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Professor Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd co-founder, blogger and host of the increasingly popular This Week in Virology (TWIV) podcast series made an anguished plea in a recent post on his Virology Blog to help promote American science literacy. “If you are writing a book, article, toy label, or anything having to do with viruses, and you are not sure of the science, feel free to contact me for advice. I will check the facts for free, because my goal is for everyone to get the science right” said Professor Racaniello.

Vincent expressed his sentiments in a post entitled “Even Toy Makers Should Get it Right” which takes a company to task (Giant Microbes) for manufacturing  “an influenza virus toy” (yes you heard it correctly) and mistakenly presented incorrect information about the influenza virus in the toy’s promotional materials and on its label (an image of the incorrect materials is displayed in the upper left hand corner of this post) . 

While only a toy, I agree with Vincent that it is imperative that all relevant facts about an infectious agent ought to be correct to insure that lay people, many of whom will never read another thing about viruses in their lives, get scientifically correct information. That is the essence of science literacy!

I have known Vincent for over 35 years and I think he is one of the brightest and most unassuming world class scientists that I know (yeah I know a few). One of the things I like most about Vincent is that he is a stickler for detail and (for as long as I have known him), never draws a scientific conclusion unless it there is incontrovertible proof that it is the correct conclusion.  While I routinely rail against self-focused and uncaring academics, Vincent is exactly the opposite. His unwavering commitment to teaching and increasing the public awareness of viruses, and science in general, is second to none. And when he says, please feel free to contact him for help he truly means it and will do everything possible to help you find what you need. Having said that (yes, I know you hate that phrase Vincent; btw so does Larry David), if any of you aspiring young scientists out there need a role model, I highly recommend that you keep Vincent in mind. And, if you need virology help or want to chat with him you can find him on twitter @profvrr or of course, at the BioCrowd!

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

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Yesterday, after giving a talk on social media to a great NYC-based PR firm called Ricochet,I decided to take an uptown trip to visit Professor Vincent Racaniello at Columbia University Medical School to talk about the new applications that we plan to introduce to BioCrowd.

When I arrived at Professor Racaniello’s office, which has an outstanding view of the Hudson River and George Washington Bridge, he was in the middle of taping this week’s This Week in Virology (TWiV) podcast with co-hosts Dick Despommier and Alan Dove. Much to my surprise, Vincent invited me to join the conversation although I am a bacteriologist not a virologist. The podcast was devoted mainly to answering questions that listeners had submitted to the show. One listener alerted us to a post at Newsweek Online entitled “Fight Flu and Falsehoods” while we didn’t agree with the author’s assertion that “that hand washing doesn’t affect the transmissibility of influenza”—it does reduce infections rates of other viruses, bacteria and parasites, so it is a good idea to continue to wash your hands—accompanying the article was an outstanding online quiz that assesses how much you really know about influenza and other viruses. 

I think it would be fun for BioJobBlog readers to take the quiz, report scores and then tabulate the results.

To take the quiz, click here and to report your score click here!  I will tabulate the results and share them in a later post if enough BioJobBlog readers and their friends take!

Until next time

Good Luck and More Luck On the Quiz!!!

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Since the beginning of the pandemic last spring, BioCrowd founder and virologist extraordinaire Vincent Racaniello has been vigilantly writing at his at his Virology Blog about HIN1 pathogenesis, epidemiology, immune responses and vaccines.  When not blogging about HIN1, Vincent also writes about other viral diseases and does a weekly virology podcast called This Week in Virology (TWIV).

In a very short time, Professor Racaniello has amassed a huge collection of original articles that could be compiled into a virology textbook with a title like “Everything you ever wanted to know about H1N1.” And, not surprisingly, his Herculean efforts have not gone unnoticed: today his Virology Blog was recognized and listed as a legitimate source of H1N1 information by the New York Times. 

For those of you who haven’t been overwhelmed by the unrelenting swine flu media frenzy and are seeking sound information about the H1N1 epidemic, I highly recommend that you check out Vincent’s blog. Also, you can talk with Vincent at BioCrowd when he is not too busy blogging, podcasting or conducting laboratory research.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Remember to Wash Your Hands !!!!!

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The Public Library of Science (PLOS) announced that it has launched a new website called PLOS Currents that is intended to serve as a vehicle for the rapid publication of scientific research and new ideas and themes. Not surprisingly, the first theme for PLOS Currents is influenza. On his Virology blog, Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd cofounder and prominent virologist, discusses why PLOS Currents is important and timely for scientist actively engaged in influenza research and vaccine development.  

The opening of PLoS Currents: Influenza was announced by Harold Varmus, Chairman and Co-Founder of PLoS. He wrote about the reasons for starting this website at The Official Google Blog:

The key goal of PLoS Currents is to accelerate scientific discovery by allowing researchers to share their latest findings and ideas immediately with the world’s scientific and medical communities. Google Knol’s features for community interaction, comment and discussion will enable commentary and conversations to develop around these findings. Given that the contributions to PLoS Currents are not peer-reviewed in detail, however, the results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary. In time, it is therefore likely that PLoS Currents contributors will submit their work for publication in a formal journal, and the PLoS Journals will welcome these submissions.

Contributions that will be welcome at PLoS Currents: Influenza include research into influenza virology, genetics, immunity, structural biology, genomics, epidemiology, modeling, evolution, policy and control. The manuscripts will not be subject to peer-review, but unsuitable submissions will be screened out by a board of expert moderators. This policy will enable rapid publication of research.

The path to publishing original scientific research is often long and tortuous.  A manuscript describing the findings is prepared and submitted to a scientific journal (such as Nature, Cell, Journal of Virology). The manuscript is assigned to two or three expert reviewers, generally scientists involved in the same area of research. If their reviews are favorable, the paper is published. Usually additional experiments are called for, which may require additional time to complete. Many months to a year may pass before the paper is published, although some manuscripts (e.g. those on 2009 pandemic influenza) may be expedited. The point is that PLoS Currents: Influenza will allow everyone – including non-scientists – to read about research soon after the authors have prepared the paper.

PLoS Currents: Influenza is a terrific idea, and I welcome this venture with great enthusiasm. I hope that PLoS Currents will grow to include other areas of science. But Varmus warns:

Given that the contributions to PLoS Currents are not peer-reviewed in detail, however, the results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary. In time, it is therefore likely that PLoS Currents contributors will submit their work for publication in a formal journal, and the PLoS Journals will welcome these submissions.

During peer review of submitted manuscripts, new experiments may be suggested that change some of the conclusions of the research. Hence, the papers that appear in PLoS Currents: Influenza may be different from final versions that are published elsewhere.

I wonder how other scientific journals will react to submissions of manuscripts that have appeared in PLoS Currents. Many journals do not accept manuscripts that have already appeared elsewhere. For example, the instructions to authors for the Journal of Virology state:

By submission of a manuscript to the journal, the authors guarantee that they have the authority to publish the work and that the manuscript, or one with substantially the same content, was not published previously, is not being considered or published elsewhere, and was not rejected on scientific grounds by another ASM journal.

It’s time for scientific journals to change this policy, and allow for preliminary publication at sites such as PLoS Currents.

Rapid and open-access publication will drive research forward and help inform and educate the public about science.

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On several occasions while driving in upstate New York, I noticed an exit sign on the NY State Thruway for Coxsackie, NY. And, not surprisingly, I began to wonder whether or not the Coxsackie virus was named after this obscure upstate NY town.

I first learned about coxsackie viruses as a graduate student while taking a medical virology course at the University of Wisconsin taught by the late noble laureate Howard Temin. However, despite a thirty year friendship with Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd co-founder and virologist extraordinaire, I never asked him about the origin of the coxsackie virus name. Much to my surprise, he had recently taken a trip to upstate NY and noticed the Coxsackie NY exit sign while driving on the thruway. This prompted him to blog about the coxsackie virus isolation, its pathogenic properties and of course, the origin of its name!

Coxsackie NY and the virus named after it 

by Vincent Racaniello,PhD

Recently while driving north on the New York State Thruway I passed the exit for the town of Coxsackie, NY (population 8,884). I grabbed my camera and photographed the exit sign, and reminded myself to write about the virus named after this small town.

In the summer of 1947 there were several small outbreaks of poliomyelitis in upstate New York. Gilbert Dalldorf, the director of the Wadsworth Laboratory in Albany, NY, and his associate Grace M. Sickles investigated this outbreak. In particular they sought polioviruses that could replicate in mice. This search was motivated by the fact that research on poliovirus required the use of monkeys which were extremely expensive. Dalldorf had attended the Fourth International Congress for Microbiology in 1947 where he heard that very young mice – suckling mice – could readily be infected with Theiler’s virus.

Dalldorf and Sickles made fecal suspensions from two children suspected of having poliomyelitis, and inoculated these into adult and suckling mice. Only the suckling mice (1 – 7 days old) developed paralysis; animals more than one week old were resistant to infection. The damage responsible for limb paralysis was widespread lesions in skeletal muscles, not in the central nervous system as occurs with poliovirus. Further study revealed that the viruses could be distinguished serologically from poliovirus.

Not only had Dalldorf and Sickles identified the first members of a very large group of human viruses, but they also introduced and popularized a new and inexpensive animal into the virology laboratory – the suckling mouse. In 1949 Dalldorf suggested that the new viruses be called Coxsackie viruses, because the first recognized human cases were residents of that New York village. This unique name is of native North American origin.

Over ten years later the importance of this work was recognized by Dr. Max Finland of Boston City Hospital:

The isolation by Dalldorf and Sickles of viruses which produced paralysis with destructive lesions of muscle in sucking mice and hamsters, from the stools of two children with signs of paralytic poliomyelitis was an achievement that may rank in importance with Landsteiner and Popper’s production of human poliomyelitis in monkeys.

In subsequent years many different Coxsackie viruses were isolated that cause a variety of clinical syndromes. Today at least 30 serotypes of Coxsackie viruses are classified in the enterovirus genus of the Picornaviridae. The viruses are classified into groups A or B depending upon the pathological effect in suckling mice.

Not every locale is pleased to have a virus named after it. In May 1993, an outbreak of an unexplained pulmonary illness occurred in the southwestern United States, in an area shared by Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah called “The Four Corners.” Muerto Canyon was proposed as the name for the etiologic agent of the disease, because the virus was first isolated from a rodent near the canyon. However after residents objected, the name Sin nombre virus was given to the agent of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.

Dalldorf G, & Sickles GM (1948). An Unidentified, Filtrable Agent Isolated From the Feces of Children With Paralysis. Science (New York, N.Y.), 108 (2794), 61-62 PMID: 17777513

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Vincent Racaniello, an intrepid virologist and BioCrowd co-founder, has been keeping folks up to date on the swine flu outbreak on his blog. Today, Vincent wrote: “There are now 257 laboratory confirmed cases, with 7 deaths, in 11 countries. In the US there are 109 cases  in 11 states. There are many more suspected cases; together the statistics indicate widespread dissemination of the new H1N1 influenza virus. I no longer doubt that this is the next pandemic strain. WHO will probably soon raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6. Important questions include whether spread will continue in the northern hemisphere through the summer, or stop very soon, as is the case with most influenza virus outbreaks. Unfortunately the southern hemisphere seems in for an extended flu season. Will antivirals be useful in reducing morbidity and mortality? Will the virus returns to the north in a more virulent form in the fall? Can a vaccine be prepared in time?”

 For answers to these questions and others, please visit the Virology Blog or join BioCrowd to chat with Vincent. Check his virology blog for the most up-to-date swine flu information.

 Until next time... 

 Good Luck and Good Virus Hunting (or not)!!!!

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By now everybody has heard that there is a Swine Flu epidemic that started in Mexico and may morph into a worldwide pandemic.  The media's coverage has been mind numbing and overwhelming.  For those of you who want the real skinny on the outbreak, I recommend that you read a post on the Virology Blog run by BioCrowd founder and virologist Vincent Racaniello.

Vincent did his PhD work on flu in Peter Palese's lab, one of the world's leading influenza experts.  In addition to his blog post, Vincent along with Dick Despommier and Alan Dove created a also created a podcast on swine flu last Friday as the epidemic began to unfold. Check it and other virology podcasts out on This Week in Virology (TWiV).

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Reading/Listening

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As you all know by now, Merck announced on Monday that it will purchase Schering Plough for $41.1billion in a deal constructed as a reverse merger. The reverse merger strategy was concocted to prevent the new company from losing the international sale rights to Remicade, Johnson and Johnson’s lucrative, blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug. According to the original deal inked by Johnson and Johnson and Schering Plough, Schering would have to surrender its rights to Remicade— which generated $2.1 billion in sales outside of the US last year —and golimumab (which is pending approval in Europe) if current ownership of Schering changes. Golimumab (CNTO 148) is Johnson and Johnson’s Centocor division next-generation human anti-TNF-alpha monoclonal antibody be developed as monthly subcutaneous treatment for adults with active forms of rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.  Since the merger was announced on Monday, Johnson and Johnson hasn’t issued any public statements about the deal—prompting some analysts to speculate that Johnson and Johnson may well make a counteroffer to acquire Schering Plough. Others believe that Johnson and Johnson will challenge the new company’s international rights to Remicade and golimumab despite the great lengths that Merck and Schering Plough management went to structure the acquisition as a reverse merger. Stay tuned for updates.

In other merger news, US-based Gilead announced that it will acquire CV Therapeutics for about $1.4 billion. The deal tops the hostile takeover offer from Astellas Pharma of Japan. Gilead, an HIV drug manufacturer is purchasing CV Therapeutics—which sells the cardiovascular drugs Ranexa (chronic angina) and Lexican (reduces stress during cardiovascular surgical procedures)—to expand its therapeutic repertoire beyond virology. The stock prices of shares of Gilead and CV Therapeutics jumped after the announcement signaling Wall Street’s approval of the deal.   Nevertheless, it may be premature for Gilead and CV Therapeutics to begin celebrating—Astellas may very well tender a counteroffer!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

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If you are not convinced that vaccines are safe, please listen to a conversation between Dr. Ginger Campbell of the Brain Science Podcast and Dr. Paul Offit.

Dr. Offit is a pediatrician who is also Chief of Infectious Diseases and Director of Vaccine Education at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is co-developer of the rotavirus vaccine and author of the book Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. This book should be read to obtain a complete appreciation of the vaccine-autism controversy. However, I found the podcast also highly compelling, because Dr. Offit is extremely knowledgeable and an excellent speaker.

The furor surrounding childhood vaccines began when Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, published a Lancet article in 1998 claiming to show a link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) and development of autism in children. Although the study was flawed, it established a clear question: does MMR cause autism? This question has been addressed in 12 different epidemiological studies involving millions of children who either did or did not receive the vaccine. The answer is quite clear: that vaccine never caused autism. Here are Dr. Offit’s thoughts on this:

…science is enormously self-correcting. Andrew Wakefield stands up in 1998 and says, ‘I believe MMR causes autism.’ Well, he raises a hypothesis. It’s a testable hypothesis. It’s been tested. He was wrong. And that’s what I love about science. It’s just enormously self-correcting, and I just think people don’t see it that way¹

The original Wakefield paper has been retracted by 10 of the 13 authors. However, the damage has been done: immunization rates with MMR have dropped in the UK, Europe, and the US. The incidence of measles is increasing and there have been deaths of children from the disease. Deaths that could have been prevented had parents chosen to have their children immunized with MMR. The controversy over MMR has lead the public to distrust all viral and bacterial vaccines, and consequently the incidence of other preventable diseases is rising.

The notion that MMR causes autism was accompanied by safety concerns about thimerosal - a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines to prevent microbial contamination. The results of several large epidemiological studies found no connection between autism and thimerosal. Nevertheless, the preservative was removed from most childhood vaccines - probably an error, according to Dr. Offit, which simply made parents more suspicious. Autism rates have not dropped since the use of thimerosal was discontinued.

Many parents still do not believe the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. Part of the problem is that the etiology of autism is not understood. To a parent, the temporal association of immunization with onset of autism is difficult to ignore. Dr. Offit recalls a story which addresses this issue:

…it’s hard to make a statistical argument, or an epidemiological argument, to a parent who’s seen something that’s very emotional. There’s a story that I tell, because I think it’s a powerful one. My wife is a privately practicing pediatrician in the suburbs. And she was in the office one day and there was a four-month-old sitting on her mother’s lap. And my wife was drawing a vaccine into a syringe that she was about to give this child. Well, while she was drawing the vaccine into a syringe the child had a seizure, and actually went on to have a permanent seizure disorder—epilepsy. And there had been a family history of epilepsy, so she was certainly at risk for that. If my wife had given that vaccine five minutes earlier, I think there’s no amount of statistical data in the world that would have convinced that mother that anything other than the vaccine caused the seizure, because I think those sort of emotional events are very hard to argue against.

Some have accused Dr. Offit of pandering to the pharmaceutical establishment and enriching himself by publishing Autism’s False Prophets. I don’t think these arguments contain a shred of truth. Dr. Offit is donating all the royalties from the boook to autism research. More compelling are his words from the interview:

I worked on that (rotavirus) vaccine because I thought that it could do a tremendous amount of good for children. It’s the same reason that I stand up for the science of vaccines and the science of vaccine safety. I care about children. That’s my motivation.

¹Quotations by Dr. Offit are taken from a transcript of his conversation with Dr. Ginger Campbell.

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Earlier this month, Vincent Racaniello and I launched a new social network called BioCrowd. Vincent and I created BioCrowd because we believe that social media has a critical role to play in the evolution of the life sciences and existing 'science social networks' were difficult to navigate or too broad to adequately meet the needs of the bioscience community.

Our objectives are  to promote scientific and business interactions between BioCrowd members and offer advice to members who may be seeking to advance their careers or find jobs. To that end, we decided to create a monthly podcast that will keep network members apprised of all of the comings and goings at BioCrowd.

Please send us your feedback on our very first podcast.  Also, feel free to suggest topics that you would like discussed on future podcasts! 

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Listening!!!!!!!!! 

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Vincent Racaniello, a pioneer in RNA virology and world class researcher on the pathogenesis of polio, believes that social media can be used to enhance scientific research and improve science education. Vincent recently blogged about this on his virology blog and graciously allowed me to repost it to BioJobBlog. It is an interesting perspective from an innovative and creative scientist.

Science and the Social Web

In a previous post about why I blog and podcast, I discussed how these activities allow me to think more about virology and to teach far more people than I ever could in a laboratory or classroom. Is there even more value in the web for scientists?

There are three different web activities, besides blogging and podcasting that enhance science in new ways. The first is the ability to post comments on blogs and podcasts. In so doing, people can interact in ways that were not previously possible. Scientists who have never met, or students hoping to learn, all can connect and create an instructive and creative dialog. Don’t understand something in a post? Just ask. Have something different to contribute? Post it. Science can only benefit from interactions not limited by geography or time.

The second powerful web tool for science is the social networks. We know how MySpace and Facebook made it easy to meet and interact with new people. These networks also allow scientists to connect and talk about their profession. There are various groups on Facebook that enable focused, productive discussions among scientists. Even more useful are the social networks that have been developed specifically for scientists - well over 20 according to this  blog post. These networks exist to foster interactions - meeting other scientists, looking for jobs, troubleshooting experiments, finding answers to thorny questions. The value of scientific social networks is that they enable dialogue far beyond what you could achieve on your floor, in your building, by telephone or email. The result is scientific interactions at unprecedented levels.

The third web tool for scientists is Twitter. This microblogging platform restricts users to posts of 140 characters or less - the end result is concentrated information. For scientists, Twitter can be either a distraction or a gold mine. If you choose to follow individuals who are interested in science, you will, in the course of a day, find tweets with links to interesting science - news or journal articles; comments on science; questions about science or science methods - in brief, the kind of exchange originally facilitated by email but far more immediate and pithy. Follow the right people on Twitter, and receive useful information. I keep an eye on Twitter to find tips on how scientists use the web, the latest science news, and comments on science in general. In turn, when I learn of an interesting science news event or article, I tweet it. Mr. Tweet’s discussion of  the evolution of a twitter user crystallizes this concept.

There is also great value for scientists at FriendFeed. No, it’s not a fourth category - it’s an aggregator of the three activities described above, one-stop for all your blogging, podcasting, social networking, and twittering.

These three aspects of the social web are revolutionizing science. By using them, I am learning more about my field than I ever have before. Those who choose not to take advantage of the social web will miss the opportunity to become more creative and productive scientists.

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For those of you virology junkies out there, This Week in Virology (TWiV) has just released a podcast on the top 10 virology stories of 2008. BioCrowd founder, Vincent Racaniello and Alan Dove, a professional science writer (and one of Vincent's former students), discuss their top picks for 2008 and make some predictions for 2009.

For those of you with no plans for this evening’s festivities, open a bottle of champagne, kick back and have a listen—it's good stuff!

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

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This post was originally written by Vincent Racaniello, a long time friend and colleague, who runs the Virology Blog. 

Here is what Vincent had to say:

My colleagues (generally the older ones) often ask me why I blog or podcast. They believe that I am wasting my time. After all, I am a scientist, and it is my job to carry out research. In order to do this I must publish papers and obtain grants. The grant funds are used to pay salaries (mine and those in my laboratory) and purchase the supplies needed for research. In my institution, nothing matters except raising money for research. Teaching, mentoring, and other community services mean very little. Blogging and podcasting do nothing to help fund my laboratory.

Here are my answers. Why did I go into science? Because my parents (physician and teacher) and my teachers inspired me. But for many other children, the only inspiration they have is their teachers. They need input from other sources. I believe I can help provide that input over the internet.

Most people - kids, teens, adults - don’t understand science. Their teachers can provide only a very rudimentary, often flawed view of some of the fundamental concepts. While I cannot cover all of science, I can do a good job of teaching what I know. I have been studying and thinking about viruses for over 30 years, so I understand them quite well. I am also able to talk and write about them clearly and concisely, a gift I probably received in part from my teacher parent. These qualities put me in a unique position to educate the public about viruses. 

Early in my career, I didn’t think much about teaching. I focused on research. Later I realized I had a reasonable ability to communicate what I knew, which turned into a love of teaching. My blogging and podcasting about viruses represent part of the effort to impart some of my knowledge to the public. 

As I have read and heard many times on the web, if you want to blog or podcast, do it about something you are passionate about. And that is what I am doing.

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