It became famous for hosting some of Wikileaks servers. And this place looks beautiful.

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The patents on the BRCA genes are particularly broad and offensive. The PTO has granted Myriad Genetics, a private biotechnology company based in Utah, patents on both the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic sequences, on any mutations along those genes, on any methods for locating mutations on the genes, without further specification on the type of methods, and on correlations between genetic mutations and susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer.

The lawsuit charges, as critics of gene patents have argued for years, that gene patents stifle biomedical research and interfere with patients’ access to genetic testing. The lawsuit argues that the patents on the BRCA genes are unconstitutional and invalid given the long-standing legal precedent that “products of nature” and “laws of nature” are not patentable. The suit also makes the novel argument that the practice of patenting genes, their correlations with disease, and the thought of comparing two genes violates the First Amendment and interferes with scientific freedom.

To be clear, the patent claims being challenged do in fact include claims on the genes themselves. For example, the text of Patent 5,747,282, Claim 1 reads:

What is claimed is:

1. An isolated DNA coding for a BRCA1 polypeptide, said polypeptide having the amino acid sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:2.

Translation: Claim 1 covers the BRCA1 genetic sequence, specifically the wild-type, or what is considered typical, sequence. Because the PTO grants patents on the genes themselves, it essentially gives patent holders a monopoly over the patented genes and all of the information contained within them. Anyone who uses a patented gene without permission of the patent holder is committing patent infringement and can be sued by the patent holder. Thus patent holders have the right to prevent other researchers from testing, studying or even looking at the genes. If the PTO simply granted patents on particular methods of examining and testing genes, then other scientists and laboratories could develop alternative methods, and research and testing could advance at a much faster pace. This lawsuit is not challenging any patent claims over specific genetic tests.

This suit is the first to challenge the patentability of human genes in the United States. The PTO has justified these patents by holding that “DNA compounds having naturally occurring sequences are eligible for patenting when isolated from their natural state and purified.” Yet, “isolated and purified” simply means that the gene has been excised from the natural chromosome; it otherwise has not been engineered or transformed.

Patent law has long held that products of nature and laws of nature are not patentable subject matter. Proponents of gene patents often cite Diamond v. Chakrabarty, a divided five to four U.S. Supreme Court decision issued in 1980. In that case, the court upheld patenting of a genetically modified bacterium that was genetically engineered to ingest oil for use in oil spill cleanups. However, Chakrabarty actually reaffirmed the principle advanced in this case: “The laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable. Thus, a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter.” While the identification of human genes and their associations with disease are important contributions to scientific progress, genes and their correlations nonetheless remain products and laws of nature.

More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled its disapproval of patents on medical correlations. In the 2006 LabCorp v. Metabolite, some of the current justices said that, had the case been heard by the court rather than dismissed as improvidently granted, they would have ruled that such correlation claims are invalid for being unpatentable.

Gene patents also raise constitutional questions. The Patent Clause in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to award patents “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Human genes are not inventions, and awarding patents on them does not promote the progress of science. Instead, gene patents slow scientific advancement, because there is no way to invent around a gene — the gene is the basis for all subsequent research. Furthermore, gene patents implicate the First Amendment. By granting monopolies on the very thought that there is a relationship between specific genetic mutations and diseases, the government has restricted scientific freedom of inquiry.

The patents on the BRCA genes have serious implications because mutations along these genes are responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. Genetic tests can detect these mutations and tell women if they are at increased risk of cancer, which in turn informs their decisions about screening, prevention and treatment options. In addition, this case could have far-reaching effects beyond the BRCA genes because it challenges the fundamental notion of gene patenting. Twenty percent of human genes have been patented, including genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease, muscular dystrophy, colon cancer, and asthma.

Spinal injuries are both common and devastating, leaving many victims paralyzed and relegated to wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. But in most cases, the worst spinal cord damage doesn’t happen at the scene of the injury – it’s the swelling around the spinal cord and the crazy firing and burning out of otherwise healthy neurons in the hours and days following the incident that turns a bad situation permanently worse. Now, scientists in Rochester, New York, have discovered a simple way to stop a lot of this secondary damage in its tracks – using the same, familiar blue food dye that gives M&Ms and blue icy poles their color. Patients with spinal injuries could escape with vastly reduced loss of function – but they’ll turn bright blue in the process.

I’ll admit a personal interest in this story: two years ago, a friend of mine, Lenna, had a nasty motorcycle accident, and I was present at the scene. It was clear she had spinal injuries – her back was twisted fairly badly. But she was able to move her feet and wiggle her toes, so we held out hope that the injury wouldn’t be too severe.

As it turned out, she became a paraplegic, with virtually no feeling or movement below her navel. The original injury, as it turns out, does a certain amount of damage to the spinal cord – but the major, unfixable damage is done over the next few hours and days.

Much of this is because of a chemical called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is used as a kind of cellular battery to deliver energy to cells around the body in normal life. But in the event of spinal trauma, the area around the injury is flooded with ATP, which causes otherwise healthy neurons to fire like crazy until they burn themselves out and die. It also increases the swelling around the wound. Swelling around an injury site is a positive healing factor in most parts of the body, but the spinal cord lives in a tightly enclosed column of bone, and the swelling, on top of the bleeding from the trauma, can cut off oxygen supply to the lower spinal cord.

In effect, a patient might receive a spinal injury of low or medium severity – but the actions of ATP in the hours and days after the trauma can completely destroy the function of the spinal cord, leaving patients paralyzed. This is exactly what happened to Lenna.

But a study published in July 28′s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) seems to show that it’s possible to block the actions of ATP and greatly reduce the severity and permanence of spinal injuries – using the same type of food dye that gives blue M&Ms their color, a food dye called Brilliant Blue G, or BBG.

BBG can be administered intravenously – so there’s no need to inject directly into the injury site – and it has the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, which gives it access to the spinal cord. It happens to bind to the same neuroreceptor (P2X7) as the ATP binds to – but it has a stronger affinity for the receptor than ATP has – so it effectively blocks the action of the ATP at the injury site.

As a fun side effect, it also turns the patient’s skin blue – as the researchers found when trialling BBG on rats. See the full method of the experiments here (PDF). The rats were administered either a high or low dose of BBG, or a water injection as a control, 15 minutes after receiving a spinal injury.

While all the rats were severely injured, the BBG-injected rats showed a greatly improved ability to support their bodyweight on their hind legs, control their bladders, and even walk in some cases. The blue skin coloring eventually faded as well, and no side effects were noted – after all, BBG has been an FDA-approved food dye since the 1920s. It’s the chemical that turns your tongue blue when you eat a blue ice-cream, and it’s well understood as a safe substance at lower concentrations.

Human testing would be required before BBG moved forward into clinical use – but the idea would be to use this study to develop treatments that ambulance drivers and paramedics can use to begin treatment right at the site of the incident, and that hospitals can use from the moment the patient is admitted.

“It could be [as simple as] you drink blue Gatorade on the way to the hospital,” lead researcher Maikn Nedergaard, from the University of Rochester Medical Center, told ScienceNews’ Rachel Ehrenberg in a recent interview.

Blue food dye! If only we’d known… Then again, I’m not sure how you’d go about getting somebody in extreme shock, confusion and physical agony to drink Gatorade or eat a pile of blue M&Ms. We’ll be catching up with Lenna very soon in the Gizcast – her journey since the accident has been equal parts fascinating, inspiring and high-tech: she’s undergoing experimental stem cell treatments in India right now and she’s been working hard to get back out on the road on a cleverly modified Suzuki motorcycle. But I bet she’d swap it all for an IV drip of BBG as she lay on the road a couple of years ago, that might have prevented a large part of her paralysis in the first place.

Here’s hoping that this simple technology shows similar results in humans, and that it makes it through into clinical use around the world as soon as possible. Any treatment that can reduce the severity of spinal cord injuries stands to vastly improve the quality of life for victims, and for such little expense this seems like an enormous breakthrough.

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Nature.

Quantum mechanics describes the physical state of light and matter and formulates concepts that totally contradict the classical conception we have of nature. Thus, physicists have tried to explain non-causal phenomena in quantum mechanics by classical models of hidden variables, thereby excluding randomness, which is omnipresent in quantum theory. In 1967, however, the physicists Simon Kochen and Ernst Specker proved that measurements have to be contextual when explaining quantum phenomena by hidden variables. This means that the result of one measurement depends on which other measurements are performed simultaneously.

Interestingly, the simultaneous measurements here are compatible and do not disturb each other. The physicists led by Christian Roos and Rainer Blatt from the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Innsbruck have now been able to prove this proposition and rule out non-contextual explanations of quantum theory experimentally. In a series of measurements on a quantum system consisting of two ions they have shown that the measurement of a certain property is dependent on other measurements of the system.

Technological headstart

The experiment was carried out by the PhD students Gerhard Kirchmair and Florian Zähringer as well as Rene Gerritsma, a Dutch postdoc at the IQOQI. The scientists trapped a pair of laser-cooled calcium ions in an electromagnetic trap and carried out a series of measurements. „For this experiment we used techniques we had previously designed for building a quantum computer. We had to concatenate up to six quantum gates for this experiment”, explains Christian Roos. „We were able to do this because, it is only recently that we can perform a quantum gate with high fidelity.”

Only last year, a team of scientists led by Rainer Blatt realized an almost error-free quantum gate with a fidelity of 99 %. With this technological headstart, the scientists have now proven comprehensively in an experiment for the first time that the experimentally observed phenomena cannot be described by non-contextual models with hidden variables. The result is independent of the quantum state – it was tested in ten different states. Possible measurement disturbances could be ruled out by the experimental physicists with the help of theoreticians Otfried Gühne and Matthias Kleinmann from the group led by Prof. Hans Briegel at the IQOQI in Innsbruck.

Randomness cannot be excluded

In 1935 already, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen questioned whether quantum mechanics theory is complete in the sense of a realistic physical theory – a criticism that is now well know in the scientific world as the EPR paradox. In the mid 1960s, John Bell showed that quantum theory cannot be a real and at the same time local theory, which, in the meantime, has also been proven experimentally. Kochen and Specker’s results exclude other theoretical models but until now it was difficult to provide a convincing experimental proof. Following a proposition by the Spaniard Adán Cabello, the Innsbruck scientists have now successfully proven this point and produced unambiguous results experimentally. The physicists are supported by the Austrian Science Funds (FWF), the European Union, the Federation of Austrian Industry Tyrol, and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).