GEN-ERIC News

The agreement, under which a commercial licence will be negotiated, sets out a codevelopment program for condoms with a VivaGel® coating. Undisclosed fees are payable to Starpharma under the co-development agreement, which also provides for the commencement of regulatory and market development activities by the two parties. SSL is the world’s largest manufacturer of condoms with approximately 30% share of the global market for branded condom sales, selling into over 100 countries around the world. Global condom retail sales in 2005 were approximately $3.2 billion, with the top four companies representing as much as 70% of the market. “We are delighted to be working with SSL, whom we believe will be an excellent codevelopment partner for VivaGel® as a condom coating,” said Starpharma’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Jackie Fairley. “In addition to SSL’s unparalleled global commercial position and the strength of the Durex® brand, Starpharma also values the organisation’s innovative approach, and its social-marketing program.

Worker ants accurately gauge their life expectancy, regardless of their actual age, and take on riskier tasks as they feel their days ebbing away. In social insects such as ants, bees and wasps, workers change tasks depending on their age. Older workers do the relatively risky foraging outside the nest, while younger ones engage in safer maintenance tasks within it. By extending the workers’ average life span, this fine-tuning helps to maximise the fitness of the colony. However, no one knew whether the division of labour in ants was activated by age-related physiological changes or through some other mechanism.

Despite its deadly reputation, the gas carbon monoxide (CO) could actually save lives and boost health in future as a result of leading-edge UK research. Chemists at the University of Sheffield have discovered an innovative way of using targeted small doses of CO which could benefit patients who have undergone heart surgery or organ transplants and people suffering from high blood pressure. Although the gas is lethal in large doses, small amounts can reduce inflammation, widen blood vessels, increase blood flow, prevent unwanted blood clotting – and even suppress the activity of cells and macrophages* which attack transplanted organs. The researchers have developed innovative water-soluble molecules which, when swallowed or injected, safely release small amounts of CO inside the human body. Research carried out in the last decade had already highlighted possible advantages, as CO is produced in the body as part of its own natural defensive systems. However, the problem has been finding a safe way of delivering the right dose of CO to the patient. Conventional CO inhalation can run the risk of patients or medical staff being accidentally exposed to high doses. Now for the first time, thanks to chemistry, an answer appears to have been found.

While developing new lenses for next-generation sensors, researchers have crafted a layered material that causes light to refract, or bend, in a manner nature never intended. Refraction always bends light one way, as one can see in the illusion of a “bent” drinking straw when observed through the side of a glass. A new metamaterial crafted from alternating layers of semiconductors (indium-gallium-arsenic and aluminum-indium-arsenic) acts as a single lens that refracts light in the opposite direction. Refraction is the reason that lenses have to be curved, a trait that limits image resolution. With the new metamaterial, flat lenses are possible, theoretically allowing microscopes to capture images of objects as small as a strand of DNA. The current metamaterial lens works with infrared light, but the researchers hope the technology will expand to other wavelengths in the future.

MIT scientists propose that blood may help us think, in addition to its well-known role as the conveyor of fuel and oxygen to brain cells. “We hypothesize that blood actively modulates how neurons process information,” Christopher Moore, a principal investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, explained in an invited review in the October issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology. “Many lines of evidence suggest that blood does something more interesting than just delivering supplies. If it does modulate how neurons relay signals, that changes how we think the brain works.” According to Moore’s Hemo-Neural Hypothesis, blood is not just a physiological support system but actually helps control brain activity. Specifically, localized changes in blood flow affect the activity of nearby neurons, changing how they transmit signals to each other and hence regulating information flow throughout the brain. Ongoing studies in Moore’s laboratory support this view, showing that blood flow does modulate individual neurons. Moore’s theory has implications for understanding brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

The Army has turned to a Honolulu company for Doppler radar and advanced algorithm technology to be able to detect and monitor multiple subjects based on their heart rate, even through walls. This means that soldiers will be able to detect someone hiding in a room before the door is kicked in, the company claims, and medics will be able to remotely perform triage and diagnoses or monitor casualties right through their flack jackets. It may also have homeland security and interrogation applications by allowing personnel to screen and identify individuals who may merit the third degree based on a guilty heart rate. Kai Sensors’ proprietary radar technology called LifeReader accurately detects and monitors heart and respiration activity wirelessly, remotely and with no contact with the subjects by using microwave, Doppler radar and digital signal processing, according to the company. LifeReader is the product of four years of research at the University of Hawaii’s electrical engineering department.