Fracking - Cracking the Code, and Passing Gas

Fracking is an industrial process for extracting natural gas and oil from previously untapped reservoirs in solid ground. The relative value of its benefits and drawbacks has been greatly debated among politicians, news media, and academia. On one hand, fracking has greatly increased the domestic supply of natural gas and oil, contributing to a global decline in prices and promoting U.S. energy independence. Critics, however, point to evidence of serious health concerns and major pollution/contamination risks.

What is Fracking?

Hydrauling fracturing, or “fracking”, involves the pumping of fluid at high pressure deep into wells in order to crack the rock (typically shale) open and release trapped energy-rich natural hydrocarbons (gas and oil). Fracking wells are first drilled vertically down and then horizontally through the target shale deposit, followed by well encasement and subsequent pumping of fracking fluid. Fracking fluid is primarily water, but also includes supportive chemicals as well as proppant. Proppant can be either sand or tiny ceramic balls that fill the cracked rock and help keep the fissures open for extraction of gas/oil. Once the pressure is turned off, the released gas/oil along with other minerals travel up the well and are extracted.

A short video explaining the process of fracking

How to Edit Genes (Using CRISPR)

Check out my summary of CRISPR, the molecular biology technique currently revolutionizing genetic engineering:

http://www.infectiveperspective.com/blog/how-to-edit-genes-using-crispr

I wrote this article as a guest column for the blog Infective Perspective. Please check out other posts there as well!

Obama's "Moonshot" to Cure Cancer: Apollo 11, or Apollo 13?

           During his final State of the Union address in January 2016, President Obama announced a plan to invest $1 billion toward a “moonshot” attempt at curing cancer. While the details of the plan are rather broad and ambiguous, it essentially provides increased funding for existing research efforts with an emphasis on data sharing and collaboration. While the biomedical research community will gladly welcome any funding increase amidst an ever-decreasing public investment in research relative to inflation, not all scientists are rushing to praise this initiative.

          The moonshot initiative includes a substantial funding increase for cancer research at both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) along with additional support for efforts at the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Research areas of interest highlighted by the initiative are: vaccine development, earlier  cancer screening/detection, immunotherapy, pediatric cancers, and genomics. As previously mentioned, another big focus is to consolidate various efforts not only among government agencies but also between distinct cancer researchers and labs. An overall summary of the plan’s goals can be found here.

Zika: Current Knowledge and New Directions

Check out the Zika post I wrote for the "Science Policy For All" blog! It summarizes the Zika outbreak, including new updates:

https://sciencepolicyforall.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/zika-update-current-knowledge-and-new-directions/

Like Cures Like: Assessing the Claims of Homeopathy (In Rapid Succussion)

What is homeopathy?

          Homeopathy was first described in a book written by Samuel Hahneman in 1796, based on the central tenet that “like cures like.” This form of alternative medicine utilizes extreme dilutions of chemicals – usually natural – as therapeutic agents for symptoms and conditions often caused the original source of the substance (for example, arsenic as a cure for severe pain). Homeopathic solutions are prepared by diluting substances many orders of magnitude in either water or ethanol and vigorously shaken (known as succussion). Several rounds of dilution and succession are repeated until the desired dilution has been reached. This repeated process of succession and diution is known as potentisation. Homeopathic dilutions are logarithmic in scale, meaning that each round of potentisation is diluting the substance by 10-fold (Table 1). 

2015 Nobel Prizes!

The 2015 Nobel Prizes were recently awarded.  Annual Nobel Prizes are awarded for achievement in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, Economics, Literature, and Peace.

The 21st Century Cures Act: Is it an overall positive?

The below article is published in the Fall 2015 issue of the National Institutes of Health -NIDDK newsletter "The Informer"

In a rare showing of bipartisan collaboration, on July 10th the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 21st Century Cures Act by the substantial margin of 344-77. The 21st Century Cures Act is a large bill that is subtitled as “an act to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st century cures, and for other purposes.” According to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce committee where the bill was drafted, the goal of the Cures Act is to streamline the process from drug discovery to development and ultimately delivery to patients. The Act promotes scientific research on deadly diseases and attempts to reduce regulatory hurdles in bringing new drugs to market.

In an era of ever-decreasing federal research funding, the bill offers a welcome boost to the research community, allocating $8.75 billion in research funds to the NIH over 5 years and an additional $550 million to the FDA. Not all scientists are in favor of the bill, however. The Cures Act aims to expedite the regulatory approval process for drugs by the FDA. As a means to this end, the bill promotes drug approval based on less rigorous clinical trials, biomarker readouts as opposed to clinical end points, and even non-quantitative anecdotal evidence in some cases. It also further reduces the rigor and objectiveness of medical device approval, which is already more lenient than the drug approval process. In the name of accelerating innovation, the bill attempts to streamline existing bureaucratic barriers to drug development and public release. However, while the bill does contain a section dedicated to “reducing administrative burdens of researchers”, it also adds additional unnecessary bureaucracy by requiring individual review by NIH institute directors of all awarded R-series grants and creating several instances of redundancy with programs or directives already in place at the NIH.  

While there are some potentially troubling issues with this bill, it is refreshing to see Congress finally recognizing the need for additional biomedical research funding. The Senate is now debating the bill and drafting their own version, but the upcoming budget debate may define whether the Cures Act is even passed this year. Assuming the 21st Century Cures Act becomes law, it will be several years before its full effects will be known. In the meantime, it is important to continue evaluating the potential long-term outcomes of this bill for everyone affected.