FeaturesStudy Snapshots Newsletter: Spring 2007 Published as a complimentary quarterly newsletter, Snapshots provides insights into the technologies transforming science and medicine. Highlights of this issue of Snapshots include:  Whether you think about flow cytometry as a “black box” or you can easily operate the most sophisticated of cytometers, nearly all scientists appreciate that flow cytometry provides a lot of information about one’s sample in a relatively short period of time. In a 27-question study, The Science Advisory Board asked over 750 researchers how they use flow cytometry to advance their research goals.  In a world full of mass-produced goods, it's rare to possess items that are individually tailored to your specifications. Whether or not you think of oligos in this way, these strings of nucleic acid are assembled based upon your exact research requirements. Because of this level of customization, everyone's experience ordering and using oligos will be different. The Science Advisory Board compiled over 750 researcher opinions on DNA and RNA custom synthetic oligos to merge these disparate experiences into a collective overview of oligo-based research. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the federal government has committed greater than $36 billion to 11 federal departments and agencies to address the threat of biological weapons. This investment supports the research, development, and acquisition of medical countermeasures and protective equipment; enhancing medical surveillance and environmental detection of biological weapons agents; and improving state, local, and hospital preparedness. Post-911, the United States has engaged in an unprecedented research effort to develop tests to rapidly diagnose, vaccines and immunotherapies to prevent, and drugs and biologics to cure disease caused by agents of bioterrorism. Four years into this effort, The Science Advisory Board launched a study to assess this biodefense research effort to date. Many of our Science Advisory Board members participated in our first biennial study on biodefense in 2004. This current study was designed to be a follow-up to this previous benchmarking report to examine scientists’ research objectives, the techniques used, the challenges faced and the types of technological advances that would accelerate biodefense research.  RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful technique to silence gene expression in cells allowing researchers to study the molecular effects of modulating expression at the level of individual genes. The diversity of its applications has made RNAi an indispensable tool for industrial scientists interested in gene function characterization, signaling pathway analysis, and target validation. The Science Advisory Board invited nearly 150 researchers from over 90 different biotech and pharmaceutical companies to share their siRNA product expectations, RNAi experimental requirements, and opinions about different siRNA brands. A summary of these study findings is presented in this Study Snaphsot. While rapidly becoming essential to both small biotech and large pharmaceutical R&D programs, the use of siRNA is still relatively new in industry—within the last five years or so. Study results indicate that most respondents use RNAi for such exploratory research as drug discovery and gene function determinations. In contrast, not many respondents are using RNAi for biologically complex experiments such as in vivo knockouts, therapeutics and pathway analysis. To get a copy of the latest Snapshots newsletter in PDF format, please click here. ### Next >> [ View All Features ] |
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