Ah, yes, the Juggernauts of Biology. That was a fun article to write. Indeed, the professor we're critiquing (and also praising) was on my committee, and I had a copy of an early draft of the Juggernauts paper literally in my back pocket during my thesis defense [0].
That research is somewhat unrelated to what I'm doing - the more relevant paper is this (happily open access thanks to the NIH) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3376188/: The molecule demonstrates great results - single digit nanomolar IC50s (somewhere between taxol and paclitaxel-level strength). And also mitigated cardiotoxicity, which was the major concern preventing continuation of preclinical experiments in the parent compound.
Briefly back to the topic of (the typical scientific) press releases, they have always been a strange animal, authored by nonscientist PR agents hired by the institution, bragging about some achievement, without directly asking for funds - in the case of universities possibly indirectly suggesting to alumni that their donations are going for good and in the case of institutions like NASA, reassuring the public that their taxpayer dollars are well-spent.
[0] so this was an option for me. http://xkcd.com/1403/
