News of the Week take safety measures, and causing an environmental disaster. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two and a half to five years. In this month's appeal court decision, after seven hours of deliberation, all charges were dropped against ICMESA chairman Guy Waldvogel, Swiss head of planning of the firm Fritz Moerim, and Italian technical director Giovanni Radice. For two of the defendants— West Germans Jorg Anton Sambeth, technical director of Givaudan, and Herwig von Zwehl, technical director of ICMESA—charges were reduced from "intentional omission of safety measures" to "neglect of providing safety measures." The appeals court sentenced Sambeth to a suspended prison term of one and a half years and von Zwehl to a suspended prison term of two years. D
Senate supports binary chemical arms funding By a four-vote margin, the Senate rejected an amendment to the Defense Department's authorization bill that would have deleted funding for production of binary chemical weapons. At the same time, the Administration was less successful in garnering support for chemical modernization among allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Pentagon this year, in contrast to last, was successful in convincing Senators of the need for a $163 million program to build binary artillery shells and bombs. It argued that the current stockpile of unitary arms is deteriorating, that binaries are safer weapons, and that modernization is needed to prod the Soviets toward an arms control agreement. The Pentagon's efforts were helped considerably by a Presidential commission. Last month, this commission concluded in an executive summary that the current stockpile was virtually useless and should be destroyed and replaced by binaries (C&EN, May 6, page 7). By contrast, a meeting of NATO defense ministers was so cool to the idea of a new chemical armament 8
May 27, 1985 C&EN
that the U.S. dropped a proposal calling on allies to recognize the need for a modern chemical deterrent. NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington argued that the U.S. should instead press for a total ban on such weapons. A major sticking point to a ban is on-site verification of chemical warfare activities. According to a 1983 General Accounting Office report, the literature suggests that binaries might complicate verification procedures, a possibility the Administration never raises.
Meanwhile, Senators opposed to chemical weapons will try to delete the production funds when the Senate votes on the DOD authorization bill as a whole. Production funding faces stiff opposition in the House, which is expected to take up the authorization bill June 10. To succeed in the House, the Pentagon reportedly must turn around 10 votes. Chemical weapons have not been produced for 16 years. They have been stored safely in their unitary form for some 40 years. D
Oncogene linked to cancer therapy resistance Further clues to the role of the oncogene N-myc are emerging from studies of Mark A. Israel of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, and colleagues there, at the National Cancer Institute, and at the Naval Medical Research Institute. A year ago, other researchers found an increased number of copies of the oncogene in about half of untreated cases of a childhood nerve cell cancer railed neuroblastoma. Now Israel and his colleagues find large increases in the product of this gene in neuroblastoma cells that have developed resistance to cancer therapy. The finding is the first evidence of a connection between a cell's resistance to therapy and increased activity of oncogenes, Israel told the American Society of Clinical On-, cology meeting in Houston earlier this month. The investigators derived four cell lines from two patients with neuroblastoma. For each patient, they derived a pretreatment cell line and another one from cells that survived initial therapy and were beginning to redevelop the tumor. Cells from these treatment-resistant cell lines had up to seven times the level of the product of the N-myc oncogene than did cells from the pretreatment cell lines. Although the product of the N-myc oncogene was increased in both treatment-resistant cell lines, the number of copies of the gene present was elevated in only one of these lines. Thus, there appear to be at least two biochemical pathways that neuroblastoma cells may
use to increase production of the oncogene product. Neuroblastoma is a cancer of undifferentiated cells—called stem cells—of the nervous system, and the N-myc gene seems to be involved in regulating that differentiation, the researchers find. They treated their laboratory-grown cells with several agents that induce cell differentiation and found that these agents reduced production of N-myc gene products 90%. The cells then began to differentiate and their growth stopped. Retinoic acid was particularly effective in reducing production of N-myc product, causing a 50% decrease within six hours and an 85% decrease within 40 hours. Those cells in which N-myc product was not decreased remained undifferentiated, the researchers find. Several possible avenues for cancer treatment are indicated by the study, Israel says. Retinoic acid at the levels used in this study already has been shown to be safe for clinical use, so a therapy using this agent might be devised. Since the N-myc oncogene seems particularly active in cells that resist other kinds of therapy, treatment of these cells with agents that reduce the oncogene's activity might be especially useful. About one in 100,000 white children in the U.S. is diagnosed with neuroblastoma each year. With current treatment methods, about 51% of these children will be alive and disease-free five years after diagnosis. D
