Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuk take home the prize for chemistry

Again, this one is a bit surprising that it happened so late.  These three researchers revolutionized organic chemistry by developing palladium-catalyzed cross coupling.  This technique has allowed the development of scores of pharmacologic drugs as well as been used to build modern consumer electronics.

And the Nobel Prize in Physics goes too...

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in England.  The prize was awarded to them for there isolation of single carbon thick polymers known as graphene.  While graphene has not yet made its ways into manufactured use, it is incredibly light and as strong as steel.  This discovery has the potential to revolutionalize material science just as polymers did decades ago.

Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to the pioneer of IVF

This year the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Robert Edwards, the man that pioneered in vitro fertilization, or IVF.  This is probably long overdue as millions of children have now been born thanks to Dr. Edwards life work.  Congrats to you Dr. Edwards.

Nobel Prize Week is here

Hooray for the geeks in all of us.  This week the Nobel awards are announced, starting Monday with the award for Medicine. 

Herpes Simplex Virus type 2 Vaccine fails in stage three trials

The search for a vaccine to prevent Herpes Simplex type 2 infection (genital herpes) has been sought after for decades.  The need for an HSV-2 vaccine has recently been highlighted by the observation that people that have genital herpes have a greater increase of risk of getting HIV.  Unfortunately, making an HSV vaccine has proven quite elusive.  Some glimmer of hope, however, had emerged from a subunit vaccine produced by GlaskoSmithKlein (GSK).  In two independent stage II trials, the vaccine prevented HSV transmission in 70% of HSV-1 seronegative women (aka, women that had not been exposed to the closely related virus most often associated with cold sores), encouraging GSK to move to a larger stage three trial.  After 8 years of study, the results of that trail were released on Friday and, sad to say, the 70%  reduction in transmission observed in the stage II trial did not hold up.  In fact, the vaccine only reduced HSV-2 transmission by 20% which was not statistically different than the control group.  It is unclear what steps GSK will take from here but if they do continue with an HSV vaccine program, it probably will be starting from scratch.