Thomas Ichim, CEO of MediStem, Inc. talks with Dr. Evan Snyder of Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute.
Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal
A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.
Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a “sole-source” procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation’s biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government’s specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.
READ MORE: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-smallpox-20111113,0,4293298.story
The La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology has become the fifth organization in the prestigious Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, joining colleagues from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Scripps Research Institute, University of California, San Diego and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in the first-of-its-kind multi-institutional stem cell research collaboration.
Slated to open its new collaborative research facility in November, the Sanford Consortium will marshal the intellectual resources of its five collaborating organizations – all world-leaders in life sciences – to improve human health through stem cell research.
Steve - thank you for changing the world. Your innovations will be missed. Cancer took you away from us way too soon. Your products have changed the way we look at the world and pushed us to make changes to the world one step at a time.
Email rememberingsteve@apple.com if you want to leave a note for Apple.
It’s been 40 years since President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act in 1971, the historic legislation that focused attention — and perhaps more importantly, government funding — on the need to research and find treatments for cancer. A lot has changed in the past four decades. The disease that doctors thought they knew then is very different from the cancer they’re studying today. For one thing, scientists have a much better understanding that cancer isn’t simply one disease in which cells suddenly start to grow out of control, but rather hundreds of different diseases. In fact, according to the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Cancer Progress Report, cancer is actually more like 200 distinct diseases, each spurred on by slightly different causes and requiring different treatments. And instead of focusing so slavishly on the tumors themselves, as experts did initially, researchers have enlarged the window through which they study cancer, allowing the consideration of other critical features, such as how the patient’s own makeup might affect the disease. Scientists also look at how tumors tend to co-opt their environment for their own pathological needs, turning healthy tissues into diseased ones in a process that makes cancer increasingly difficult to control.
Great TIME Article written by Alice Park
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/21/cancer-researchs-40th-anniversary-how-far-have-we-come/
Medistem Inc. announced it will be presenting results from cardiac patients treated with the company’s Endometrial Regenerative Cell (ERC) universal donor stem cell product at the upcoming World Stem Cell Summit Oct 3-4 in Pasadena, California.
“These new data, along with our previous publication describing use of ERC in heart failure (link to paper: http://www.intarchmed.com/content/pdf/1755-7682-3-5.pdf ), provide support for developing heart failure as Medistem’s second clinical indication after critical limb ischemia,” said Dr. Vladimir Bogin, Chairman of Medistem Inc. “In the USA heart failure causes approximately 200,000 deaths per year and costs our Health Care system approximately $30 billion per year. It is our intention to expand the current studies to assess whether our ‘off the shelf’ stem cell product help patients with this devastating condition.”
READ MORE:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/medistem-to-present-patient-safety-data-on-endometrial-regenerative-cell-product-for-treatment-of-heart-failure-2011-09-19?reflink=MW_news_stmp
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning has reportedly undergone a stem cell treatment in Europe because of a neck injury that is so far this season keeping him off of the field and on the sidelines, according to news reports. Manning is currently suffering from a bulging disk in his neck; he has undergone surgery several times this year to correct the injury.
Manning’s treatment is not approved in the United States, and involves using the four-time MVP’s own fat cells to regenerate the nerves around his neck, AOL Sporting News reported.
The New York Daily News reported that Manning underwent another neck surgery after undergoing the stem cell treatment.
Athletes are allowed to undergo stem cell therapies”unless a banned substance is used as part of the procedure,” an NFL spokesman told The Daily News.
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning has reportedly undergone a stem cell treatment in Europe because of a neck injury that is so far this season keeping him off of the field and on the sidelines, according to news reports. Manning is currently suffering from a bulging disk in his neck; he has undergone surgery several times this year to correct the injury.
Manning’s treatment is not approved in the United States, and involves using the four-time MVP’s own fat cells to regenerate the nerves around his neck, AOL Sporting News reported.
The New York Daily News reported that Manning underwent another neck surgery after undergoing the stem cell treatment.
Athletes are allowed to undergo stem cell therapies”unless a banned substance is used as part of the procedure,” an NFL spokesman told The Daily News.
New drug could cure nearly any viral infection Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Lab have developed technology that may someday cure the common cold, influenza and other ailments.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.htmlMost bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, discovered decades ago. However, such drugs are useless against viral infections, including influenza, the common cold, and deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola.Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania announced Wednesday that they have discovered a possibly “huge” breakthrough in the fight against cancer.
In two medical journals, the scientists revealed that a new treatment targeting a patient’s white blood cells, which are part of the body’s immune system, shows signs of early promise in combating leukemia.
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/95/95ra73.abstract
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849?query=featured_home
“This is a huge accomplishment — huge,” Dr. Lee M. Nadler of Harvard Medical School told theLos Angeles Times. Nadler discovered the molecule on cancer cells that the newly engineered T-Cells were instructed to target.
Have you watched the film? A film that hit theaters in 2010 is available online and on Netflix.
Dr. Oz interviewed Director Eric Merola and Dr. Burzynski on May 17th, 2011 on SiriusXM Radio. Cancer is big business and those affected by it will be caught in a dying business model. Have you done the research and are you ready to tackle the disease?
The film was presented at the Newport Beach Film Festival in April 2010. The filmmaker used his own money and credit cards to pay for the film (direct words from the filmmaker Eric Merola). Watch the link below…
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Director Shane Carruth answers audience questions along with producer Casey Gooden, actor Andrew Sensenig, and editor David Lowery after the...
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