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Council Recognises Champions Of Pharmacy
Two pharmacists, and one non-pharmacist, have been recognised by the Council of the Royal

International AIDS Conference Could Return To U.S. If Ban On HIV-Positive Visitors Is Reversed
The International AIDS Society (IAS) announced Thursday it is considering Washington, D.C., as the location for the 2012 biannual International AIDS Conference, Science Magazine"s blog, the ScienceInsider reports. "But before it holds the conference anywhere in the U.S., the federal government must change a law that bans HIV-infected people from entering the country," according to Science Insider. The conference has not been held in the U.S. since 1990, because the government banned people living with HIV from entering the U.S. "This long-standing law, which is contrary to all scientific evidence and human rights principles, is one of the U.S."s weakest spots in HIV policy," IAS President Julio Montaner said in a statement. The law has been repealed, but HHS still has HIV on the list of communicable diseases that bar entry. "In a statement to ScienceInsider, HHS said it has submitted "a notice of proposed rule-making to implement this change" to the Office of Management and Budget for its review," according to the blog (Cohen, ScienceInsider/Science, 6/11).
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The Battle For CRTC2: How Obesity Increases The Risk For Diabetes
Obesity is probably the most important factor in the development of insulin resistance, but science"s understanding of the chain of events is still spotty. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have filled in the gap and identified the missing link between the two. Their findings, to be published in the June 21, 2009 advance online edition of the journal Nature, explain how obesity sets the stage for diabetes and why thin people can become insulin-resistant.
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ERK1 And ERK2 Activities Are Key To Ovarian Functions And Fertility

Two enzymes called extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK1 and ERK2) are critical factors in a pathway that induces ovulation, maturation of the mammalian egg (oocyte) and other activities key to ovarian function and female fertility, said a group of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in a report that appears today in the journal Science. "This finding could provide clues to developing new contraceptives and understanding infertility in some women with irregular menstrual cycles," said Dr. JoAnne S. Richards, professor of molecular and cellular biology at BCM and the paper"s senior author. Block everything "There are other genes that when mutated can block ovulation and other activities involved with oocyte maturation or formation of corpora lutea," said Richards and Dr. Heng-Yu Fan, a senior postdoctoral fellow in Richard"s laboratory and the paper"s first author. "But these are the only ones so potent that they can block everything." (The corpora lutea [luteum in the singular] are a yellow mass of cells that forms from the follicle after the release of an egg. It secretes the hormone progesterone. Previous studies had shown that mice that lacked ERK1 are viable and can conceive but those without ERK2 died as embryos. "We thought only one would be important," said Fan. Enzymes actions are redundant However, he, Richards and their colleagues found the activities of the two kinases are redundant in fertility. To disrupt fertility, they had to knock out the activity of both enzymes in specific ovarian somatic cells. (ERK1/2 are found in all tissues of the body. Richards and Fan were able to disrupt them selectively in ovarian cells required for fertility.) In women and other female mammals, oocytes exist within the follicles of the ovary, surrounded by granulosa and cumulus cells. Women can only release fertilizable eggs when the follicles grow and the granulose cells differentiate. The oocytes mature and are released through the process of ovulation. Luteinizing hormone (LH) plays a key role in initiating these activities, but this work demonstrates that LH and the canonical pathway it ignites are not the only important elements. New pathway "For a long time, people thought that the canonical pathway involving the luteinizing hormone, cyclic AMP and protein kinase A controls everything. In part, this is true. However, another pathway that involves the signaling protein RAS and ERK1/2 mediates everything downstream of LH-receptor activation," said Richards. RAS and ERK1/2 are activated "like a bullet," she said, occurring over two hours - just a short but vital period during the entire process of releasing a viable egg. Others who took part in this research include Zhilin Liu of BCM, Masayuki Shimada of Hiroshima University in Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan; Esta Sterneck and Peter F. Johnson of the Center for Cancer Research of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, MD., and Stephen M. Hedrick of the University of California, San Diego. Funding for this work came from the National Institutes of Health, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the National Cancer Institute. Dipali Pathak Baylor College of Medicine


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