eHarmony specializes in getting singles to connect. Now the matchmaking site hopes landmark research will show that good health, not just marriage, is a possible outcome of its pairings. If a dating service seems an unlikely venue for serious research that could influence both health psychology and personalized medicine, it helps to remember that eHarmony’s business proposition is not to find you a few dates, but a partner for life. Gian Gonzaga, senior research scientists with eHarmony talks to Bill about the research being conducted by the company.

HMO Kaiser Permanente is helping set up farmers markets at its medical centers across the nation on the principle that good food leads to good health. Since the first weekly markets opened at the Kaiser facility in Oakland in May 2003, farmers markets have sprouted at 32 Kaiser centers in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Georgia and Hawaii. As journalist Theresa Moore reports in the December issue of The Journal of Life Sciences, it’s one thing to tell patients to eat more fruits and vegetables and its another thing to make high quality produce available at its medical centers.

 

In 2008, Menlo Park, California-based Geron expects to begin a much-anticipated clinical trial in which doctors will transplant a type of neural stem cell into humans. The trial is significant because, if successful, it would represents the first time that a product derived from embryonic stem cells could be shown to be safe and effective. But as author Ann Parson reports in the December issue of The Journal of Life Sciences, even though the company’s expectations are modest, success in treating patients with spinal cord injuries would validate a lengthy and costly effort.

The notion of personalized medicine is seductive. Proponents say it will increase the efficiency of drug development, cut wasteful spending on therapies that don’t work for certain patients, and deliver more effective treatments. But as Daniel S. Levine reports in the November issue of The Journal of Life Sciences, the adoption of personalized medicine on a large scale faces significant barriers. The science of identifying appropriate biomarkers for diagnostics can be evasive. The business models to align pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies’ interests remain undefined. And the regulatory and reimbursement models are not yet in place to allow companies to recoup their sizable R&D investment in products designed to reach smaller and smaller populations within a subset of a disease.

Empowerment through genetics is now at everyone’s finger tips – or so we’re told. A quick trip online will direct you to tests that claim to identify your genetic propensity for diabetes, breast cancer, cystic fibrosis, or iron overload disease. You can secretly check your baby’s paternity and learn its gender in as few as six weeks from conception. You can go to Target.com and buy a genetic home collection kit for the whole family, with results that tell you how your DNA makes you unique. But as Sally Lehrman reports in the November issue of The Journal of Life Sciences, some question whether the trend toward making genetics testing as easy as fixing a TV dinner is putting the market ahead of the science.

Reserved, introspective, uncomfortable with head-to-head competition, Elizabeth Blackburn might seem an unlikely role model and mentor for young scientists. But her predilection for exploring unconventional explanations and her aversion to jostling for position in a crowded race led her to a seemingly obscure byway that became a thriving research field with significant implications for human health. The functions of telomeres and telomerase in the aging of cells influences human aging, and telomerase also plays a role in the growth and metastasis of cancer. Catherine Brady, author of the newly released Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA joins Bill to discuss the career of this pioneering scientist.

The Journal's Editor-in-Chief offers some thoughts on the biomolecular economy and how biological principles are informing organizational structures.

For all the size and scope of its medical infrastructure, Houston lags behind in translating biomedical research into biotech commerce. A 2005 Ernst & Young study showed that California was leading the nation with more than 400 biotechnology companies, but Texas was toward the end of the list with fewer than 50. In the current issue of the Journal of Life Sciences, Ellen Durckel takes a look how the biggest city in Texas is hoping institutional partnerships will change that.

A Glioblastoma is a relatively rare illness, but a nasty one. About 10,000 patients get diagnosed with it in the United States annually and only half of them will live a full year after their diagnosis. Even when the tumors have been surgically removed from the brain, half the time they will return within six months. But a vaccine in tests for this aggressive cancer has patients living more than twice as long as those treated with radiation and chemotherapy and, as author Bruce Goldman reports in the October issue of the Journal of Life Sciences, has some wondering if it could serve as a model for other types of cancer.

Maxygen CEO Russell Howard has said that “Life is characterized not only by death, but by reproduction, passing on the DNA, the thread that produce progeny and is the real essence of life. Most businesses are the genesis of another business. They may spin off another company, and the parent may die, but the spin-offs survive and succeed. I use the analogy not only of inevitable death, but of life’s continuous process of recreation.” In 2002, Monitor’s Chris Meyer took a close look at Maxygen, itself has been an extraordinarily adaptive enterprise, following an evolutionary biological model when it comes to its organization, leadership, and product development. In this month’s Journal, Meyer revisits the company five year’s later.