Two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are reviewing their editorial policies after complaints that they published material by researchers with undisclosed financial interests in their research fields.

Thirty-two researchers and ethicists signed the complaint about articles in recent issues of the two journals. Science recently published five items involving researchers who may have financial biases, the critics said. The articles in question were generally editorials, commentaries and data reviews of other scientists' work, which generally are not covered by disclosure policies.

According to the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, Danforth Plant Sciences Center published an editorial supporting genetically engineered crops. Danforth has been supported by agri-giant Monsanto, CSPI said. In another example, critics said Emory University's psychiatry chairman reviewed mood disorder therapies in the monthly journal Nature Neuroscience without revealing his ownership of a patent on one of the treatments.

Nature's executive editor said he is considering changing the publication's disclosure rules and pointing out in print which contributors decline to answer disclosure questions. But he said most of what the critics described as "academic entrepreneurship" is appropriate and doesn't necessarily taint research.

- - -

Keeping an eye on SARS: Tracking both rumors and reality, the World Health Organization announced plans to test a new SARS surveillance system next week in the regions of China that were hardest hit by the disease.

Health specialists want such surveillance in place in case SARS, which ebbed in June, returns in the cold weather of coming months. With a four-week trial run of the system, WHO hopes to see China detecting more suspected SARS cases — even if those cases don't turn out to be the disease — in the belief that many false alarms demonstrate better medical vigilance.

WHO officials in Beijing have said they were concerned that China, unlike other affected countries, has had very few SARS-related false alarms, or "noise." That suggests less information is flowing in or being made public. The trial will involve between 10 and 14 hospitals in southern China's Guangdong and northern China's Shanxi and in Beijing, said WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng.

- - -

Cancer vaccine trials suspended: Antigenics said regulators suspended late-stage clinical trials of the company's cancer vaccine and requested more information about the product before the company can proceed.

The company said just two weeks ago that the vaccine significantly improved survival in 52 percent of patients with advanced colon cancer who responded to the drug. Antigenics also said on Aug. 18 that all 15 of the colon cancer patients whose immune systems responded to Oncophage were alive two years after the treatment, while only half of the patients who did not respond to the vaccine were alive.

Antigenics said safety of the Oncophage vaccine was not an issue in discussions with the FDA, and patients already enrolled in Phase III trials could continue with their course of treatment. Oncophage is a personalized vaccine derived from a patient's own tumor. Because the injected drug contains the patient's own genetic codes, it is believed to be more effective in re-programming the immune system to attack the cancer without side effects.

- - -

Using fat to fight fat: Scientists have found clues to how a naturally occurring fat compound blocks hunger, which could pave the way for a new class of safer anti-obesity drugs.

In a study published in Nature, scientists at the University of California at Irvine said they had shown how the fatty acid oleyethelanolamide (OEA) – found naturally in the diet – bonds with cells to send the body a signal to stop eating.

The researchers fed high-fat diets to two groups of mice: one normal and one mutant group with cell receptors that interact with OEA genetically removed. Normal mice ate less and lost weight with the treatment, but it had no effect on the mice with their cell receptors removed – suggesting that cell receptors play a key role in how the fat communicates to the body to stop eating.

Other man-made drugs that are now being tested for obesity work in similar ways, but they are seen as potentially more toxic than naturally occurring OEA, researchers said..

- - -

Compiled by Kari L. Dean. Reuters and AP contributed to this report.

Trials Begin for Cancer Vaccine

Cancer's Enema No. 1? Make That 2

More SARS or Just a False Alarm?

Tiny Capsule Could Fight Fat

Read more Technology news