor nearby to troubleshoot), learning becomes so easy and interesting.

To get a copy please contact me.

First available oral fungicidal agent.

Kishor Wasan, a pharmacologist at the University of British Columbia, needed a negative control. It was 2000, and he was investigating a new way to deliver anti-fungal drugs in pill form, generally cheaper and easier to administer than intravenous injections. "I said, 'Let's take a drug I know doesn't work'," Wasan recalls. He turned to amphotericin B, an antifungal membrane disruptor that Wasan had studied a decade earlier for his PhD, and is not normally absorbed by the body when administered orally. He embedded amphotericin B and a batch of other drugs into his newly devised lipid-based delivery vehicle, and fed them to rats. This turned out to be perhaps one of the worst negative control experiments ever - but a lucky break for Wasan.

Compared to the other drug treatments, the rats on amphotericin B had the highest blood levels and lowest kidney levels of the drug, indicating that the body more readily absorbed amphotericin B than any other drug. What's more, oral amphotericin B seemed to bypass the renal toxicity normally associated with intravenous forms of the drug (Antimicrob Agents Chemother, 47:3339-42, 2003).

Wasan was bewildered: "I thought, what the heck is going on?" Further experiments showed the drug was actually working: Amphotericin B fed to rats wiped out Aspergillus fumigatus infections (Drug Dev Ind Pharm, 33:703-7, 2007), and 90% ofCandida albicans kidney infections, which is similar to the 95% success rate seen with intravenous delivery. All with no renal toxicity. "The fact that we've got an oral formulation that's mimicking IV - that's a major finding," Wasan says.

"Amp-B is basically the best antifungal agent we have; the problem with it is that it has to be given IV and it's toxic," says David Stevens, a clinical mycologist at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif. Eliminate the need for IV and "they've got half the battle solved," he adds. "And if it's less toxic, it's a home run."

Amphotericin B in poppable pill form could treat systemic fungal infections, particularly in patients with cancer or HIV/AIDS. This may make it highly profitable in the developed world, but it can also combat parasitic infections, such as trypanosomiasis and visceral leishmaniasis, that are more prevalent in developing nations. "We've got a first-world need where we can make money," says Wasan, "and a third-world need where you can sell the drug at a subsidized cost."

To commercialize his formulation, in 2007 Wasan teamed up with the UBC chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, an international organization that aims to improve access to medicines and research on neglected diseases at academic research institutions. In May 2008, Wasan licensed his oral amphotericin B formulation to iCo Therapeutics, a Vancouver-based biotech company, which agreed to make the drug available at a subsidized cost to combat leishmaniasis in developing nations. It's a "win-win" situation, says John Clement, iCo's chief business officer.

Wasan's amphotericin B formulation could prove to be the world's first available oral fungicidal agent. (Pfizer's oral antifungal Diflucan (fluconazole) stops fungal growth but does not kill the infectious agent.) But Raleigh, NC-based BioDelivery Sciences International (BDSI) has its own oral formulation of amphotericin B based on its patented Bioral delivery technology, which wraps the drug in a coiling structure of alternating lipid layers, currently in phase I trials. (Clearly, amphotericin B is more 'oral-izable' than originally believed.) Still, Wasan thinks his drug, in preclinical trials, should have an advantage. His formulation solubilizes the drug in a glyceride-based liquid, whereas Bioral relies on a liposomal suspension, which can be difficult to bring up to a commercial scale, he notes.

Raphael Mannino, BDSI's chief scientific officer, disagrees. "This is a very simple manufacturing process," he says. What's more, BDSI's formulation is effective, nontoxic, and "even in suspension, we have very long stability of our product," he says.

The irony of Wasan's drug discovery, he notes, is that he didn't even want to study amphotericin B again after finishing his PhD; he only resorted to the drug because he expected it to fail. "Am I lucky as hell? Yes. Did I think it was going to work? No. Am I fully believing it? Well, human studies will be needed to play this out."

Becoming a scientist

What qualities do you need to succeed in biomedical research? Some of the world's most prominent biomedical researchers may surprise you with their answers. As you'll see in their video responses, they say that intelligence alone is insufficient; success in science also depends on several other qualities.
Visit http://www.hhmi.org/becoming/

Exclusive Academic Pharma Research Website

"www.pharmaresearch.in" is the India's 1st exclusive and free Pharma website for academic research to bridge the existing lacuna between academic institutes and Pharma industry association and to provide the research problems to all research scholars by industrial experts for the research deliberations and rational solutions. The research theme will be actual research problems/research in the areas of R&D, F&D, Pharmacology, Biotechnology and Herbal drug Technology units and thus it will offer a paramount opportunity to each of the research scholars to show their potentials according to need of research in Pharma industry.
Apart from this, website will also provide as a sole destination to many information On latest Pharma news about seminars & workshops in India, Free access to Pharma journals, Indian Pharma publications, Impact factor for Pharma journals, Pharmaweb links, Free Pharma Software, Sources of financial assistance for research project in India, sources for travel grants, List of CROs in India, List of facilities for instrumental analysis, List of facilities for herbarium and plant identification and many more Pharma updates.

Software for Research Methodology

Software ReMe ver1.0.0 - 'Research Methodology for Undergraduates'
The software is absolutely free and anyone can download it from http://www.ampiweb.org/indphar/sware.htm. It is a fully working CAL software to learn about research methodology. Though the software is aimed at UGs, it would still be useful for anyone who is yet to be inducted into research/dissertation work. It includes modules for planning & conducting a simulated experiment on animals, analysing data and drawing conclusions. Background text material for each topic (such as how to search literature,animal research ethics, random allocation, allocation concealment, statistical analysis of data etc.) is available for the user to help him plan and execute the study.
If you download and use it, I would appreciate receiving your comments

Biobar

The biobar is a bioinformatics power-browsingtoolbar for Mozilla-based browsers including Firefoxand Netscape 7+. This toolbar provides access to allmajor biological data resources. The primary advantageof this tool is that it allows the user to browseand retrieve data from Genomic, Proteomic, Functional,Literature, Taxonomic, Structural, Plant andAnimal-specific databases. In addition to the browsingfeatures, biobar also provides links to importantbioinformatics sites and services including servicesat the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI),National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) as well asmedline. The latest release provides browsing access to over 42different databases (including Google Scholar, HubMed etc).Visit: http://biobar.mozdev.org/index.html for more.