© 2004 by Oxford University Press
© 2004 Oxford University Press
NEWS |
In Brief
NIH Proposes 1-Year Ban on Outside Consulting
The National Institutes of Health has proposed a 1-year moratorium for all NIH employees on outside consulting with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, expanding the ban that was previously limited to senior staff.
Earlier this year, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, M.D., outlined a set of proposed changes to the NIH Ethics Program that prohibited senior staff from receiving compensation for any outside consulting with pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies. However, in the same Congressional hearing in which he announced those policies, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations presented findings from its own investigation into consulting arrangements. The committee had uncovered dozens of agreements that had not been disclosed to NIH.
The new proposal must be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Government Ethics before it can take effect.
See also News, Vol. 96, No. 14, p. 1057, "Zerhouni Proposes Major Changes to NIH Ethics Program," and Vol. 96, No. 11, p. 819, "Panel's Recommendations Urge `Sufficient Public Transparency' in Outside Activities."
SV40 Studies Prone to False-Positive Results, Researchers Conclude
Evidence of an association between simian virus 40 (SV40) and some types of cancer may actually come from a common contaminant in the test used to detect the virus, a new study has found.
SV40 has been proposed as a cause of some types of human cancers, but the evidence supporting this theory has been inconsistent. Fernando Lopez-Rios, M.D., of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and colleagues set out to study the effect of SV40 infection combined with the deletion of a specific tumor suppressor gene in mesothelioma samples. Puzzled by their initial findings, the researchers decided to investigate possible sources of false-positive results.
They searched for the presence of SV40 in 71 frozen mesothelioma samples using several methods and found conflicting results. When they tried to detect SV40 DNA using a PCR-based method, they detected SV40 DNA in 56% to 62% of samples when they used certain primer sets, but only 6% of samples when they used a different primer set.
The researchers found that many of the primer sets used in PCR assays are contaminated with SV40 sequences, which could cause a high rate of false positives in some studies. The PCR data in previous SV40 studies should be reexamined, and future studies should be carefully designed to avoid the possibility of contamination, the authors concluded in their study, which was published in the September 25 issue of The Lancet.
NCI-Designated Cancer Center Files for Bankruptcy
The Institute for Cancer Prevention (IFCP) in New York closed its doors on September 10 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection later that month.
"IFCP has known of its financial crisis for a long time," Leo F. Buscher Jr., chief of the National Cancer Institute's Grants Administration Branch, wrote in a letter to IFCP grantees. "In the spring, 2004, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General conducted an audit, which concluded that IFCP had, in fact, overdrawn $5.7 million [in federal grant funds]."
Grantees were notified that the NCI would work with investigators to transfer grants and research resources to another institution.
IFCP is the only NCI-designated cancer center devoted solely to prevention research. It was founded in 1969 by Ernst Wynder, M.D., as the American Health Foundation.
Red Wine Consumption Associated With Decreased Prostate Cancer Risk
A new study has found no association between overall alcohol consumption and prostate cancer risk, but consumption of red wine was associated with a decreased risk of prostate cancer.
Janet L. Stanford, Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and colleagues conducted a retrospective case–control study of nearly 1,500 men, about half of whom had been recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. There were no clear associations between prostate cancer risk and consumption of alcohol in general, or beer or liquor specifically.
There was an inverse association between red wine consumption and prostate cancer risk; consumption of four or more glasses of red wine per week was associated with a 50% decreased risk of prostate cancer and a 60% decreased risk of more aggressive types of prostate cancer.
The results of the study were published online September 22 in the International Journal of Cancer.
See related story, p. 1497.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||