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National Organization for Women Establishes Kansas Abortion-Rights PAC To Fill Void After Death Of Abortion Provider Tiller
The Kansas chapter of the National Organization for Women has formed its own political action committee to replace ProKanDo, a PAC founded in 2002 by abortion provider George Tiller that was closed after his murder in May, the AP/Hays Daily News reports. ProKanDo spent more than $1 million over the last four years to advocate for abortion rights, assist candidates who support abortion rights and oppose antiabortion-rights candidates. The organization had more than 6,400 contributors but received between one-third and one-half of its annual funding from Tiller, according to former Director Julie Burkhart.NOW has scheduled a conference in Wichita on July 25 to discuss legislative strategy and Kansas elections. Marla Patrick, coordinator of NOW"s Kansas chapter,÷ said that although the new PAC will not have the same financial support from Tiller that ProKanDo received, his death has invigorated grassroots support. She added, "I think that can be every bit as effective, if not more so, especially in light of all the recent events" (Hegeman, AP/Hays Daily News, 7/18).

Quintiles Consulting Outlines Methods For Re-Balancing Drug Development Risks
Quintiles Consulting released the first in a three-part series of white papers addressing how best to navigate risk in drug development. The first paper, "On the Re-Balancing of Risk to Transform Cost and Productivity in Drug Development," focuses on operational risk. It is available for download at http://www.quintiles.com/consulting.
News of the day
Only Drop-In Needle Exchange Center In Minnesota Closes Due To Lack Of Funding
Minnesota"s only storefront needle exchange drop-in center, called Access Works!, "fell victim to economic hard times and federal anti-drug policies" and ended its program last week after 13 years, the Minnesota Independent reports. The program "traded used needles for clean ones, conducted HIV and Hepatitis C testing, taught overdose prevention, held support groups and connected users with chemical dependency treatment experts," according to the Independent. Federal funding cannot be used to administer needles for such programs, Lauri Wollner, executive director of the program said. She added, "The federal ban has had a long-term impact. We spend almost $40,000 a year on needles and about $5,000 a year on disposal (of used needles)." Private donations also have been down, she said. While the ban on the use of federal funding for needle exchange is being revisited by Congress, "local needle-exchange activists say it is doubtful that congressional action will be able to save the struggling organization," the article states (Birkey, 8/3).
Sexual Health

Getting More From Whole-Transcript Microarrays

The widely-used Affymetrix Whole-Transcript Gene 1.0 ST (sense target) microarray platform, normally used to assay gene expression, can also be utilized to interrogate exon-specific splicing. Research published in the open access journal BMC Bioinformatics shows scientists how to monitor alternative splicing activity on a genome-wide scale, without investing in new exon microarray technologies. Alternative splicing produces a variety of mRNA transcripts from a single gene by splicing together different combinations of exons, which can give rise to alternative protein forms that are functionally distinct. Almost 90% of human genes are now considered to exhibit alternative splicing and to meet the demand to analyze this on a genome-wide scale, Affymetrix have developed their Exon 1.0 ST platform. However, this study by Mark Robinson and Terence Speed from the University of Melbourne and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia suggests that the Gene platform can also do the job. The scientists explored a publicly available dataset of 11 human tissues that were analyzed on both the Affymetrix Gene 1.0 ST and the Affymetrix Exon 1.0 ST chips. Robinson said, "Our intention was not to provide a detailed comparison between those platforms and to suggest that the Gene array should be used as a replacement for the Exon arrays. We simply wanted to demonstrate that researchers could get information about differential splicing from the Gene platform in certain circumstances at no additional experimental cost. We, therefore, provide added value to their collected data." The authors acknowledge that the ability to detect differential splicing depends on various factors, including the number of probes covering the gene and the nature of the splicing event. They constructed a new statistical method, called FIRMAGene, that uses information about adjacent poorly fitting probes to calculate differential expression in the Gene arrays and showed that it provides comparable results to the Exon array analysis. The approach can only be used in well-annotated genes and can detect differential splicing involving multiple exons. However, they suggested that it should work particularly well for genes containing few exons, since for these genes the coverage of probes in the Gene platform can be greater than the Exon platform. Dr Robinson added that, "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first statistical method that interrogates differential splicing using the Gene 1.0 ST platform. We have used this method for uncovering differential splicing in human tissues, where typically a small number of tissues exhibit a distinct pattern. However, we believe it could be useful in a variety of experimental settings." FIRMAGene can be applied to human, mouse and rat samples, for which the latest Affymetrix Gene 1.0 ST platforms are available, or any other whole-transcript microarray design. Differential splicing using whole-transcript microarrays Mark D Robinson and Terence P Speed BMC Bioinformatics (in press) http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbioinformatics/ Graeme Baldwin BioMed Central


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