Nanotechnology safety monitored

A new report from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars calls for a new approach to nanotechnology oversight. The report comes from one of the country’s foremost authorities on environmental research and policy, which examines the strengths and weaknesses of the current regulatory framework for nanotechnology. Considering the implications nanotechnology has for cancer treatment in the future, it is interesting to see how this group is trying to protect people from harm while looking for the benefits for medical treatment.

According to the Project, nanotechnology holds tremendous potential – for improvements in health care, the production of clean water and energy, and continued advances in our IT infrastructure,” says William K. Reilly, former EPA Administrator, commenting on the report. “But nanotechnology can only flourish if industry and government are committed to identifying and managing the possible risks to workers, consumers, and the environment. Davies’ analysis of the federal regulatory system and recommendations should spark a necessary dialogue among business, government and citizen groups about how to move forward as nanotechnology develops.”

Epigenetics and cancer

Whoa! Here’s a hypothesis about cancer from some researchers that gives the whole process a significant twist.

A Johns Hopkins researcher, with colleagues in Sweden and at the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center, suggests that the traditional view of cancer as a group
of diseases with markedly different biological properties arising from a series
of alterations within a cell’s nuclear DNA may have to give way to a more
complicated view. In the January issue of Nature Reviews Genetics, available
online Dec. 21, he and his colleagues suggest that cancers instead begin with
"epigenetic" alterations to stem cells.

 

"We’re not contradicting the view that genetic
changes occur in the development of cancers, but there also are epigenetic
changes and those come first," says lead author Andrew Feinberg, M.D., M.P.H.,
King Fahd Professor of Medicine and director of the Center for Epigenetics in
Common Human Disease at Johns Hopkins.

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New Cancer Genome Atlas

The New York Times has been covering a lot of cancer topics lately as mentioned in an earlier blog on FI Space about a current series. In addition, another story today in the NYT today was about the three-year $100 million funding that the federal government has designated for the Cancer Genome Atlas pilot – "the first step toward a comprehensive map of cancer’s genetic makeup. The Cancer Genome Atlas will ‘tackle the cancer problem like it’s never been tackled before,’ said Dr. Francis Collins, genetics chief at the National Humane Genome Research Institute."

Times cancer articles

The New York Times has been running a series of very informative articles about cancer. Today’s is about environment and cancer. It’s the fourth in a five-part series. Seems to me it’s a handy reference set, so here’s permanent back-door links to the articles that avoid the pricey archives. I’ll update the list when the final article, genetics and cancer, is published.

Diet and Cancer
Exercise and Cancer
Stress and Cancer
Environment and Cancer