Recent News

By Category: Agents & Toxins

Research reveals new drug target urgently needed for tuberculosis therapy

(EurekAlert) One third of the world is infected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB), a disease that is increasingly difficult to treat because of wide spread resistance to available drugs. Researchers from the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology (CNRS, Université de Toulouse) in Toulouse (France) have identified a fresh target to develop new  Read More »

Iraqis suffer from effects of US biological weapons

(Press TV) An Iranian lawmaker says biological weapons used by the United States in Iraq have caused cancer among the people and defects in newborn babies. “Water and soil in Iraq have been contaminated by the American biological weapons which have caused various diseases among the Iraqi people,” Abed Fattahi said on Wednesday. The Iranian  Read More »

The End of Days for H5N1 Moratorium?

(The Scientist) After a 2-day meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, this week, government officials have finally reached a consensus on a policy to review requests to research the potentially dangerous H5N1 influenza virus. The new policy could end a longstanding debate that began when two research groups published studies showing their ability to create viruses that  Read More »

Domestic Beef Likely Source of Canada’s E. coli Outbreak

(Food Safety News) Beef from Australia and New Zealand that went into those Canadian hamburgers that were laced with enough E. coli O157:H7 to sicken five people in two provinces were not the source of the bacteria. And spices that went into the burgers also have been ruled out. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)  Read More »

Study turns parasite invasion theory on its head

(EurekAlert) Current thinking on how the Toxoplasma gondii parasite invades its host is incorrect, according to a study published today in Nature Methods describing a new technique to knock out genes. The findings could have implications for other parasites from the same family, including malaria, and suggest that drugs that are currently being developed to  Read More »