Content Preview: rss
49 days ago
In Sep the New England Journal of Medicine published a clinical study IPASS (Iressa Pan-Asia Study). This study includes more than 1200 patients from mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan of China, Japan, and Thailand. I would like to quote the conclusion here: Gefitinib is superior to carboplatin–paclitaxel as an initial treatment for pulmonary adenocarcinoma among nonsmokers or former light smokers in East Asia. The presence in the tumor of a mutation of the EGFR gene is a strong predictor of a better outcome with gefitinib. This study had two important messages: (1) targeted therapy (gefitinib) is better than traditional chemotherapy (carboplatin–paclitaxel); (2) somatic mutation of EGFR predict clinical outcome. During recent years, target cancer therapy has been criticized due to its toxicity and efficacy. However, more and more clinical data showed that targeted therapy had better clinical outcome than traditional chemotherapy. This study used Tyrosine Kinase ...
49 days ago
In the latest issue of Nature, a paper titled “Direct RNA sequencing” caught my attention. Although the technique looks simple it greatly reduces errors in the step of RNA to cDNA. I would not say too much of it because I think the title speaks itself. Direct RNA sequencing, Nature, 2009, V461, p814-818
156 days ago
美国有什么特别让我喜欢的吗? 答曰: 红酒, 划船, 钓鱼. 红酒保证是葡萄酿的; 没喝过贵的, 超过15块一瓶的不买; 最爱Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon和Shiraz/Syrah, 不喜欢Merlot; 划船很方便很便宜; kayak, canoe; 湖里, 河里, 海里; 以后搬到海边城市去, 可以常在浪里划船; 钓鱼很爽, 钓不到还常常去钓才是真的爱钓鱼.
189 days ago
终于成了 Permanent head Damaged 了 . 感慨一下 . 其实我好像并没有觉得特别激动或者如释重负 , 没啥变化 . 总结一下 , 4 年半之前转学 ( 加上转学之前的一年半 , 一共 6 年 ) , 根本没有想到今后几年会做什么研究 . 来了这个学校 , 加入了一个很不错的实验室 ( 不错是指老板人很好 , 实验室气氛很好 , 经费不错 , 还有临床的支持 , supportive, nice, productive...) , 按时毕业 , 运气不错 . 发了一篇小文章 , 还有一篇大文章被审稿人要求补实验 ( 正在努力中 ) , 希望能被接受 ; 不算很出色 , 还凑合吧 . 回顾我从金属有机化学到 ligand-targeted anti-cancer therapy 到现在的 lung cancer translational research (mouse models, miRNA, lung cancer stem cell), 跳跃很大 . 那么我到底算是什么专业的呢 ? 我现在的研究领域算是生物医学 , 但我好像从来不觉得我是学生物的 . 就算现在 , 我还是觉得我的生物基础很差 ; 有时候别人说起一些生物的基础实验 , 我居然根本就没有听过 ; 说起一些基础生物学的大人物 , 我也没有听说过 ; 我对奇妙的生物世界似乎也缺乏足够的兴趣 . 我也不是学医的 , 尽管我在药理系 ( 药理是医学的分支 ) , 跟医学院的学生一起上了一年的药理学 , 但我对临床知之甚少 . 更不用说有机合成了 , 也许现在只能勉强看懂文献 , 或者做最简单的有机反应 . 我常说 :”Once a chemist, always a chemist” 我觉得化学的训练对我的思维方式影响很大 . 在我看来 , 有机化学是一个应用的学科 , ...
311 days ago
This time I would like to recommend two articles. One of them is stem cell in mouse model, the other is about tissue engineering in curing patient. 1. Generation of a prostate from a single adult stem c ell. Kevin G. Leong, Bu-Er Wang, Leisa Johnson and Wei-Qiang Gao. Nature, 2008, Vol 456, page 804. 2. Clinical transplantation of a tissue-engineered airway. Paolo Macchiarini, Philipp Jungebluth, Tetsuhiko Go, M Adelaide Asnaghi, et al. Lancet, 2008, Vol 372, page 2023. The reason I put these two articles is that I strongly believe high quality basic research in biomedicine will eventually benefit clinic. The first paper is from Genentech, which is a company, which is a little bit surprising because people still don’t believe that industrial can conduct high quality basic research. Simply by reading the title we can have an idea of the article. The authors isolate prostate stem cells ( lin - Sca-1 + CD133 + CD44 + ...
