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CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (ENS) —
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In one of the first potential applications of synthetic biology, researchers are engineering viruses to attack and destroy the surface “biofilms” that harbor harmful bacteria in the body and on industrial and medical devices.

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University have already successfully demonstrated one such virus. They have what they call a “plug and play” library of “parts” and say that many more could be custom designed to target different species or strains of bacteria.

Synthetic biology is an emerging field that aims to design and build useful biomolecular systems. The research was reported in the July 3 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our results show we can do simple things with synthetic biology that have potentially useful results,” says first author Timothy Lu, a doctoral student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Bacterial biofilms …

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

The UK government’s plans to vaccinate all 12-year-old gifts against the human papilloma virus (HPV) to prevent cervical cancer could prove extremely expensive. The programme is due to start in 2008, but a detailed cost-benefit analysis will be carried out before a final decision is made. One vaccine–Sanofi Pasteur MSD’s Gardasil–is already licensed, and GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix is likely to be approved within the next few months.

Neither prevent all strains of the virus, however. Both protect against strains 16 and 18, which are responsible for most cervical cancers, but at …

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Information provided by: Findarticles.com