Quick FactsWhen it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be more important than what you eat. To trim weight or to stave off excess weight gain, people should drink fewer soft drinks, fruit drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages, according to research by nutrition expert Benjamin Caballero and colleagues. Bringing a new drug to market in the U.S. takes on average 15 years and $800 million. Researchers David Sullivan and Curtis Chong suggest speeding up the process by screening existing drugs for new uses. Sullivan has already found an allergy drug that may treat malaria and a pinworm medicine active against diarrheal protozoans. Dean Michael J. Klag has made financial support for students a major fundraising priority for the Bloomberg School. “In order to succeed in our core mission, we must continue to attract the best students in the world,” says Dean Klag. And the Walls Come Tumbling Down. People with immune systems compromised by HIV, cancer therapy or an organ transplant have two potentially lethal enemies: 1) opportunistic fungal infections; and 2) the drugs used against them. One such drug, Amphotericin, is known as "Amphoterrible" because the dose needed to kill the fungal infection is just short of lethal for the patient. Molecular geneticist David Levin, PhD, has uncovered a weakness in yeast that may result in new, less-terrible drugs. Like its pathogenic cousins Candida, Aspergillus and Cryptococcus, yeast must carefully maintain cell wall integrity as it grows. Levin, a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has found proteins needed to build strong walls. Disrupt a few proteins, and the cellular walls will come tumbling down. A pharmaceutical company has licensed one of his discoveries and is evaluating drug compounds that could help save the thousands of people who die every year from fungal infections. |
