Spotlight

FY12 Spending Debate Comes to a Close

Congress completed, and the President signed into law, the FY12 appropriations bill. The $915 billion spending bill wraps up the remaining nine appropriations measures. The bill provides funding for programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National
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Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) Editorial in Most Recent Science

Science 16 September 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6049 p. 1549
DOI: 10.1126/science.1211494
EDITORIAL:

Dueling Visions for Science

Rush Holt
Rush Holt is the U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 12th Congressional District and has a doctoral degree in physics.

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Children Aging Before Their Time: Can Progeria Now Be Treated? - 2/25/09

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Dr. Stephen Young
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Up until the early 1990s, very little was known about progeria, a rare genetic disease. Today we know progeria is caused by a tiny mutation in a single gene, lamin A (LMNA). Still, the only drugs available are those that treat the ailments of aging. There are no current treatments for the underlying condition, but there is hope. Dr. Stephen Young discusses how his laboratory is testing new methods using a drug targeted for cancer — the farnesyltransferase inhibitor—that has been shown to reduce the severity of the disease. Children with HGPS have cells with deformed nuclei. Tests on mice show that treatment with the drug results in a higher proportion of normally shaped nuclei, which leads to a decrease in the severity of symptoms and an increase in bone density. Based on these findings, this drug is now being tested in children with HGPS.