Today’s dose is all about color, from the color of hospital gowns to getting a darker tan during pregnancy to coloring in an individual’s genome sequence with its clinical relevance.
The Daily Dose – Please shine down on Mommy
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Monthly Archives: April 2010
Cancer vaccine given the go ahead
The US Food and Drug Administration today approved Provenge, a first-of-a kind vaccine for the treatment of prostate cancer. Seattle-based Dendreon’s therapeutic vaccine is tailor-made by taking a patient’s own immune cells and exposing them to a protein called prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP) that is found in most prostate cancers. The treatment proved to extend lifespan by more than four months on average.
“It’s a turning point for the field,” Dendreon chief executive Mitchell Gold said at a news briefing today.
The biotech, which is in the process of ramping up capacity at its three manufacturing plants, said the drug will be made available to around 2000 patients at about 50 clinics over the next year, and will cost $93,000 for a standard three-shot complete course of treatment — only $23,000 per month of extra life, the company boasted.
All told, that’s not a bad deal when you compare the price to that of other cancer meds.
The Daily Dose – There’s a (killer) fungus among us
Today’s dose includes new evidence that a fatal fungus is spreading, and a call for more evidence related to Alzheimer’s prevention. We also examine potential gene discrimination and a way to make malaria easier to treat.
Canadian biomedical research gets central repository
Two years ago, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) mandated that all studies funded by taxpayer-backed grants be made freely accessible within six months of publication. The problem was there was no central repository to store all these papers, so manuscripts tended to be kept on a hodgepodge of publishers’ websites, institutional repositories and elsewhere.
Now there’s a solution. As of today, researchers can submit their final peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central (PMC) Canada, the north-of-the-border spin-off of the US National Institutes of Health’s PMC, a free digital archive of biomedical journal paper.
The Daily Dose – California dreamin’
Today’s dose has that Golden State shine, with good news for California’s stem cell efforts, as well as two new research findings coming out of Anaheim.
The ‘pinkwashing’ of chicken buckets and firearms
America is becoming ‘pinkwashed.’ No, it’s not what happens when you accidentally wash a red shirt with your white laundry. It’s what happens when well-meaning messages — in this case, supporting breast cancer research — get clouded by commercialism.
The latest, and now most famous, case is KFC’s pink bucket. Earlier this month, the fast food giant announced that it would donate 50 cents of every bucket of fried (or grilled) chicken toward Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer charity. The campaign has already raised more than $2 million from both buckets and online donations, on the way toward a goal of $8.5 million, but it surely hasn’t been without ridicule. Many opponents point out how unhealthy eating and obesity have been linked to breast cancer and, of course, to fast food restaurants such as KFC. (Surely, the buzzed-about Double Down ‘sandwich’ hasn’t helped rid the company of its unhealthy image.)
Keeping an eye on Lucentis
The controversial drug Lucentis in combination with laser treatment can improve eyesight in people with diabetes-associated blindness, researchers from the US National Eye Institute (NEI) reported today.
The findings have been hailed as a major advance for those suffering from a condition known as diabetic macular edema. But critics have lambasted the government agency for testing Genentech’s Lucentis instead of the company’s much cheaper cancer drug Avastin, which works by the same mechanism as Lucentis and is already prescribed off-label by many retina specialists.
Two years ago, we reported how eye doctors raised a stink after Genentech proposed to restrict sales of Avastin — which costs only $50 to $100 a dose when used in the eye compared to about $2,000 a pop for Lucentis — for treating macular degeneration.
Now, researchers are crying foul over the NEI’s decision to accept $9 million in financing and free drugs from Genentech in exchange for testing Lucentis over Avastin. The trial was “clearly a case of pay to play,” University of Miami ophthalmologist Philip Rosenfeld told the New York Times.
Genentech is reportedly conducting two of its own clinical trials, and plans to seek regulatory approval to market Lucentis, also known as ranibizumab, for macular edema. The NEI is also carrying out a trial comparing Lucentis to Avastin for treating macular degeneration. Results for all these trials are expected next year.
Image of macular edema via Wikipedia
The Daily Dose – A shot of history
Today’s dose features a grave reminder for vaccination. There’s also news on cancer patients feeling the pain of insurance, and the discovery of new painkiller targets. Lastly, the US Food and Drug Administration shakes up the evaluation of medical devices.
Yale shooting
Cross posted from Nature’s The Great Beyond blog.
An infectious diseases researcher at Yale University has been murdered outside of his home in what is believed to be a workplace related dispute. Vajinder Toor, a first year postdoctoral fellow in the school of medicine’s infectious diseases department, was gunned down on the morning of 26 April in Bradford, Connecticut.
The Daily Dose – Positive about being negative
Another week, another dose. Today there’s new ammo in the wars on HIV, tobacco, and conflict of interest. Also, there’s talk of being “overwhelmed with work,” but it’s not about you.