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FDA Issues Rules To Improve Egg Safety by Reducing Risk of S. enteritidis
Officials of the Food and Drug Administration in July issued new rules for the handling of eggs that aim at preventing food-borne illnesses by reducing levels of contaminant Salmonella enteritidis, a pathogenic bacterium. Among other requirements, the new rule mandates testing in poultry houses for S. enteritidis, with repeat testing for two months if positive. Additional remedial measures call for ridding such houses of bacteria and diverting contaminated eggs to non-food uses. Adherence to the new rule is expected to prevent 79,000 cases of foodborne illness and 30 deaths each year, and also to yield $1.4 billion in annual public health benefits, at an annual cost of $81 million to the regulated industry, according to agency estimates.
Minicells Effectively Deliver Antisense and Cytotoxic Agents to Tumor Cells
Bacterially derived minicells provide a vehicle for delivering anticancer agents, including small interferingRNA(siRNA) duplexes to overcome drug resistance and, separately, cytotoxic drugs to destroy malignant cells directly, thereby reducing overall levels of drugs administered to lower the risk of systemic toxicities, according to Himanshu Brahmbhatt of EnGeneIC Pty Ltd. in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and collaborators at several nearby institutions as well as at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Part of the treatment strategy entails affixing antibodies to the surface of minicells to target them to tumor cells. The minicells, which derive from a minCDC deletion mutant of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, produced "no adverse side effects or deaths" in the mice that were treated during these preclinical experiments. Details appear in the June issue of Nature Biotechnology.
Exxon Mobil and Synthetic Genomics Join in Effort To Make Fuels from Algae
Exxon Mobil of Irving, Tex., and Synthetic Genomics, Inc. (SGI) of La Jolla, Calif., in July formed an alliance to harness photosynthetic algae for the purpose of producing fuels. The $600-million deal "could be a meaningful part of the solution in the future if our efforts result in an economically viable, low net carbon-emission transportation fuel," says Emil Jacobs, a vice president at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. "This agreement represents a comprehensive, long-term research and development exploration into the most efficient and costeffective organisms and methods to produce next-generation algal biofuel," adds J. Craig Venter, founder of SGI. "We are confident that the combination of our respective expertise in science, research, engineering, and scale-up should unlock the power of algae as biological energy producers in methods and scale not previously explored." Scientists at SGI recently engineered algal strains to produce lipids via a continuous process.
H1N1 Influenza, Like 1918 Flu, Is Especially Damaging to Lungs
The new pandemic H1N1 influenza viral strain that is now circulating causes more lung damage than does a seasonal influenza strain in several tested species, including mice, ferrets, and macaques, but does not cause disease symptoms in pigs that it infects, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin in Madison and his collaborators (see p. 405). Further, this H1N1 flu strain appears to be sensitive to antiviral drugs, including Tamiflu, when tested in vitro. Based on the finding that antibodies from flu patients born before 1920 can recognize the new strain, the current recirculating H1N1 strain appears to be closely related to the influenza virus that was responsible for the 1918 pandemic. However, individuals born after 1920 apparently do not harbor antibodies that recognize the new strains. Details appear in the 13 July online issue of Nature [DOI: 10.1038/nature08260].
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