Toward a sustainable biomedical research enterprise: Finding consensus and implementing recommendations

The US research enterprise is under significant strain due to stagnant funding, an expanding workforce, and complex regulations that increase costs and slow the pace of research. In response, a number of groups have analyzed the problems and offered recommendations for resolving these issues. However, many of these recommendations lacked follow-up implementation, allowing the damage of stagnant funding and outdated policies to persist. Here, we analyze nine reports published since the beginning of 2012 and consolidate over 250 suggestions into eight consensus recommendations made by the majority of the reports. We then propose how to implement these consensus recommendations, and we identify critical issues, such as improving workforce diversity and stakeholder interactions, on which the community has yet to achieve consensus.     

The diverse oncogenic and tumor suppressor roles of salt-inducible kinase (SIK) in cancer

Introduction: The salt-inducible kinases originally cloned in adrenal glands of high salt diet-fed rats, generally named as SIKs, are highly evolutionarily conserved serine/threonine protein kinases belonging to a family of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Overexpression of SIK2 and SIK3 is discovered in many tumors. Whereas, SIK1 expression was significantly lower in tumors than in normal tissues. Areas covered: The main aim of our review is to introduce the signaling pathways as well as its mechanisms underlying their activity regulation, and especially the roles they play in cancer, which may shed light on the prospects of the cancer prevention and therapeutic targeting of SIKs in the future. Expert opinion: It is conceivable that SIKs, mainly stimulated by ACTH, LKB1, TGF-β, and autophosphorylation, play crucial roles in regulating multiple signal pathways in cancer cells and controlling a series of cellular processes including cell proliferation and cell apoptosis. More recent studies about SIKs are emerging, and their overexpression is found in a few specific types of cancers. However, correlations between SIKs and carcinogenesis remain to be fully elucidated.     

Parliament in action: Drug withdrawals and policy changes in the U.K.

Previous studies on changes in health policies theorize such changes either as crises responses, or as the outcome of longer-term stakeholder conflicts. In this paper, we propose that parliaments function as overlooked, intermediate actors that contribute to translating the interests of stakeholders into policy changes. We study the role of parliament connecting policy makers and stakeholders in the context of drug regulation. Based on three high-profile cases of drug withdrawals between 1991 and 2005 in the United Kingdom (triazolam, rofecoxib, and co-proxamol), we distinguish partisan-political, individual-idiosyncratic, and collective-institutional pathways of parliamentary action on drug withdrawals. Distinguishing direct and indirect actions, we argue that indirect courses of action, including advocacy and educational work, can be just as effective as regular legislative endeavours, under certain conditions.     

Accounting for failure: risk-based regulation and the problems of ensuring healthcare quality in the NHS

In this paper, we examine why risk-based policy instruments have failed to improve the proportionality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of healthcare quality regulation in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Rather than trying to prevent all possible harms, risk-based approaches promise to rationalise and manage the inevitable limits of what regulation can hope to achieve by focusing regulatory standard-setting and enforcement activity on the highest priority risks, as determined through formal assessments of their probability and consequences. As such, risk-based approaches have been enthusiastically adopted by healthcare quality regulators over the last decade. However, by drawing on historical policy analysis and in-depth interviews with 15 high-level UK informants in 2013–2015, we identify a series of practical problems in using risk-based policy instruments for defining, assessing, and ensuring compliance with healthcare quality standards. Based on our analysis, we go on to consider why, despite a succession of failures, healthcare regulators remain committed to developing and using risk-based approaches. We conclude by identifying several preconditions for successful risk-based regulation: goals must be clear and trade-offs between them amenable to agreement; regulators must be able to reliably assess the probability and consequences of adverse outcomes; regulators must have a range of enforcement tools that can be deployed in proportion to risk; and there must be political tolerance for adverse outcomes.     

基于GC-TOF-MS代谢组学研究黄连解毒汤对大鼠粪便代谢的影响＊

目的 通过GC-TOF-MS代谢组学探讨不同剂量的黄连解毒汤对SD大鼠粪便代谢组的影响，进而为黄连解毒汤的作用机制提供参考。方法 SD大鼠45只适应性喂养7天后，随机分为5组：黄连解毒汤高剂量组、中剂量组、低剂量组、抗生素组和空白组，每组9只。中药干预组不同剂量黄连解毒汤灌胃，1 mL/次，2次/天，连续给药21天；抗生素组，1 mL/次，2次/天；空白组生理盐水灌胃，1 mL/次，2次/天，连续给药21天；末次给药后，禁食禁水12 h，处死并收集大鼠粪便。采用气相色谱-飞行时间质谱（Gas Chromatography Tandem Time-of Flight Mass Spectrometry，GC-TOF-MS）检测各组大鼠粪便，运用多元分析OPLS以及单变量统计学方法筛选差异代谢物，通过MetaboAnalyst平台进行代谢通路分析。结果 对于粪便中的内源性代谢物小分子，高剂量组的黄连解毒汤影响的主要有：核糖、硫酸、棕榈酸、花生酸、茜素等；中剂量组的黄连解毒汤影响的主要有：乌头酸、胆固醇、乳酸、棕榈油酸、茜素等；低剂量组的黄连解毒汤影响的主要有：硫酸、棉子糖；氨苄西林钠影响的主要有：蛋氨酸1、麦角固醇、正亮氨酸1、棕榈酸、硫酸、乳酸等；不同剂量的黄连解毒汤和氨苄西林钠都能够影响到半乳糖代谢及硫代谢通路。结论 黄连解毒汤可改善糖尿病和心脑血管疾病相关的代谢物小分子，不同剂量的黄连解毒汤对粪便代谢的影响不同，其中中剂量的影响最为广泛。     

基于“证治代谢组学”假说探讨中药（单体/复方）药效物质基础的研究思路与实践＊

中药(单体/复方)药效物质基础研究是中医药现代研究的关键问题之一。然而,目前运用的生化和分子生物学方法很难诠释其多靶点、整体性和动态性的整合调节作用。课题组提出的"证治代谢组学"假说理论指出,不同的证候存在"证相关代谢谱群"和"证相关生物标志物",这可能是中药药效物质基础所在,辨证论治后偏离的代谢网络功能呈现回归趋势。基于"证治代谢组学"假说开展中药(单体/复方)药效物质基础研究,这将为阐释中药(单体/复方)防病治病和养生保健的科学内涵及其对疾病个体的整合调节作用提供新的思路。本文以冠心病为研究载体、气阴虚血瘀证为切入点、活血保心丸为干预措施,就该研究思路的内涵与总体模式、提出的背景与依据、实践的方式与可行性、创新与特色及其研究意义等进行了简要介绍。