Got Milk......

In a new study of breast milk and store-bought milk from across the United States , scientists at Texas Tech University found perchlorate in every sample but one. The results suggest that this thyroid-disrupting chemical may be more widespread than previously believed

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Bird flu virus may spread among people

The Earth may be on the brink of a worldwide epidemic from a bird flu virus that may mutate to become as deadly and infectious as viruses that killed millions during three influenza pandemics of the 20th century, a federal health official said Monday.

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Medical Companies Joining Offshore Trend to India & China

The exporting of jobs is telling evidence that the relentless shifting of employment to countries like India and China that has occurred in manufacturing, back-office work and computer programming is now spreading to a crown jewel of corporate America: the medical and drug industries. Fueling the outsourcing trend are Indian and Chinese scientists who obtained graduate degrees and work experience in the United States and Europe and are now returning to their native countries.

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Genome-Wide Mouse Study Yields Link To Human Leukemia

COLUMBUS , Ohio – Thanks to a handful of very special mice, scientists have discovered a new tumor suppressor gene and a unique chemical signature implicated in the development of human leukemia, findings that open up a “treasure box” of opportunity and possibility, study authors say.

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Millipore Forms New Bioscience Division

Millipore Corporation announced that it has formed a new Bioscience Division that will focus on life science research and general laboratory applications of Millipore products and services. The new division combines Millipore's Life Sciences Division and Laboratory Water Division which essentially served the same customer base. The intent is to provide more organizational clarity, improve sales effectiveness, better serve customers, and focus R&D investments in the laboratory area.

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How to Save Medicare- Die Sooner

Though Social Security's fiscal direction has taken center stage in Washington of late, Medicare's future financing problems are likely to be much worse. President Bush has asserted that the Medicare Modernization Act, which he signed in 2003, would solve some of those problems - "the logic is irrefutable," he said two months ago. Yet the Congressional Budget Office expects the law to create just $28 billion in savings during the decade after its passage, while its prescription drug benefit will add more than $400 billion in costs. So, how can Medicare's ballooning costs be contained? One idea is to let people die earlier.

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Biotech Stocks- Biogen-Elan plunge leads sell-off in biotech

Biogen and Elan both plunged after the companies voluntarily took their multiple sclerosis treatment off the market because of safety concerns. Biogen plunged by 46 percent to $36.63 while Elan lost more than two-thirds of its value, falling 67 percent to $8.83.

The companies said they withdrew the drug, Tysabri, after one patient died and another became seriously ill when the drug was used in conjunction with another MS treatment, Avonex

But the news sent shares of Serono soaring, up 18 percent to $18.26. Removing Tysabri off the market takes away a key threat for Serono's own MS treatment, Rebif.

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Scientists Find a Possible Cause to Aging

A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how reversal, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health.

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Amazon Starts Renting Out the Human Genome

Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has started offering access to large collections of data. Business customers and scientists can take the information, which ranges from census databases to three-dimensional chemical structures and the genome, and use it as the basis for computing jobs. By gathering and storing the information, Amazon says that it can save businesses the step of assembling and managing data on their own.

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pharmaco-metabonomics? A simple say to predict rug effects?

An international group of scientists has demonstrated a new tool for personalized medicine that makes it possible to predict nearly any adverse reaction an individual might have to drugs. Rather than being based on genetic screening, which up to now has been the dominant approach to personalized medicine, the new test relies on profiling an individual's metabolic products. Called pharmaco-metabonomics, the technique involves screening urine for metabolites: small molecules that are involved in or produced by the metabolic processes that sustain an organism.

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Studies Find Elusive Key to Cell Fate in Embryoo

They have discovered a striking new feature of the chromatin, the specialized protein molecules that protect and control the giant molecules of DNA that lie at the center of every chromosome. The feature explains how embryonic cells are kept in a poised state so that all of the genome's many developmental programs are blocked, yet each is ready to be executed if the cell is assigned to that developmental path. The developmental programs, directing a cell to become a neuron, say, or a liver cell, are initiated by master regulator genes. These genes have the power to reshape a cell's entire form and function because they control many lower genes.

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Flu Pandemic: Not just health but the economy

Noting that "pandemics are like earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis" - only worse because of their global nature - Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota painted an unsettling picture of pandemic bringing world trade and travel to a screeching halt. Economist Sherry Cooper elaborated with an analysis of supply and demand: since inventories are deliberately kept at razor-thin levels, there would be food shortages and panic buying of nonperishables, water and medical supplies; a black market would ensue. With companies operating at minimum staffing levels, most would find it difficult to continue operating if up to 30 percent of their employees were out with influenza - that includes oil refineries and electric companies, thus leading to gas shortages and extended blackouts. Cooper estimated a mild influenza pandemic could result in a global economic delcine of two percent on an annual basis; but a severe pandemic could result in a six percent decline, which would push the U.S. into a deep recession, deeper than the recession of 1982.

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Computer model details future flu pandemic

An influenza pandemic in the United States would crop up first in population centers like Houston and be largely over within four months, according to the researchers who created a complex computer simulation of a flu pandemic in the U.S. and Great Britain.

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Curing HIV in Germany ?

Every virus-resistant person has two mutant copies of a gene called CCR5, and a new biotech tool called zinc finger nucleases givve anyone that mutation. Instead of transferring bone marrow from another person, doctors could take a few cells from a patient, modify them to be HIV-resistant and then put them back in."

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German Qiagen up on talk of bid by Sanofi-Aventis

Shares in Qiagen rose more than 5 percent on Friday as traders cited market talk that French drug specialist Sanofi-Aventis was considering a bid for the German Biotech. "I've heard talk of a bid of 14.50 euros per share for Qiagen," a Frankfurt-based trader says. A spokesman at Sanofi-Aventis said the company does not comment on market rumours.

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CDC seeing more regular flu cases now

U.S. health officials are seeing a surprisingly high number of cases of ordinary, seasonal flu at a time when the flu season typically peters out.

About half of people recently testing positive for the flu have the new swine flu virus, Dr. Daniel Jernigan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said Friday.

"The H1N1 virus is not going away," Jernigan said. The virus "appears to be expanding throughout the United States" and poses "an ongoing public health threat," he said.

Swine flu continues to affect more younger people — those ages 5 to 24 — and CDC is still seeing relatively few cases in older people

In the United States, there are now more than 4,700 probable and confirmed cases of swine flu, and 173 hospitalizations and four deaths, Jernigan said. The tally doesn't include a fifth death that Texas officials said Friday was due to swine flu.

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NCSU News :: New Tool Helps Researchers Identify DNA Pattern of Cancer, Genetic Disorders

David Cox, a Ph.D. student in computer science at NC State, devised the "symbolic scatter plot" tool to provide a visual representation of a DNA sequence. Cox explains, "The human visual system is more adept at identifying patterns, and differentiating between patterns, than existing computer programs such as those that try to identify repetitions of DNA sequences." In other words, the naked eye sees patterns better than computers can.

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Researchers Find Vibrator Use To Be Common, Linked To Sexual Health

Two Indiana University studies conducted among nationally representative samples of adult American men and women show that vibrator use during sexual interactions is common, with use being reported by approximately 53 percent of women and 45 percent of men ages 18 to 60. Not only is vibrator use common, but the two studies also show that vibrator use is associated with more positive sexual function and being more proactive in caring for one's sexual health.

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Researchers Create First Targeted Knockout Rats Using Zinc Finger Nuclease Technology

In a paper published in the July 24, 2009 issue of Science, researchers describe the novel application of ZFNs to generate rats with permanent, heritable gene mutations, paving the way for the development of novel genetically modified animal models of human disease. ZFN technology will make the generation of such animals faster and will create new opportunities in species other than mice.


"Until now, rat geneticists lacked a viable technique for 'knocking out,' or mutating, specific genes to understand their function," said Howard Jacob, Ph.D. Director of the Human and Molecular Genetics Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "This study demonstrates that ZFN technology bypasses the current need to conduct cumbersome experiments involving nuclear transfer (cloning) or embryonic stem cells and allows rapid creation of new animal models."

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Medicare slammed for not improving lab-quality rules - Nation/Politics.

Medicare slammed for not improving lab-quality rules - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "Some

scientists and consumer health groups are angry that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has decided

not to write new rules designed to improve the quality of laboratories that perform genetic testing, keeping in place

current guidelines.
'We're very disappointed,' said Rick Borchelt, spokesman for the Genetics and Public Policy Center. 'After years of saying

they were going to do this, they did a complete about-face ... with no justification. We're mystified.' "

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Team finds breast cancer gene linked to disease spread

A team of researchers at Princeton University and The Cancer Institute of New Jersey has identified a long-sought gene that is fatefully switched on in 30 to 40 percent of all breast cancer patients, spreading the disease, resisting traditional chemotherapies and eventually leading to death. The gene, called "Metadherin" or MTDH, is located in a small region of human chromosome 8 and appears to be crucial to cancer's spread or metastasis because it helps tumor cells stick tightly to blood vessels in distant organs. The gene also makes tumors more resistant to the powerful chemotherapeutic agents normally used to wipe out the deadly cells.

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FDA Claims 6 of Qiagen's Molecular Dxs Should Have Undergone Agency Review

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — The US Food and Drug Administration has sent a letter to Qiagen warning it that certain of its molecular diagnostics currently sold in the US do not have regulatory approval.

In an Oct. 2 letter to Qiagen CEO Peer Schatz, the FDA said six diagnostic products Qiagen developed are improperly marketed and require regulatory review by the agency. On its we site, Qiagen stresses that the products — tests for herpes virus, lime disease, parvovirus, Chlamydia, and malaria — are designed for use in CLIA labs and therefore do not require FDA oversight.

The FDA, on the other hand, claims that because the tests are packaged with instructions they are subject to agency review.

Products affected include Artus CMV PCR, C. Trachomatis PCR, C. Trachomatis Plus PCR, Parvo B19 PCR, Borrelia PCR, and Malaria PCR analyte specific reagents

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Applied Biosystems president joins Kinetic Concepts | Reuters.com

BOSTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Applied Biosystems Inc. (ABI.N: Quote, Profile, Research), a maker of tools for genetic research, said on Friday that its president, Catherine Burzik, has resigned to become chief executive of medical device company Kinetic Concepts Inc. (KCI.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
Foster City, California-based Applied Biosystems, whose parent is Applera Corp., said Tony White, Applera's chairman and chief executive officer, will become interim Applied Biosystems, president.
Kinetic Concepts, based in San Antonio, Texas, specializes in making wound-care products, specialty hospital beds and mattress replacement systems.

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Scientists Find a Possible Cause of Aging

A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health.

Read more »

Smoking ban leads to major drop in heart attacks

A smoking ban in one Colorado city led to a dramatic drop in heart attack hospitalizations within three years, a sign of just how serious a health threat secondhand smoke is, government researchers said Wednesday. The study, the longest-running of its kind, showed the rate of hospitalized cases dropped 41 percent in the three years after the ban of workplace smoking in Pueblo, Colo., took effect. There was no such drop in two neighboring areas, and researchers believe it's a clear sign the ban was responsible.
The study suggests that secondhand smoke may be a terrible and under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths in this country, said one of its authors, Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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