Bioscience

The Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons has granted Accreditation with Commendation to the cancer program at Scottsdale Healthcare.

Included in the accreditation are the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare, Scottsdale Healthcare Shea Medical Center and Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn Medical Center.

Accreditation with Commendation is awarded to top cancer programs demonstrating the highest levels of cancer clinical services, research, community outreach, quality improvement, leadership and data management, according to the Chicago-based Commission on Cancer.

Bioscience

Critical Outcome Technologies Inc. (COTI) (TSX VENTURE:COT) announced today that it received a favourable Pre-Investigational New Drug (pre-IND) gap analysis report from an independent team that reviewed its novel oncology drug candidate COTI-2. This represents an important milestone as the Company draws closer to a Phase 1 clinical trial.

This gap analysis is conducted prior to an initial meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to identify potential deficiencies in the preclinical development program of a new chemical entity being considered for human clinical trials. A thorough analysis of the preclinical data package for COTI-2 by an independent team of scientific and regulatory consultants revealed no deficiencies in the COTI-2 program.

Bioscience

In Arizona, XL Renewables has formed Phyco BioSciences to commercialize algae biomass as a food and industrial crop.  Phyco is currently developing a commercial production facility near Phoenix, Arizona to meet customer demand.

Beginning in 2011, Phyco plans to work with qualified contract producers by providing them a production and harvest platform with algae cultivars in return for a commitment to processing and marketing services. Phyco CEO Ben Cloud said that the company has developed a functional production, processing and marketing structure geared to attract capital for expansion and development of new markets for algae biomass.

Bioscience

Astronauts are known to have a higher risk of getting sick compared to their Earth-bound peers. The stresses that go with weightlessness, confined crew quarters, being away from family and friends and a busy work schedule - all the while not getting enough sleep - are known to wreak havoc on the immune system.

A research group led by immunobiologist Ty Lebsack at the University of Arizona has discovered that spaceflight changes the activity of genes controlling immune and stress response, perhaps leading to more sickness.

Between spaceflight affecting a crew's susceptibility to infections and previous observations of sickness-causing microbes thriving in a near-zero gravity environment, long journeys to far-away destinations such as Mars pose a big challenge to manned space missions.

Bioscience

The largest genome-wide association study in Alzheimer's disease to date has identified two new genetic variants and confirmed two others, but research leaders conceded that they would have little predictive value in the clinic.

Polymorphisms near the BIN1 and EXOC3L2 genes were more common in people with Alzheimer's disease, with odds ratios in a replication sample of 1.17 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.33) and 1.25 (95% CI 1.05 to 1.51), respectively, according to Monique Breteler, MD, PhD, of University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues.

Bioscience

A special May 10, 2010 issue of Nature Biotechnology (NBT) includes ten scientific publications from Critical Path Institute's (C-Path) Predictive Safety Testing Consortium's (PSTC) evaluation of seven kidney biomarkers for use in drug safety assessment. The seven urinary proteins (KIM-1, Albumin, Total Protein, B2-microglobulin, Cystatin C, Clusterin, Trefoil Factor-3) were evaluated for their utility to outperform current tests to detect drug-induced kidney injury, i.e., BUN and serum creatinine. PSTC submitted the data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Japanese Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) for evaluation. The FDA and EMA reached the formal conclusion that the biomarkers are considered qualified for use in regulatory decision-making for drug safety to detect acute drug-induced kidney injury in preclinical studies and, on a case by case basis after discussion with agencies, in early clinical studies in combination with standard biomarkers. A final conclusion from the PMDA is expected imminently. The biomarkers are now being used successfully to more efficiently advance or terminate drug development programs. The scientific details of the studies and analyses, as well as a description of the evolution of the qualification process at the regulatory agencies, will be reported publicly for the first time in this issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Bioscience

A team of scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have programmed an autonomous molecular "robot" made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track.

The development could ultimately lead to molecular systems that might one day be used for medical therapeutic devices and molecular-scale reconfigurable robots -- robots made of many simple units that can reposition or even rebuild themselves to accomplish different tasks.

A paper describing the work appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Bioscience

Dr. James Bogenberger has been awarded a 3-year, $150,000 postdoctoral fellowship by the American Cancer Society to research acute myeloid leukemia at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the most common and deadliest acute adult leukemia, is a malignancy in granulocytes or monocytes, the body’s white blood cells that battle infections.

Dr. Bogenberger’s project, Identifying therapeutic targets that sensitize AML to epigenetic therapies, is under the guidance of Dr. Raoul Tibes, an Associate Investigator in TGen’s Clinical Translational Research Division and Director of the Hematological Malignancies Program for TGen Clinical Research Service at Scottsdale Healthcare.

Bioscience

The shovels were in the dirt on Wednesday for the construction of the new Health Sciences Education Building on the downtown Phoenix Biomedical Campus.

"Today, we have moved one step closer to fulfilling the urgent need for health care professionals in our state," said Arizona Board of Regents President Ernest Calderón. "This one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary facility will provide greater access to medical education in Arizona and will have a tremendous economic impact on the state by creating new jobs and pumping revenue into the economy."

A ceremonial groundbreaking was held May 12 for the building, part of the expansion of the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix. Gov. Jan Brewer; House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa; Senate Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia, D-Tucson; Arizona Board of Regents President Ernest Calderón; Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon; University of Arizona President Robert Shelton; and Northern Arizona University President John Haeger all took part in the ceremony at the campus, near Seventh Street and Van Buren.

Bioscience

Alec Sutherland of Arizona State University in the United States will develop and test a vaccine delivery system that uses Norovirus virus-like particles (VLPs) to deliver desired antigens directly to the gut mucosa. The self-replicating RNA in the VLP will not only encode those antigens, it will also act as an adjuvant by activating several signaling pathways for an enhanced and sustained immune response.