The value of negative results

Negative results are similarly important than positive results for science advances. Indeed, a large number if hypothesis could be excluded if we considered negative results from other studies. Unfortunately, negative results are not so easily accepted and published in peer reviewed journal, thus are not available for science community.

 

Monoclonal antibodies

Monoclonal antibodies are important tool in molecular biology, diagnostics and clinical studies. These protein are produced by a single cells isolated from immunized animals. Current protocol requires an immunization of an animal host, for instance rabbit or mouse; then spleen cells are selected in vitro and B cells are isolated. B cells from spleen are fused with tumoral mouse cells of mieloma in order to stabilize and make possible the B lymphocyte culture. Indeed, B cell culture is difficult to set up and maintain.

 

Discussion about the climate change

Climate change is an actual and much discussed topic. Several global meetings have been done about the climate, considering the importance of climate change in our life. Giving this great interest of politicians and international institutions, scientists that work on this field are undergone to strong pressure by public opinion.

 

Automation in High-throughput screening

Drug discovery uses the major amount of its resources for the high throughput screening. Based on specific probabilistic calculation, large experiments in HTS are performed by pharmaceutical and biotech companies to identify some molecules that could become drug after further long analyses.

 

Sperm cooperates to fertilize an egg

Recent studies published this week on Nature journal demonstrated that sperm can link up with other cells in order to swim faster and successfully reach the egg. Surprisingly, scientists from Harvard University noted that sperm form clusters only with cells of relatives.

 

New challenges for synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is a modern discipline that tries to manipulate cells and program them to perform some activities useful for us. Different products or services may be provided by cells, for instance production of biofuel or toxin identification into a body as well as controlled insulin release. Synthetic biology requires a strict control of the system, but many parts involved into the process have not been known yet.

 

Statistics in science

A common English quote says that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. This sentence was wrongly attributed to Disraeli, whereas it was firstly published by Marc Twain. Even if it could seem true, statistics is the only tool available up to date to manage a large amount of data and to give their a mean. Several functions are usually used in statistical analysis; the most common are the average, standard deviation, frequency and also the number of observation is reported in scientific publications.

 

The pediatric knowledge base

The pediatric knowledge base (PKB) is an IT system developed at the Pediatric Pharmacology Unit of the Children’s Philadelphia Hospital. This project involved professionals from several disciplines, such as medicine, pharmacology, statistics, bioinformatics. They built a model in which clinical data from patient were combined with electronic medical records and drug profiling, in order to obtain an IT tool able to continuously learn information about the patients self.

 

The role of IL10 in autoimmunity

Several immune diseases seriously compromise life quality of patients and cause important deficit in general body functions. One common autoimmune disease is the Insulin Deficient Diabetes Mellitus (namely IDDM) which arises during childhood and often correlates with autoimmune response versus pancreatic islets. Transplantation is the best treatment for this kind of disease, but is possible only in presence of a compatible allotype and also in this case the possibility to have a rejection is quite high.

 

Immune system involvement in TB

Tuberculosis is one of the diseases eliminated from occidental countries, even if few cases are reported every year. Granuloma formation into lung is the fundamental characteristics of this disease and the involvement of our immune system in this process is argued since long time.

 
Syndicate content