The field station of the CSIR Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, located in Bonera, is playing a crucial role in promoting and expanding lavender cultivation in the picturesque southern district of Pulwama.  Through their dedicated efforts, they are empowering local labourers and revolutionising agricultural practices in the region. Lavender, known for its captivating fragrance and versatile uses, has gained popularity as a crop worldwide. Recognising its potential in Jammu and Kashmir, the CSIR Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine has actively engaged in research and development to harness the benefits of lavender farming. By collaborating with local farmers and providing them with technical expertise, the institute has successfully brought lavender cultivation to the forefront of the agricultural industry in Pulwama.  This initiative has not only created new opportunities for the region but also contributed to the overall socio-economic development of the local community. The labourers working on the lavender farm are experiencing a significant improvement in their livelihoods. Many of them previously relied on traditional farming practices that yielded limited returns. With the introduction of lavender cultivation, they now have access to a high-value crop that fetches better market prices. The CSIR Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine has conducted extensive research on lavender varieties suitable for the climatic conditions of Jammu and Kashmir. Through careful selection and breeding, they have developed robust and disease-resistant lavender plants, ensuring successful harvests for the farmers. Further, the institute has imparted advanced agricultural techniques and best practices to the labourers, enabling them to maximise their yield and optimise the quality of lavender oil and other lavender-based products.  This knowledge transfer has not only enhanced productivity but has also empowered the farmers with valuable skills for sustainable agriculture. The director of the CSIR Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine said, "Our aim is to create a lavender revolution in Jammu and Kashmir, transforming the lives of farmers and boosting the economy. Lavender farming has tremendous potential, and we are committed to supporting the local community in capitalizing on this opportunity." The success of lavender cultivation in the southern Pulwama district has garnered attention from other regions in Jammu and Kashmir. Farmers and agricultural enthusiasts are now eager to adopt lavender farming, recognising its profitability and ecological benefits. With the continued efforts of the CSIR Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine and the dedication of local farmers and labourers, the lavender industry in Jammu and Kashmir is poised for remarkable growth. This collaborative endeavor is not only diversifying the agricultural landscape but also positioning the region as a key player in the lavender market.

Amid the financial crisis, government hospitals in Balochistan have run out of medicines, Pakistan vernacular media reported citing the Young Doctors Association of Balochistan. In Quetta's government hospitals, a year's worth of unrepaired CT scans, MRI, and angiography equipment is concerning as well. The Young Doctors Association Balochistan has urged electronic and media persons to also do a special report on the plight of hospitals in Quetta, as the top officials have also appealed to ensure the delivery of medicines in Government hospitals as soon as possible, Pakistan vernacular media Urdu Point reported. Earlier, The Express Tribune reported that the pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan is struggling to replenish its supplies amid a shortage of essential life-saving drugs and other surgical instruments. The economic crisis faced by Pakistan is caused by a number of factors, including the refusal of commercial banks to issue new Letters of Credit (LCs) on account of a shortage of US dollars that has impacted drug companies, as per The Express Tribune report. Pharmaceutical companies have been facing difficulty to maintain stocks of essential life-saving drugs. As experts have warned of the economy "sinking into near-paralysis", top pharmaceutical firms are facing difficulty to get raw materials to manufacture drugs while being forced to reduce production as patients suffer in hospitals, The News International reported citing sources. Due to the ongoing economic crisis, Pakistan is unable to buy basic imports, including medicine and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), several vaccines, and biological products for the treatment of several diseases, as per the news report.

The Swedish researcher Svante Paabo won this year's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research into how human beings evolved, Sweden's Karolinska Institute announced on Monday. Paabo was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1955 and performed his prize-winning studies at the University of Munich and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Paabo sequenced the genome of the Neanderthal and also discovered the previously unknown hominin Denisova. His work showed the genomic changes that came to differentiate humans and their closest cousins. He also showed that both Neanderthals and Denisovans contributed genes that still exist in modern humans. "By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human," the Nobel committee said. No scientist stands alone It has become uncommon for the Nobel Committee to award prizes to individuals alone, but the 2022 Prize for Physiology or Medicine has indeed gone to just one person. But no scientist works alone these days — Paabo heads a laboratory, which his colleague and close collaborator, Hugo Zeberg, described as "inspiring" to DW. "The scientific questions we are tackling... we live with them," said Zeberg by phone moments after Paabo's win. "It's not like we leave the lab at 5 o'clock and we stop thinking about these questions. We are totally engaged with them. It is a very inspiring environment." Their work has not only taught scientists more about the Neanderthals, but it is also credited with having helped modern medicine during the COVID pandemic. "From the genome of Neanderthals, we can learn what defines modern humans. One of our big findings was that a major risk factor for severe COVID is a gene variant that has come down from the Neanderthals," said Zeberg. "And we believe a million people have died [with COVID] because of that gene variant." Without Paabo's sequencing the Neanderthal genome, "we wouldn't know that today," said Zeberg.  The most prestigious award The Nobel Prize is considered the most prestigious award in the fields it's presented. In previous years, notable winners in the category of Physiology or Medicine have included Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Chain and Sir Howard Florey for their discovery of penicillin and Ronald Ross for his discovery that malaria is spread by mosquitoes. The science prizes are announced over the first three days in a week of Nobel Prizes, with Physiology and Medicine on Monday, Physics on Tuesday and Chemistry on Wednesday. The Nobel Prizes for Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences follow from Thursday. David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the Medicine prize last year for their work on sensing touch, temperature and pain. This year's winners receive a cash prize of 10 million Swedish Krona (about €920,000), a Nobel Medal and global recognition. The prizes will be handed out at a gala dinner in December. Alfred Nobel's legacy The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded 112 times since the prize's first year in 1901. It's gone to 224 scientists, but only 12 women. Alfred Nobel established the prize in his will before he died in 1896. He left the majority of his money to the establishment of "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind" in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and military explosives, famously established the prize so he could leave a better legacy after being criticized for "finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before." That's what a journalist wrote in an obituary mistakenly published eight years before Nobel's actual death. The article was erroneously published after the death of one of Alfred Nobel's brothers. The very first Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to Emil von Behring in 1903 for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin. He was known as the "savior of children" for his work with the disease.

Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton won the Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a major source of liver disease that affects millions worldwide. Announcing the prize in Stockholm, the Nobel Committee noted that the trio's work identified a major source of blood-borne hepatitis that couldn't be explained by the previously discovered hepatitis A and B viruses. Their work, dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, has helped saved millions of lives, the committee said. "Thanks to their discovery, highly sensitive blood tests for the virus are now available and these have essentially eliminated post-transfusion hepatitis in many parts of the world, greatly improving global health," the committee said. "Their discovery also allowed the rapid development of antiviral drugs directed at hepatitis C," it added. "For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population." The World Health Organization estimates there are over 70 million cases of hepatitis C worldwide and 400,000 deaths from it each year. The disease is chronic and a major cause of liver cancer and cirrhosis requiring liver transplants. The medicine prize carried particular significance this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has highlighted the importance that medical research has for societies and economies around the world. Will Irving, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, said that identifying hepatitis C had been the "holy grail" in medicine. "After hepatitis A and B were discovered in the 1970s, it was clear there was still at least one other virus or more that were causing liver damage," he said. "We knew there was a virus in the blood supply, because when people had blood transfusion they would get liver damage," Irving said. "It was recognized as a risk but there was nothing we could do. We didn't know what the virus was and we couldn't test for it." Nobel Committee member Patrik Ernfors drew a parallel between this year's prize and the current rush by millions of scientists around the world to combat the coronavirus pandemic. "The first thing you need to do is to identify the causing virus," he told reporters. "And once that has been done, that is, in itself, the starting point for development of drugs to treat the disease and also to develop vaccines against the disorder." "So the actual discovery, viral discovery itself, is a critical moment," said Ernfors. Unlike hepatitis A, which is transmitted via food or water and causes an acute infection that can last a few weeks, hepatitis B and C are transmitted through blood. American scientist Baruch Blumberg discovered the hepatitis B virus in 1967 and received the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine, but this did not explain all cases of chronic hepatitis, a disease that was becoming more common even in apparently healthy people who had received or given blood. "Before the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, it was a bit like Russian roulette to get a blood transfusion," said Nobel Committee member Nils-Goran Larsson. Alter, who was born in 1935 in New York, was working at the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda when he discovered that plasma from patients who didn't have hepatitis B could also could transfer the disease. "The breakthrough came in 1989, when Michael Houghton and colleagues working at Chiron Corporation used a combination of molecular biology and immunology-based techniques to clone the virus," said Nobel Committee member Gunilla Karlsson-Hedestam. Later, Nobel winner Rice confirmed that a cloned hepatitis virus alone could cause persistent infection in chimpanzees and reproduce the disease observed in humans. The hepatitis C virus belongs to a group known as flaviviruses that also includes West Nile virus, dengue virus and yellow fever virus. Thomas Perlmann, the Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee, said he managed to reach two of the winners, Alter and Rice. "I had to call a couple of times before they answered," he said. "They seemed very surprised and very, very happy." The prestigious Nobel award comes with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1,118,000), courtesy of a bequest left 124 years ago by the prize's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Graham Foster, professor of hepatology at Queen Mary University, said the discovery of hepatitis C had prevented millions from getting sick or dying of the disease or other liver problems and that the awarding of the Nobel to Alter, Houghton and Rice was very well deserved. Foster said the discovery has had significant impacts in both developing countries, like Egypt and Pakistan, where millions were infected by the disease via contaminated medical equipment or procedures, and in developed countries like the U.S., where the blood supply itself was often contaminated. "This discovery allowed for safe blood transfusion and it allowed the rapid development of treatments for hepatitis C," Foster said. "We are now in a position where we have drugs that are 96% effective if you take a pill for eight weeks." He said Egypt had implemented a massive screening program to detect hepatitis C and virtually eliminated the disease. Foster estimated in recent years, tens of millions of people have been infected with hepatitis C. "Identifying the virus has allowed us to protect the majority of those people." The Nobel Committee often recognizes basic science that has laid the foundations for practical applications in common use today. "It takes time before it's fully apparent how beneficial a discovery is," said Perlmann. "Of course these serological tests have been around for quite a while, but the antiviral drugs that emerged as a consequence of this significant discovery have been much more recent." Monday's medicine award is the first of six prizes in 2020 being announced through Oct. 12. The other prizes are for outstanding work in the fields of physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics. Source: AP/UNB AH

The 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to scientists William G. Kaelin, Jr, Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of "how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability," the Nobel Committee announced Monday. The discoveries made by the three men "have fundamental importance for physiology and have paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anemia, cancer and many other diseases," said the Karolinska Institute. The trio — Kaelin and Semenza are Americans, and Ratcliffe is British — will share equally the 9 million kronor ($918,000) cash award. It is the 110th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901. Kaelin works at Harvard, Semenza at Johns Hopkins University and Ratcliffe is at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain. In announcing the prize, the Nobel Committee said the work by the three laureates has "greatly expanded our knowledge of how physiological response makes life possible." The Committee said that Semenza, Ratcliffe and Kaelin found "the molecular switch for how to adapt" when oxygen levels in the body vary, noting that the most fundamental job for cells is to convert oxygen to food and that cells and tissues constantly experience changes in oxygen availability. Thomas Perlmann, the secretary of the Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute, said he was able to call all three laureates Monday. But he reached Kaelin via his sister who gave him two phone numbers — the first one was a wrong number. "He was really happy," Perlmann told a news conference. The announcement kicked off Nobel week. The Nobel Physics prize is handed out Tuesday and the following day is the chemistry prize. This year's double-header Literature Prizes — one each for 2018 and 2019 — will be awarded Thursday and the Peace Prize will be announced on Friday. The economics prize will be awarded on Oct. 14. The 2018 literature prize was suspended after a scandal rocked the Swedish Academy. The body plans to award it this year, along with announcing the 2019 laureate. Prize founder Alfred Nobel — a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite — decided the physics, chemistry, medicine and literature prizes should be awarded in Stockholm, and the peace prize in Oslo. He specifically designated the institutions responsible for the prizes: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry; the Karolinska Institute is responsible for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; the Swedish Academy picks the Nobel Prize in Literature; and a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian Parliament decides who wins the Nobel Peace Prize. The economics prize — officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — wasn't created by Nobel, but by Riksbanken, Sweden's central bank, in 1968. It is the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that was tasked with selecting the winner. Nobel glory this year comes with a 9-million kronor ($918,000) cash award, a gold medal and a diploma. The laureates receive them at elegant ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. Source: AP/UNB AH

Two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for research that has revolutionized the treatment of cancer, the jury said on Monday. The pair were honored “for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation,” the Nobel Assembly said. Reports AFP. Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy targets proteins made by some immune system cells, as well as some cancer cells. The proteins can stop the body’s natural defenses from killing cancer cells. The therapy is designed to remove this protein “brake” and allow the immune system to more quickly get to work fighting the cancer. Allison, a professor at the University of Texas, and Honjo, a professor at Kyoto University, in 2014 won the Tang Prize, touted as Asia’s version of the Nobels, for their research. The duo will share the Nobel prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about $1.01 million or 870,000 euros). They will receive their prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament. Last year, US geneticists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young were awarded the medicine prize for their research on the role of genes in setting the “circadian clock” which regulates sleep and eating patterns, hormones and body temperature. The winners of this year’s physics prize will be announced on Tuesday, followed by the chemistry prize on Wednesday. The peace prize will be announced on Friday, and the economics prize will wrap up the Nobel season on Monday, October 8. For the first time since 1949, the Swedish Academy has postponed the announcement of the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize until next year, amid a #MeToo scandal and bitter internal dispute that has prevented it from functioning properly. AH