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To quote the ASCB Newsletter: "Cravatt is being recognized for his research with fatty acid amides in cellular and organismal biology. Fatty acid amides, a family of chemical messengers, have been shown to affect many physiological functions, including sleep, thermoregulation, pain sensitivity, and angiogenesis." Ben's award lecture will occur at the ASCB annual meeting on Tuesday, December 17, in San Francisco.

The article in the August 9, 2002 issue of Science includes a picture of Ali and reports on Ali's attempts to obtain the "more than 60" human embryonic stem cell lines that President Bush announced were available a year ago. Ali has only been able to obtain two. Science reports that of these 60 some cell lines, only 16 are well well-characterized and available for distribution, and most of these come with strings attached...such as working collaboratively with the originators of the lines. Only four lines seem to be in the hands of US scientists who are not collaborating with the originators. Stem cells derived from human embryos have the potential for turning into any kind of cell in the body and so may be of great use in treating injuries and diseases in which specific cells are damaged or killed. These include spinal cord injuries, some forms of diabetes, and neuro-degenerative diseases such as Parkinsonism. The use of human embryonic stem cells is controversial because the cells are derived from early stage human embryos.

The ACS's write-up of Roger's award can be found at ACSLink.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - Fifteen individuals doing research in the chemical and biological sciences will each have an additional $240,000 to support their research programs during the next three years. The fifteen have been named as the 2002 Searle Scholars. With the names announced today, 363 Searle Scholars have shared over $65,000,000 in grants made since the program began in 1981. This year, 170 applications were considered from recently appointed assistant professors, nominated by 93 universities and research institutions. The final selection of Scholars was based on recommendations made by a Scientific Advisory Board of eleven scientists distinguished for their research and leadership in fields of interest to the Searle Scholars Program.

In selecting the Scholars, the Board looked for individuals who have already demonstrated innovative research with the potential for making significant contributions to biological research over an extended period of time.

The funds that support the awards come from trusts established under the wills of John G. and Frances C. Searle. Mr. Searle was President of G.D. Searle & Co., of Skokie, Illinois, a research-based pharmaceutical company. Mr. and Mrs. Searle expressed the wish that some of the proceeds of their estates be used for the support of research in medicine, chemistry, and biological science.

In 1980, members of the Searle family acting as Consultants to the Trustees of the Trusts established under the wills of Mr. & Mrs. John G. Searle, recommended the development of a program of support for young biomedical scientists. This idea evolved into the Searle Scholars Program, which is funded through grants from the family trusts to The Chicago Community Trust and administered by Kinship Foundation in Northbrook, Illinois.

2002 Class of the Searle Scholars Program

David Bilder, University of California, Berkeley

Lera Boroditsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Brian R. Crane, Cornell University

Hironori Funabiki, The Rockefeller University

Jay T. Groves, University of California, Berkeley

Rustem F. Ismagilov, University of Chicago

Daniel L. Minor, University of California, San Francisco

Victor Munoz, University of Maryland, College Park

Axel Nohturfft, Harvard University

Bernardo L. Sabatini, Harvard Medical School

Ram Samudrala, University of Washington, Seattle

Peter R. Scheiffele, Columbia University

Douglas Smith, University of Califnornia, San Diego

Peter A. Takizawa, Yale University

Jack Taunton, University of California, San Francisco

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named 23 recipients of the year 2001's MacArthur Fellowships. Each will receive $500,000 over five years of "no strings attached" support. Geraldine was sited for her research that "provides key insights into biology's most complex processes: creating a fully formed adult animal from a single cell and then repeating the proces in the next generation."

Discover (Vol. 23, No.1: January, 2002) describes David Bartel's research in which his group has been able to evolve new RNA enzmyes that can replicate short RNA molecules. This activity is a possible scenario for the origin of self-replicating organic systems that may have been the precursors to living things on Earth near the dawn of the solar system. Commenting on his work, David is quoted as saying "....the foundation is there... [but] evolution had much more time and a much larger test tube." M. Reza Ghadiri is cited for his creation of peptide molecules that home in on bacterial cells and kill them, leaving mammalian cells alone. This work has the promise of leading to new antibiotic drugs. Advisor Tony Hunter comments on Gleevec and other new anti-cancer drugs that work on enzymes Hunter and coworkers discovered and have extensively characterized. Discover also cites the work from Rudolf Jaenisch's lab that pinpoints problems that may be encountered in cloning animals (and thus relevant to the question of human cloning). Testimony by Jaenisch before a congressional committee investigating human cloning is also quoted.