Monthly Archives: November 2010

Has the media turned its back on the AIDS epidemic?

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With the annual World AIDS Day coming up on Wednesday, the media is awash with reports of last week’s New England Journal of Medicine study showing that antiretroviral drugs that control HIV in infected people can also help prevent new infections.

But the heightened media attention in the last week is likely an anomaly. According to a European team of researchers, coverage of HIV– and AIDS-related topics in the print news media has fallen by more than 70% in developed countries over the last 20 years.

A survey of 115 leading newspapers from around the world revealed that around 1.5 articles linked to HIV/AIDS were published on average each day in the early 1990s, compared with fewer than 0.5 articles per newspaper issue today. In contrast, news stories related to climate change have increased more than ten-fold over the same period, leading to an increased focus on curbing carbon emissions in the political and social agenda of Western countries.

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23andMe adopts bigger and better genotyping chip — with a discount to celebrate

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In case you missed 23andMe’s fire sale on DNA Day in April, here’s your chance to pick up one of the company’s personalized genetic test kits again for just $99. The Mountain View, California-based genetic test provider announced today that it is rolling out a brand new chip that can test around one million single-nucleotide polymorphisms, compared to just 600,000 SNPs on the old platform. And to celebrate the new technology, for a limited time customers can snag the test for just $99 — a $400 savings from the regular price.

23andMe’s third-generation chip is based on Illumina’s HumanOmniExpress array, which includes 733,302 genome-wide markers, combined with an additional 200,000 custom SNPs. According to the company’s press release, the new chip has better coverage of genes associated with drug metabolism, autoimmune conditions and Mendelian diseases such as Tay-sachs.

With the new genotyping platform, 23andMe has also rolled out a new business model. Gone are the separate health and ancestry components; instead, the company is only offering the comprehensive full genome scan. In the past, 23andMe also continually updated customers’ profiles for free as new genetic links from the latest genome-wide association studies came in. Now, however, the company is requiring a $5 per month subscription fee to keep accounts up-to-date.

Over at Genetic Future, geneticist-blogger Daniel MacArthur has a comprehensive break-down of the new chip’s specs, as well as the discount code needed to cash in on the $99 reduced price.

Image by KeepTheByte via Flickr Creative Commons

Scientist v. employer in stem cell legal battle

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James Sherley, the researcher leading the charge to derail the Obama administration’s stem cell policy, hasn’t made many friends among the scientific community. And now Sherley can add his home institution to his list of personal detractors.

Yesterday, the Boston Biomedical Research Institute asked to join an amicus brief in support of the government’s appeal of the 23 August temporary injunction barring federal funds from going toward human embryonic stem cell research, ScienceInsider reports.

This isn’t the first time that Sherley has found himself in direct opposition with his employer. In 2007, Sherley held an 11-day hunger strike outside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provost’s office to protest what he saw as racist motives behind his denial of tenure.

Hey Big Pharma, hey big spender

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The economic turmoil of the past couple years prompted countless job cuts in the pharmaceutical industry. Yet despite the reductions in work force, drug makers actually increased their investments in research and development in 2009, according to the newly released EU Industrial R&D Investment Scorecard, which analyzes the spending patterns of the top 1,400 companies around the world.

FierceBiotech crunched the numbers and came up with the top ten research spenders in pharma and biotech, respectively. Intriguingly, four of the top six pharma companies are based in the EU, while none of the top 10 biotechs are European. Meanwhile, Japanese companies — which saw a 26.5% hike in R&D investment last year, compared to just 2% in the US and EU — continue to climb the ranks.

The data, as assembled by FierceBiotech, follows below the jump:

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Second embryonic stem cell trial to go ahead

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Just a month after Geron Corporation started treating people with its embryonic stem (ES) cell-based therapy, GRNOPC1, US regulators have given the green light to a second company to begin trials using human ES cells.

Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration approved the Santa Monica, California-based company’s application to use retinal cells derived from ES cells to treat people suffering from Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy, a common form of progressive juvenile blindness. The phase 1/2 trial will involve 12 patients at several hospitals across the US, including the Casey Eye Institute in Portland, Oregon, and the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts.

According to Robert Lanza, ACT’s chief scientific officer, the company also plans to file an investigational new drug application in the coming weeks to use the same ES cell-derived retinal cells to treat people with macular degeneration.

Stargardt’s macular dystrophy affects around 25,000 people in the US, and occurs in approximately one in 10,000 children. By comparison, macular degeneration impairs the sight of more than 10 million Americans.

Image: The left eye of a Stargardt’s patient from Özdek et al., Eye 19, 1222–1225 (2005).

Allegations of free stem cell treatments hit Korean company

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From the way some politicians in the US talk, you couldn’t picture them touching a dish of stem cells with a ten-foot pole. But attitudes seem different elsewhere. The Korean health ministry is reportedly looking into allegations that the Seoul-based firm RNL Bio provided free stem cell treatments to politicians and celebrities in return for promises of eased regulations on stem cell therapies. (Stem cell treatments are illegal in Korea.)

Of more immediate concern to the company may be the fact that the International Cellular Medicine Society — the association of doctors that has established itself as a stem cell clinic watchdog alongside the more academically-inclined International Society for Stem Cell Research — launched an investigation into RNL Bio earlier this month. The action comes in response to reports that two people died after they received stem cell injections from RNL as anti-aging treatments.

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You don’t get to 500 million friends without causing a few diseases

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3686402702_67aae1fecd.jpgThe need to constantly check social networking sites like Facebook can be so habit forming that psychologists now have a name for the obsession: Facebook Addiction Disorder. And while many critics might dismiss this latest FAD as a relatively harmless waste of time, new research suggests that incessantly updating your status and gawking at your friend’s photos can cause serious illness.

Earlier this year, for example, researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK surveyed the Web-surfing habits of around 1,300 people and found that those who regularly frequented social networking site were much more prone to clinical depression than other internet users. Facebook and similar sites have even been blamed for higher incidences of venereal disease because, public health officials say, social networking encourages more causal, unprotected sex. And now Italian doctors are blaming Mark Zuckerberg’s site for driving a man to serious breathing problems.

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The drug war to replace warfarin

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atrial_fib_stroke.jpgFollowing a report out yesterday that the blood thinner rivaroxaban is at least as good as warfarin at preventing strokes in patients with erratic heartbeats, doctors and analysts are abuzz with predictions about which new stroke-prevention drugs will come to dominate the marketplace.

The success of rivaroxaban — based on a 14,000-plus patient study and reported Monday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in Chicago — comes on the heels of last month’s approval by the US Food and Drug Administration of a similar anti-clotting agent called Dabigatran for the same condition. “Both of these drugs are game-changers,” Douglas Zipes, a cardiologist at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Bloomington, told the LA Times.

Three more pills for treating atrial fibrillation, a heartbeat irregularity disease that can lead to bleeding complications and ultimately stroke, are also moving toward possible marketing approval in the next few years, and it remains unclear which drug will come out on top. More than two million Americans suffer from atrial fibrillation, and analysts estimate that sales for medicines in this class could top $20 billion a year.

Comparing the two leading contenders, rivaroxaban, which is marketed as Xarelto by Bayer and Johnson & Johnson, performed slightly worse than Boehringer Ingelheim’s Dabigatran, also known as Pradaxa, in relation to warfarin. But the two trials considered different study populations and the drugs have not been tested head-to-head.

Rivaroxaban has the advantage of only requiring one pill per day, compared to Dabigatran’s twice daily dose. But Dabigatran, by being the first to market, could have the leg up over it’s as-yet unapproved counterpart.

Image: NHLBI

Animalgesic effects

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Animal experiments have produced an explosion of information about pain, but this knowledge has failed to yield new painkillers for use in humans. This abysmal track record has led to calls to overhaul the design of preclinical studies. Elie Dolgin goes to great pains to learn how monitoring rodents’ facial expressions and brain activity might offer a more effective and humane way to test drug candidates.

Click here to read the rest of the news feature, part of our November special focus on understanding the neurobiological basis of pain and the challenges to translate these advances into new analgesics.

Stem cell trial for stroke begins

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Cross posted from Nature’s The Great Beyond blog.

A safety trial of a stem cell therapy for stroke has enrolled its first patient, the UK company developing the treatment announced today.

Surrey-based ReNeuron’s treatment will transplant neural stem cells into the brains of stroke patients, in hopes of promoting the renewal of damaged areas. The firm won approval for the trial of 12 patients last year, after establishing that the therapy is safe and effective in rat models of stroke.

Read the rest of the post on The Great Beyond.