Texas two-step: the Lone Star state lures two top scientists

Texas two-step: the Lone Star state lures two top scientists

On Friday, the physician turned politician Ron Paul announced plans to seek the Republican presidential nomination. But Paul wasn’t the only medical professional making headlines in the Lone Star state. University officials last week announced that the Texas had also corralled a pair of leading scientists to lead research efforts at two of the state’s premier institutions. University of Texas regents on Wednesday named Ronald DePinho as the next president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. A long-time cancer geneticist at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, in recent years DePinho has turned his attention to the  … Read more

China’s new WHO flu monitoring center seeks to reverse criticism

China's new WHO flu monitoring center seeks to reverse criticism

By Hepeng Jia BEIJING — China has not always been a world leader when it comes to infectious disease surveillance. Severe acute respiratory syndrome caught the country by surprise in 2003, and, two years later, government officials went into denial after reports surfaced that H5N1 avian influenza had infected people and birds. But since those debacles, China has ramped up its screening efforts, building several infectious-disease institutes and more than 400 labs devoted to flu surveillance and testing, plus adding sentinel equipment to some 550 hospitals. So when H1N1 ‘swine flu’ struck four years later, the world’s most populous country  … Read more

Q&A: Straight talk with…George Radda

Q&A: Straight talk with...George Radda

By David Cyranoski Singapore, the fastest growing economy in Asia last year, has enjoyed a decade of free-flowing research funding. Money is still pouring in, but the question remains whether money can buy international-class science, especially after the sudden attachment of strings to grant money starting last fall. Perhaps the best person to answer this question is Sir George Radda (he received his knighthood in 2000). Radda was the chief executive of the UK’s Medical Research Council (MRC) from 1996 to 2003. In his final year at the helm of the MRC, he had his first interaction with Singapore’s budding  … Read more

Report backs pending legislation to investigate disease clusters

Report backs pending legislation to investigate disease clusters

By Alisa Opar In Kettleman City, California, a town of 1,620 people, 11 babies were born with severe birth defects in the last three years. Meanwhile, at least 60 men who lived on the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina from the late 1950s into the 1980s have developed breast cancer. And residents in Wellington, Ohio are three times more likely to develop multiple sclerosis than in the rest of the country. A new report highlights these and 39 other so-called ‘disease clusters’—defined as unusual aggregations, real or perceived, of health events grouped together in time and space—that  … Read more

NIH funding rates drop to record lows

NIH funding rates drop to record lows

Although the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) was largely spared the budgetary axe in the agreement reached last month by Congress, researchers will nevertheless soon feel the sting. Speaking before a Senate appropriations subcommittee yesterday, NIH director Francis Collins said that agency will likely only fund one in six grants in 2011 — the first time that the award rate has dipped below 20%. Here, the percentages of individual research project grants (R01s) awarded over the past 15 years are shown (with the projected level for 2011).  Read more

Companies race to develop first Hedgehog inhibitor cancer drug

Companies race to develop first Hedgehog inhibitor cancer drug

By Elie Dolgin ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Basal cell carcinoma is the most common form of skin cancer, but in people with a hereditary predisposition to this disease, lesions crop up so fast that they can hardly keep pace with their doctor’s appointments. “Surgery can become tedious, and often, because of that, people don’t go as often as they should and the [cancerous] areas grow larger,” says Maria Michalowski, a former board member of the Basal Cell Carcinoma Nevus Syndrome (BCCNS) Life Support Network who herself suffers from the disease. Yet, judging by trial results reported here last month at the  … Read more

New technologies promise to improve blood supply safety

New technologies promise to improve blood supply safety

NEW YORK — Ever since scientists first linked an obscure blood-borne virus to chronic fatigue syndrome two years ago, blood centers around the world have been scrambling to determine whether their collections are safe. With memories of previous blood scares still fresh in the minds of blood bank officials, many collection centers have even gone so far as to bar donations from people with the disease. But it’s not just xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus (XMRV) that threatens global blood supplies today. Even well-known pathogens such as hepatitis B virus can slip through the cracks of existing screening techniques, leading to contaminated blood products and accidental infections.  Read more

Bangladesh eyes the generic pharma pie

Bangladesh eyes the generic pharma pie

By T V Padma China and India, in 2001 and 2005, respectively, amended their patent laws to comply with the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, which bans making generic copies of drugs still under patent protection. The move sparked concerns about the affordability of medicines in poor countries. But Bangladesh, categorized among the world’s least developed countries (LDCs) according to the UN, hopes to fill the void—at least for the next five years. Under the TRIPS agreement, LDCs can make generic versions of patented drugs until 2016. Bangladesh already has an estimated 350 drug companies,  … Read more

Gloomy pharma forecast in Japan downgraded after quake

Gloomy pharma forecast in Japan downgraded after quake

By Branwen Morgan Japan is the world’s second largest pharmaceutical market after the US on the basis of total revenue. But according to Business Monitor International (BMI), a London-based analyst firm, Japan’s overall pharmaceutical market is stagnating, and the devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck in March has introduced new uncertainties. In its initial review, published in early March, BMI stated that factors such as the government’s cuts to subsidies for prescription medicines and its pro-generics stance will conspire to lower annual growth rates going forward. Presently, pharmaceutical expenditure is 1.8% of the country’s gross domestic product and BMI predicted that  … Read more

Russia pledges $4 billion for Pharma-2020 plan

Russia pledges $4 billion for Pharma-2020 plan

By Gary Peach Russia’s biomedical industry is woefully underdeveloped, accounting for only 0.2% of the world market. But plans are afoot to change that. Speaking at the opening of a new birth center in Ryazan on 11 March, for example, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated that the government wants to boost Russia’s presence on the world biopharma stage to 3–5% in the next decade. And he emphasized that the country already possesses the necessary academic and research institutions to achieve that. “We need to come up with measures to stimulate demand for Russia-made biotechnological products and remove barriers that often  … Read more