A.
A Major Development in the Treatment of Lou Gehrig's Disease
Narrator: This is Science Today. The delivery of therapeutic molecules across the blood-brain barrier may prove to be a major development in the treatment of ALS – a neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Cleveland : Lou Gehrig's disease is a disease in which the muscles just stop working because the nerves that innervate them and signal them to contract die. It's a disease typically progressive over a time course of a few years and is almost always invariably fatal.
Narrator: Don Cleveland of the University of California , San Diego School of Medicine, helped design and test molecules known as antisense oligonucleotides and found that in the lab, when effective doses were delivered, far less of the protein that causes a hereditable form of ALS was produced.
Cleveland : We have no therapy that really slows the course of the disease. Therefore, we would argue that there is hope, real hope for bringing an effective therapy to ALS.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Researchers Stduy Environmental Factors That May Trigger MS
Narrator: This is Science Today. Among the 400 thousand cases of multiple sclerosis diagnosed in the United States , ten thousand are pediatric cases – and that figure may actually be as high as 20 thousand, since many cases are missed because symptoms are sometimes mild. Once diagnosed, there may also be a lack of information about the pediatric safety and efficacy of drugs used to treat MS in adults.
Waubant: Because MS is mostly an adult disease all the drugs that have been developed for FDA approval have been developed in studies of patients over the age of 18.
Narrator: Dr. Emmanuelle Waubant of the University of California , San Francisco , led the first study of the safety of using the drug interferon to treat MS in children. Now, she's looking into studying environmental factors that may trigger the onset of MS.
Waubant: Because we know that the impact of MS in adults probably pertains to the first 10 or 15 years of life.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C. Marine Biologists Tag Sharks for Study
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California , San Diego 's Scripps Institution of Oceanography are leading a consortium that studies sharks and rays off Southern California . Marine biologist Jeffrey Graham says the main objective is to raise awareness about the natural history and ecology of many of the sharks and rays – populations that have been declining partially due to fishing and the effects of humans on inland water bodies.
Graham: With this has come a general decrease in the population size of most of the sharks and most of the rays in the local area. They can be seen, many of them, but their numbers are less abundant than they were and this means that there are ecological and biological changes occurring in these habitats.
Narrator: Graham's lab recently completed tagging adult thresher sharks with acoustic and archival monitoring tags.
Graham: That merely ride with the shark for a long period of time and then when the shark is caught by a commercial or recreational fisherman, it's brought ashore, given back to us and we can download the data about where that shark went during the time it was at sea.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Developing Bio-Mass Feed Stocks for Alternative Fuels
Narrator: This is Science Today. The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy are teaming together to decode the DNA of the soybean, which is the principal source of biodiesel. Researcher Jerry Tuskan is involved with the decoding effort at the Joint Genome Institute, a facility in Northern California that's operated by the University of California . Tuskan says the project is the largest plant genome to be attempted to sequence.
Tuskan: The U.S. Department of Energy has had for a long time, interest in developing bio-mass feed stocks for alternative fuels. And soybean has been on the list as a candidate to produce biodiesel mainly from oils crushed out of the seeds or hulls and then that oil is converted into biodiesel. It's hard not to be optimistic and excited about the potential to really make a difference here. As a country, we can bring to bear these resources and impact our transportation fuels industry are currently deployed and managed.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. New Insights into Melanoma
Narrator: This is Science Today. Light-skinned people are more likely than others to develop melanoma. A single gene, called MC1R, greatly influences this risk and now researchers have found that people born with variations in this gene results in a particular form of melanoma that occurs among people in their 40s or 50s, regardless of skin color. Dr. Boris Bastian of the University of California , San Francisco 's Comprehensive Cancer Center , co-led the study.
Bastian: I think it adds strong genetic support for the notion that there are distinct types of melanoma. It's not just one homogenous disease entity and that we need to develop a more refined view to understand how does it arise and how do we treat it?
Narrator: Bastian helped lead studies revealing at least four types of melanomas; two linked to the sun's UV rays and two linked to gene variants.
Bastian: So, by realizing now that these are different types, one can actually analyze the role of UV light and other factors in a more refined way.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
