Word: toxin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...laboratories, especially since Boston is a “hotspot” for biochemical research and development. The drugs to be developed would slow the build-up in the eye over time of retinotoxic molecules called lipofusins—the cause of AMD—according to Rando. These toxins cause degeneration of the macula, the part of the retina that controls keenness of vision and color vision, sometimes to the point of complete blindness. “Every time light is absorbed in the retina...it produces a chemically reactive by-product,” Rando said. He explained...
...neural-tube defects (NTDs) in unborn children. Often debilitating and sometimes fatal, NTDs such as anencephaly and spina bifida have been linked directly to the tortillas and other corn products in the diets of expectant mothers living along the Rio Grande. Missmer and her associates isolated fumonsin, a fungal toxin often found in American corn crops, as the likely cause of these infants’ cranial and spinal malformations. The study, conducted on mothers of babies born from the early 1990s to 2000, determined that overexposure to fumonsin inhibits fetal ability to absorb folic acid, a compound known to prevent...
...smallpox vaccine is expected in 2006. But more than a year into the program, drug companies still complain that they don't have a clear sense of what to develop and how much the feds will buy. Although HHS has formally identified four threats--anthrax, smallpox, botulinum toxin, and radiological and nuclear devices--that's only the first step. Requests for treatments must then be issued, competing drug proposals have to be evaluated, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget has to sign off on each contract...
...would have a bustling biodefense industry by now. In a State of the Union speech laced with references to terrorism, Bush asked Congress for nearly $6 billion to fund Project BioShield, a program he said would "quickly make available effective vaccines and treatments against agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola and plague." That sounded like a good idea, considering the havoc wrought by the anthrax mailings of 2001, which killed five people and set off a near panic for treatment. So Congress anted up. Eighteen months later, Bush signed BioShield into law. The measure set aside $5.6 billion for drug...
...Yanukovych mutters about a "soft coup d'?tat," and Kuchma keeps searching for a way out. The political stakes are extremely high - a nation's fate is at stake - but Zimpfer's announcement on Saturday proved that for Yushchenko, the personal stakes may be even higher. The amount of toxin in his bloodstream is so great that tests could not measure it. Had the dose been any larger, he would likely be dead. And though he is recovering - his intense back pain subsiding, liver function returning, energy rebounding - his long-term prospects are bleak. "I don't want to scare...