How I’ve Discovered Twitter Can Be a Resource, Not a Waste of Time. Michael Gilman11/1/10 “If you’re so busy, why do you spend so much time on Twitter?”
So asks a member of my household who shall go unnamed here. Well, here’s why. Twitter has become my primary source for news, my point of contact with the important people in my life, and my connection to a rich and growing professional network. I no longer bother to collect the morning paper from the driveway. Dollars for Docs: Who’s On Pharma’s Top-Paid List? Pictured, from left to right, top: Amir Sharafkhaneh, Samuel Dagogo-Jack, Stephen Landy.
Bottom: Farhad Zangeneh, David Rizzieri, Eliot Brinton. The list includes a big-name cancer specialist with a thick resume of peer-reviewed research, but also doctors whose qualifications as experts remain a mystery. The Evolving Role of Molecular Markers in the Management of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. The Importance of Identifying Molecular Markers in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer To understand the importance of molecular markers in the current and future treatment of lung cancer, one should first understand how lung cancer was classified up until the beginning of this decade.
Pathologists would look at a sample of a patient’s lung tumor under a microscope, and then make a judgment of whether the cells represented small cell lung cancer (SCLC) or non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although that is an oversimplification, for all practical purposes, that is what oncologists cared about when it came to choosing treatment. If the diagnosis was NSCLC, then oncologists treated the patient with platinum doublet chemotherapy using one of many standard regimens that were felt to be equally effective. More Fall foliage down the street. Fall in the city. @DivaBiotech and more at. @DivaBiotech and more at. There is a male predominance in cancer incidence with a ratio of 1.4:1.
Thus although males constitute only 51.1% of the Egyptian population, yet they contribute 58.3% of the cancer population. This denotes that males in general are at a higher risk than females to develop cancer. Conversely, in developed countries, this male predominance is less striking, with a ratio of only 1.1:1 in USA. The anatomical site distribution of cancer in Egyptian patients is analyzed in two pathology series, a private practice series of more than 13,000 patients (El Bolkainy) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) series of 11,614 patients during the years 1990 -1997. A Method to Profit From FDA Approvals - BioRunUp.com. The Run-Up method involves locating and buying shares of these companies well before their decision date, riding the share price up, and selling BEFORE the FDA announces their decision.
But what about after an FDA decision? Specifically a positive one. There is a proven method to consistently profit from FDA approvals, lets take a look. A very intense sunrise over Philly this morning. A new non-invasive DNA test for colorectal cancer from Mayo Clinic and Exact Sciences. The Holy Grail of colorectal cancer prevention – a reliable screening test that users don’t dread and avoid – appears to be getting close.A novel test that detects telltale DNA markers in stool samples correctly identified 85 percent of colon cancers, 64 percent of significant precancerous polyps, and 90 percent of healthy samples, researchers announced Thursday in Philadelphia at a conference held by the American Association for Cancer Research.
“There is no other noninvasive screening test for colon cancer that comes close” to that accuracy rate, said David Ahlquist, a Mayo Clinic researcher who invented part of the technology and who is working with the commercial developer, Exact Sciences of Madison, Wis.The DNA test is still experimental, hasn’t been validated under real-life conditions, and will take at least another year of development, he said.via Researchers at Philadelphia conference announce progress toward noninvasive colon cancer test | Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/29/2010. A new non-invasive DNA test for colorectal cancer from Mayo Clinic and Exact Sciences. Sanofi's Latest Move - Let's Have a Campath Working Group. It amuses me greatly that the @aacr meeting on colon cancer h. Most Human Gene Variations Identified, Scientists Report. Abstracts online - Ecco. Things I like: EORTC-NCI-AACR symposium embargo policy, Lancet apology. My sunset along the Pacific. Amphastar sues FDA.
The race to bring a biosimilar version of Sanofi-Aventis’ low molecular weight heparin, Lovenox® (enoxaparin sodium), to market had three players, Momenta Pharmaceuticals in partnership with Sandoz, Amphastar Pharmaceuticals and Teva.
The winner was Momenta/Sandoz who (as mentioned in a previous post) recorded $292 million of sales in 69 days post launch. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Amphastar are now suing the FDA alleging the agency acted arbitrarily in delaying its imports of raw heparin. There certainly seems to be no love lost between Amphastar and the FDA, who earlier this year alleged a conflict of interest between Janet Woodcock, the Director for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and Momenta as a result of the collaboration that identified the contaminant in chinese heparin that killed patients in 2008.
In the run up to the approval, the FDA visited the manufacturing facilities for all three companies. AACR Colorectal Cancer Meeting: Biology to Therapy. Kudos to Lilly for Straight Talk About Value in Medicine. In 10 years, there will only be two kinds of communicators in the health care industry: those that can talk seriously and knowledgeably about the issues of cost and value in our health care system, and those that are out of work.
The intense health care battles of the past 2 years are only prologue to what is likely to become an even more incendiary — and more difficult — conversation about how we tame medical costs. It’s not a conversation that can be avoided. Medical treatment — everything from pills to diagnostics to a stay in a cramped hospital bed — is getting more expensive, and there is no single, obvious silver bullet. New Guidelines Recommend Caution in Using ESAs in Cancer Patients. Gt; sallychurch > slumping divas. Skitch Image Sharing Updates Skitch sharing is now part of the Evernote Service.
Click here to get Evernote and start sharing your images. For more information, please visit our Knowledge Base. Skitch Sharing Sharing in Skitch will go through the Evernote Service, which means that you will be able to access your Skitch notes on any computer, phone, or tablet you use. Healthy life could prevent 23 percent of colon cancers. PARP’s – what are they and what do they do in cancer? PARP's or POLY ADP-RIBOSE Polymerase Antibodies are a new generation of small molecules which may have potential applications in the treatment of cancer.
This class of agents was discovered almost 40 years ago by Pierre Chambon, J.D. Weill and Paul Mandel in Strasbourg with the synthesis of a yet uncharacterized polyadenylic acid upon addition of nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) in rat liver nuclear extracts. In 1963 they published a paper entitled “Nicotinamide mononucleotide activation of a new DNA-dependent polyadenylic acid synthesizing enzyme” that launched the research on PARP metabolism. What does Icarus Consultants do? While in the UK last week, several people asked me what we do here at Icarus Consultants. Rather than say that we are a marketing strategy company, I simply said we were in the business of 'actionable insights'. That got their attention and an interesting conversation ensued about what it involved. Now, normally on this blog we tend to talk about interesting ideas and disease concepts or conference updates, but I thought it was worth explaining a little more about what we do for once.
You can group the concept of actionable insights into 5 main areas: What’s the best treatment for elderly patients with untreated multiple myeloma? It’s a while since I’ve written about multiple myeloma, but after this interesting paper popped up in The Lancet Oncology, I couldn’t resist. Many cancers occur more frequently in the elderly, a testament to the extended lifestyle many of us now enjoy compared to ancient times. This offers many challenges compared to treating younger fitter people, not least are performance status and managing toxicities. A standard induction treatment in untreated multiple myeloma is now the combination of bortezomib (Velcade), melphalan and prednisone (VMP), which has been shown to be superior to MP alone.
In elderly people with multiple myeloma, however, the side effects can be difficult to tolerate. Readers' Photos - Picture Your Life After Cancer - Interactive Feature. FDA Law Blog: First Circuit Rules for the FTC in Dietary Supplement Advertising Case. By Riëtte van Laack - Direct Marketing Concepts, Inc. (“DMC”) and other companies and individuals marketed Coral Calcium and Supreme Greens by producing and distributing infomercials claiming that these products were an effective cure against many diseases including heart disease, cancer, lupus, etc.
The district court granted summary judgment against the Defendants, holding that the infomercials were misleading as a matter of law, and ordered the defendants to pay $50 million. Defendants appealed, challenging the legal and factual bases for the District Court's ruling, including its calculation of "damages. " On October 21, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit concluded that the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") had shown that the Defendants had not established that they had adequate substantiation for the claims at issue. The Court also rejected a "puffery" defense, concluding that the claims at issue went far beyond puffery. Failcon Privacy Panel topic: why are location services ignoring these guys? Today I’ll be on a panel at Failcon about privacy. More on that in a second, but last week I visited the Gates Building at Stanford University. You know, that’s the building where Google’s founders went to computer science classes and developed Google.
While there I met a student, Arvind Narayanan, and a professor, Dan Boneh (you see them in the photo here) who showed me that they’ve developed a way to let people tell other people where they are located, or, especially, if Dan is near me so we can go and have lunch together. So? Doesn’t Foursquare do that? Well, through some neat cryptographic tricks. But after explaining it all to me, they said none of the location-based services were interested in it. Why not? The truth is that both companies and consumers aren’t demanding these kinds of features, so until they do this neat idea will remain code on Dan’s whiteboard.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about privacy lately. Obesity related illness consumes a sixth of US healthcare budget. No More NICE by 2013? Geek&Poke's List Of Best Practices - Today: Continuous Integration. ROI Measurement. FDA may seek tighter standards for approval of generics. Pharma Strategy Blog is now live and kicking again. $89 Billion in Branded Prescription Sales at Risk for Generic Competition By 2014: Pharmalive Special Reports. Rather apt for Pharma-land! Dilbert Daily Strip: 2010-09-13: #socpharm #hcsmeu. Kings College Faure Pie Jesu and Agnus Dei. New home for Pharma Strategy Blog! - Pharma Strategy Blog. Pharma Strategy Blog is moving! Not sure its 6th-grade reading level, but what a chilling article: Projection 2050, diabetes burden in US adult pop:
Wikileaks Iraq war logs: every death mapped.