Girl inspires family to get on fitness track

A program designed by the Weight Management Center at the School of Medicine and the YMCA of Chesterfield has helped the Garcia family from Chesterfield lose roughly 105 pounds. The Family Lifestyle Intervention Program (FLIP) is designed to show families how to get healthy together through supervised exercise, counseling and education.

A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Intellectual Property

Biotech innovations pop up every day. From medicines developed by large companies to ingenious solutions worked out by individuals in university labs, new technologies are poised to enter the marketplace. The question is, are patents helping or hurting this process? “Patents are essential to bring biotechnology innovations from everyone — not just well-funded corporations — to the people,” says F. Scott Kieff, J.D., associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Without patents, the biotech marketplace in basic science takes on the nature of something like an old boys’ club in which personal attributes such as fame, prestige, and even gender and race, govern what exchanges take place; and the addition of patents gives many more people a way to play in that game.”

Intellectual Property Law and the Protection of Traditional Knowledge

Growing biopiracy concerns have fueled urgent calls for a new system of legal protection for traditional knowledge. Detractors of the current patent systems say that the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities does not readily fit into the existing rules of the industrialized world and that these rules basically promote the interests of the industrialized world. However, Charles McManis, J.D., IP and technology law expert and the Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that “at least in the short run, existing intellectual property regimes offer the most realistic avenue for securing effective legal protection for traditional knowledge holders.”

Oncologists could gain therapeutic advantage by targeting telomere protein

Chromosomal damage results in fusion (bottom).Inactivating a protein called mammalian Rad9 could make cancer cells easier to kill with ionizing radiation, according to research at the School of Medicine. The researchers found that Rad9, previously considered a “watchman” that checks for DNA damage, is actually a “repairman” that fixes dangerous breaks in the DNA double helix.

Some 30 WUSTL faculty to present at AAAS Annual Meeting in St. Louis

More than 30 Washington University faculty, administrators and staff will participate in science and technology presentations when the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific organization, holds its annual meeting Feb. 16-20 at both the America’s Center and Renaissance Grand Hotel in downtown St. Louis.

February 2006 Radio Service

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Warfarin increases risk of fractures (week of Feb. 1) • Older adults can control health (week of Feb. 8) • New cancer strategy (week of Feb. 15) • Enzyme affects aging process (week of Feb. 22)
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