Genome

A Rockville biotech company announced yesterday that it has cleared a major hurdle in fulfilling a $165.2 million federal contract to supply a new anthrax drug. Human Genome Sciences Inc. says its clinical trials show that a single dose of ABthrax improved survival rates up to 64 percent in monkeys infected with anthrax over a 28-day period. The drug also proved safe in trials where it was given to 180 human volunteers. "The most challenging scientific work is behind us," Dr. David C. Stump, a physician who is executive vice president, told reporters in a telephone briefing yesterday.

Medical researchers have made a significant advance in understanding multiple sclerosis, a common neurological disease that causes symptoms that include muscle weakness and paralysis. The disease is one in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the electrical insulation of nerve fibers. The cause is part genetic and part environmental, but researchers trying to identify the relevant genes have endured repeated frustration. Their approach has been to guess what genes might be involved and see whether patients have abnormal versions.

Scientists at a Rockville biotechnology institute say they have completely replaced the DNA of one bacterium with that of another, effectively changing its species. The experiment could open the door to production of artificial organisms whose original genetic material is replaced entirely by man-made DNA, the researchers said. That way, they believe, they can program bacteria to produce useful metabolic products, such as new biofuels. Critics said the experiment raises concerns about the unknown risks of artificial organisms and the emerging science is too loosely regulated.

In a long-delayed harvest from the human genome project, researchers say they have found six new sites of variation in the genome that increase the risk of breast cancer. Together with genes known earlier, the discovery means that a sizable fraction of the overall genetic risk of breast cancer might now have been accounted for, researchers say, and much of the rest could be captured within a few years. The findings do not point to any new treatment and are too little understood to serve as the basis for a diagnostic test.

Researchers said yesterday that they have identified seven new genes connected to the most common form of diabetes - the latest result of an intensifying race between university researchers and private companies to find genes linked to a range of diseases. The findings, presented in three reports by university scientists and one report by a private company, offer novel insights into the biology of a disease that affects 170 million people worldwide. And the sudden spate of new results marks an acceleration, and perhaps a turning point, in the ability to find disease genes, the long-promised payoff from the Human Genome Project that began in 1989.

Dr. Claire M. Fraser-Liggett will be paid $350,000 annually to head a new genomics institute at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, officials have disclosed. The pioneering scientist, who has mapped the genomes of microbes that cause anthrax, cholera and chlamydia, was named to the newly created post last week. She becomes the 43rd-highest-paid employee on the state payroll, according to figures released yesterday by the state Comptroller's Office. All but 10 of the top 100, whose salaries were provided at The Sun's request, are employees of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

One of the world's leading experts on the DNA of microorganisms that harm humans will head a new research institute at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, an addition that promises to thrust the university to the front ranks of the movement to apply genetics to medicine. Claire M. Fraser-Liggett, 51, a pioneering geneticist known for mapping the genomes of deadly microbes such as anthrax and cholera, will head the new center and bring seven or eight top scientists with her. School officials and outside experts agreed that Fraser-Liggett's prominence should help the medical school attract talented scientists and compete for research funding.

Doctors first gave Karen Banfield Evans a year of chemotherapy, even though she doesn't have cancer. Then, they switched her to a drug that prevents organ rejection, though she has never had a transplant. Add into the mix several blood pressure reducers, a steroid, various nutritional supplements along with a multivitamin, and the count of pills Evans takes per day comes up to 10 - none of which was designed to treat her disease. Evans has lupus, an often debilitating illness in which the immune system attacks the body, destroying organs, tissue, joints and quality of life.

Karen Rothenberg says that almost as soon as scientists realized that they could map the human genome, there was also a realization that there were ethical and legal issues involved. "Pretty early in the process, Congress started setting aside money to look at the ethical and social implications of the Human Genome Project," she says of the government agencies involved in the research over a decade ago. Now dean of the University of Maryland's School of Law, Rothenberg has made something of a specialty of the intersection of medicine, science and the law. She is the founding director of the school's Law and Health Care program and took a leave in 1995 to work at the National Institutes of Health in the Office of Research on Women's Health.

Maryland: Courts Judge reviewing U.S. Foodservice case A federal judge is reviewing whether Deloitte & Touche LLP and Deloitte & Touche Accountants should go to trial for allegedly playing a role in an accounting scandal at Columbia-based U.S. Foodservice. Deloitte was the accounting and financial auditing firm for U.S. Foodservice, which is owned by Dutch food company Royal Ahold NV, when the company recorded false promotional allowances, which inaccurately reduced its cost of sales and inflated its earnings.