Bioscience

The impact of personalized medicine on the delivery of health care now and in the future is the focus of a national conference being sponsored by major players in the field of law, medicine and science on March 8-9, at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.

"Personalized Medicine in the Clinic: Policy, Legal, and Ethical Implications," will be hosted by the Center for Law, Science & Innovation at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Mayo Clinic and the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI).

Bioscience

On 26 January 2010, at an ordinary airport hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, an extraordinary gathering unfolded. High-level representatives of 19 different pharma, biotech, and medical companies from across the U.S. and Europe—businesses that compete fiercely for the same market—spent the entire day cooped up in one room. There they engaged in a searching, at times surprisingly candid, discussion with academic research leaders, funders, and regulatory and statistics experts. Their topic? How they could set aside their competition in order to advance a shared vision of testing candidate drugs in people who are at imminent risk for Alzheimer disease but have no symptoms. In other words, these are future patients who, pathologically speaking, may already have Alzheimer’s but as yet without the dementia that epitomizes the disease in most people’s minds.

Bioscience

Tempe's Kiwanis Community Park will host races in March to raise money to fight ovarian cancer and to help children suffering from Alport syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the kidneys.

More than 500 Valley residents are expected to join researchers from the Translational Genomics Research Institute on March 7 at the park for the first Steal a Cure 5K.

Bioscience

The human brain excels at using past experiences to make predictions about the future. However, the world around us is constantly changing, and new events often violate our logical expectations.

Bioscience

Two leading institutions in their respective fields – Mayo Clinic and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication – are joining forces to give future physicians intensive cross-platform journalism training.

The Mayo-Cronkite Fellowship will bring students from Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minn., to Phoenix following their second year of medical studies for a condensed one-year master’s program at Arizona State University’s (ASU) nationally recognized journalism school.

Mayo-Cronkite Fellows will return to Rochester for their final two years of medical studies following the year-long immersion in journalism. Officials anticipate enrolling the first Mayo-Cronkite Fellows in August.

Bioscience

The Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg (IBBL) opened its facilities today, with a Grand Opening Ceremony led by Luxembourg’s leading academic institutions, Government Ministers and pioneer scientists from IBBL’s international collaborative
partnerships. Today’s official opening marks the beginning of Luxembourg’s bid to become a centre of excellence for biomedical research, serving Luxembourg’s economy and healthcare system.

The IBBL is an important step to realizing Luxembourg’s potential as a centre of excellence in biomedical research. Not only will this level of infrastructure contribute to diversifying the economy, attracting investment and generating new jobs, but it will help sustain an efficient, world-leading healthcare system for all Luxembourg citizens.

The IBBL was founded by Luxembourg’s leading public research and academic centres, in partnership with the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), USA, to accelerate medical research in personalised medicine with a focus on developing new diagnostic biomarkers.

Bioscience

The U.S. Department of Defense, caught off guard by the swift spread of the H1N1 flu virus last year and delays in producing a vaccine, is backing an unusual plan to use tobacco plants to make the vaccine.

Flu vaccines are typically grown in chicken eggs. Although the technique is slow and expensive, vaccine makers have done little to improve on this reliable method for more than 60 years. The urgent need for a better way became apparent last year.

Bioscience

Pressured by revenue cuts, Phoenix Children's Hospital and St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center have entered talks about combining their pediatric units.

Senior executives of the two central-Phoenix hospitals emphasized that nothing has been decided but that discussions are moving along.

Bioscience

A recent multi-center study has confirmed earlier study results that 400 mg/day of lacosamide provides a good balance of efficacy and tolerability for patients with uncontrolled partial-onset seizures (POS), and doses of 600mg/day may provide additional benefit for some patients. Researchers from the Barrow Neurological Institute, St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, Thomas Jefferson University Medical School, Arkansas Epilepsy Program, Schwarz Biosciences and Johns Hopkins University Hospital conducted this study which is available early online in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy.

Bioscience

Scientific researchers in the Valley have high hopes for new therapies for patients with certain types of cancer.

New drugs are constantly in development at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, also known as TGen, based in Phoenix. But some of the clinical trials to test these new drugs could be at risk if more cancer patients don’t get involved in the studies.

In collaboration with the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare, TGen has about 35 clinical trials under way. These trials test the safety and effectiveness of the new drugs prior to approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.