12
terrasig | October 31, 2007Welcome, Reader: This post was updated on Halloween 2009 to remedy linkrot and add an interesting tidbit on the famous Macbeth passage. As it is likely you ended up here via a search engine, click here to go to the updated post.
Have you ever wondered, perhaps on 31 October, why witches are depicted as riding brooms?
The answer is alluded to by Karmen Franklin at Chaotic Utopia in her post as to why witches need to know their plant biology.
The excerpts I'm about to give you come from a superb and accessible pharmacology text entitled, "Murder, Magic, and Medicine," by John Mann, host of the…
terrasig | October 16, 2007As we discussed here yesterday, ixabepilone, a semi-synthetic anticancer drug derived from a soil bacterium was up for review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Just over a half hour ago the manufacturer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, announced that the drug has indeed been approved for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. The drug will be sold under the trade name, Ixempra.
"Previously, patients with aggressive metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer no longer responding to currently available chemotherapies had limited treatment options," said Linda Vahdat, M.D., Associate…
terrasig | October 15, 2007Perhaps not a cure but certainly another critical tool in the anticancer armamentarium.
If you've ever read our introduction to the left in my profile as to why this blog is called Terra Sigillata, you'd know that the first trademarked drug was dirt itself (or soil to be exact). Terra Sigillata was a special fatty clay harvested from the Greek isle of Lemnos and then punched into planchets with a special seal. Because it contained kaolin, a component of Kaopectate, it was useful for treating gastrointestinal disorders, and its high mineral content was useful for treating deficiencies that…
terrasig | September 16, 2007Leukemia Drug Adulteration
Chinese generic versions of the anticancer drugs, methotrexate and cytarabine hydrochloride, have been reported to be contaminated with an undisclosed substance according to several wire reports this morning.
Several children in a Shanghai hospital were reported to suffer leg pain and difficulty walking after being injected with methotrexate. A common drug used in many chemotherapy regimens for leukemia, methotrexate is not normally associated with these side effects.
The Xinhua news agency reported that the drugs had been traced to one manufacturer, Shanghai…
terrasig | September 15, 2007[This post appeared originally at my Blogspot site on 20 December 2005 to describe my rationale for the name of this blog. With today's traffic from the Daily Kos, I thought it would be useful to new readers to know our story here. FYFI, here is why I chose the pseudonym Abel Pharmboy. - APB]
If you Google, "Terra Sigillata," you'll get a number of hits for various clay pottery recipes. Very complicated stuff, requiring the use of a deflocculant to separate out large clay particles from the small ones. Terra sig, as it is known among pottery hipsters, is then used to coat finished pieces…
terrasig | August 19, 2007Late last week saw two announcements from the US FDA on genetic issues in drug safety. The first of these addresses the prescribing guidelines for Coumadin, or warfarin. Coumadin is a "blood-thinner" (or anticoagulant) prescribed for conditions from heart valve and hip/knee joint replacements to pulmonary hypertension and following strokes due to inappropriate blood clotting.
The reasons for this warning relate to data that has accumulated whereby individual patients respond quite differently to the same dose of Coumadin. Two genetic markers have been identified to account for much of…
terrasig | July 8, 2007Have you ever wondered how well-pressurized airlines keep the cabin of the average commercial flight? I have. So, in my gadget days, I once took my altimeter on a flight and learned that on my particular flight the cabin was pressurized to the equivalent of an altitude of 7200 ft (2195 m) above sea level. At the time, I was living at about 8000 ft (2438 m) so I never gave thought to the fact that a prolonged flight might produce symptoms of acute mountain sickness in otherwise unacclimatized individuals predisposed to the disorder.
Now, in research supported by Boeing and published in last…
terrasig | May 26, 2007Seventy-nine years ago today marked the passing of Dr John Jacob Abel, known as the American father of Pharmacology. Beyond his work on epinephrine, insulin, and devising a dialysis machine, Abel founded the departments of pharmacology at the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins University.
The American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) is celebrating their 100th anniversary by marking the scientific pedigree of its members back to Dr Abel.
terrasig | May 7, 2007My namesake and North American father of pharmacology, John Jacob Abel, was a celebrity in absentia at the recent Experimental Biology meeting of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). In Nature, Jill Adams reported on an effort to mark the 100th anniversary of the society next year by having members determine their "Abel number" - their degrees of removal from having published with the man who discovered epinephrine, first crystallized insulin, and founded departments of pharmacology at both Michigan and Johns Hopkins.
Now, of course, Abel is not the…
terrasig | March 20, 2007So say the American elder statesmen of natural products in the 2007 update of their periodic review of the subject to be published in the 23 March issue of the Journal of Natural Products. (Details are in this Reuters article with by Julie Steenhuysen). I will post more about the article when I get my hands on it, but it comes from NCI's Dr David Newman and recently-retired Dr Gordon Cragg. Cragg had led the NCI Natural Products Branch, a position that Newman now holds.
Newman and colleague Gordon Cragg reviewed the origins of new drugs developed in the past quarter-century and found that…
terrasig | December 18, 2006Wasn't able to get off an original post today so I'll direct Terra Sig readers to an excellent interview written by Carl Zimmer. As Carl writes,
Discover chose Jay Keasling as their scientist of the year and asked me to interview him. Keasling, who directs the Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology, is trying to get either E. coli or yeast to crank out a powerful malaria drug normally only made by the sweet wormwood plant. I had already been getting familiar with Keasling's work, since it is a great example of the sort of work that's being done on E coli, the subject of my book. So it was a…
terrasig | October 26, 2006If you've been working in this field for any period of time, cocktail party discussions or talks with students invariably turn to nature's greatest trove of biologically-active compounds, those that act on the central nervous system (CNS) as stimulants, euphorics, and hallucinogens.
So, over the last couple of days, I've been enjoying the posts by my relatively new compatriot here at ScienceBlogs, SciBling for short, The Molecule of the Day. I have no clue as to who he/she is or where they are other than it is written, "by a chemist who enjoys rambling about the relationship between…
terrasig | September 10, 2006Most of last week's posts were about music, so I thought I'd round out the holy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.
Traveling this weekend gave me an opportunity to indulge in one of my secret guilty pleasures: reading USA TODAY.
First up, as it were, is Kitty Bean Yancey's story on the opportunity for Atlanta-based passengers to join the mile-high club in a private plane for just $299:
Q: Who goes on these flights?
A: Couples from 18 and 19 up to their 60s. I've taken between 75 and 100 in five years. I've had people fly in from New York, New Jersey and Miami just to do the mile-high…
terrasig | August 24, 2006The wimpy approval of OTC status today for Plan B emergency contraception only for women 18 and older has me nonplussed.
I've been disgusted by the intrusion of politics into science and medicine on this issue for quite some time.
As some Terra Sig readers know, a major network news outlet keeps the real Dr Pharmboy on their experts list for commentary on pharmacotherapy issues but my exact comments rarely make it on-air. Perhaps these will be inflammatory enough to get a call to be on this time, and then you'll all know who I am. (No, I am not Dr Raymond Woosley, but I wish I were.)
So here…
terrasig | August 19, 2006Yes, I know that I am late with The Friday Fermentable, but this pharmacologist couldn't pass up the following blogthing on a lazy Saturday morn:
Your Personality Is Like Ecstasy
You're usually feeling the love for the world around you - you want to hug everyone.
And while you're usually content to sit back and view the world with wonder...
Sometimes your world becomes very overwhelming and a little scary.
What Drug Is Your Personality Like?
Definitely the first blog quiz I've ever taken that nailed me.
Hat tip: La Blonde Parisienne at Daily Hysteric
terrasig | July 19, 2006While we're on the topic of death and acknowledging that 70-ish is a life well-lived, I'd note that experimental pharmacologist and legendary gonzo journalist, Dr Hunter S Thompson, would have been 69 yesterday.
His widow, Anita, keeps a blog at their fortified Owl Farm estate and posted this loving tribute to The Good Doctor yesterday.
Although we were live-blogging from Aspen last week, we're certainly not the kind of folks to go poking around in Mrs Thompson's business up Woody Creek Road - plus, I really do fear the remaining explosives, especially with a 4-year-old running wild and…
terrasig | July 18, 2006Monday's contest to win $50 decoding the chemical and historical nature of the Terra Sigillata banner masthead got such a response that I didn't even expect it. Amazingly, one entrant answered 4 of the 5 questions correctly, with the 5th being closest of anyone.
I'll be contacting the lucky feller forthwith regarding delivery of his fifty American dollars. The answers will follow in subsequent posts, but here are the questions once again of you care to exercise your mind:
1. What is the complete name of the dude on the righthand side of the banner and why do you think I picked him to as the…
terrasig | July 16, 2006I've never properly acknowledged the commercial artist, Mr Brien O'Reilly of SaBOR Design, who designed the content-rich, scientific eye-candy banner in the masthead above for the Sb version of Terra Sigillata.
So, I'd like to kick off the week raising awareness of the banner and advertising Mr O'Reilly's talents and services by asking some questions of you about the design elements of the banner. And, since I know that many readers of Terra Sig are poor graduate students or postdoctoral fellows, I'm well-aware that nothing gets your attention like cash-for-knowledge. (Well, yes, free…
jrosenhouse | May 25, 2006A three judge panel for the eleventh circuit court of appeals has vacated the decision of the lower court in the Cobb County sticker case. At issue here was the decision by the Cobb County School Board to include the following stickers in its high school biology textbooks:
This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of liiving things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.
Now, there can be no serious question that this sticker is deeply stupid. There can also be no…