StemCell Therapy

CHICAGO, Aug. 31, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tempus, a technology company focused on helping doctors personalize cancer care by collecting and analyzing large volumes of molecular and clinical data and University of California Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center are collaborating on a precision medicine partnership to advance clinical care with Next Generation Sequencing analysis, focused initially on patients diagnosed with hematological malignancies and pancreatic cancer.

As part of the collaboration, Tempus will do molecular sequencing and analysis for a group of patients at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. Utilizing machine learning and advanced bioinformatics, Tempus helps physicians analyze data sets in a search for potentially relevant patterns that can help guide treatment for patients who are unlikely to respond to conventional therapies or for whom no conventional therapies exist.

Technology has come a long way since researchers first mapped the genome more than 15 years ago and yet physicians and their patients have not widely benefited, said Eric Lefkofsky, Founder and CEO at Tempus. We are excited to bring the Tempus platform to physicians at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center who will now have access to technology and analytics that will support their efforts to deliver personalized treatment for each patient.

Tempus will work with a team of investigators led by Dr. Primo Lara, an esteemed investigator in clinical-translational research, who has chaired a number of cancer clinical trials from phase I to III.

Discovery is happening at a rapid pace and will continue to accelerate with access to data-driven tools designed to support work in the clinic, said Dr. Lara, Interim Director of the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. Working with Tempus is consistent with our commitment to providing our physicians with the tools and resources they need to best treat their patients.

The UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center is among the top-ranked national cancer programs for both research and patient care. It is one of 48 centers designated "comprehensive" by the National Cancer Institute.

About Tempus: Tempus is a technology company that is building the worlds largest library of molecular and clinical data and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful. We enable physicians to deliver personalized cancer care for patients through our interactive analytical and machine learning platform. We provide genomic sequencing services and analyze molecular and therapeutic data to empower physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions. Our goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as we gather more data. For more information, visit tempus.com and follow us on Facebook (Tempus Labs) and Twitter (@TempusLabs).

About UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer CenterUC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only National Cancer Institute-designated center serving the Central Valley and inland Northern California, a region of more than 6 million people. Its specialists provide compassionate, comprehensive care for more than 10,000 adults and children every year, and access to more than 125 clinical trials at any given time. Its innovative research program engages more than 280 scientists at UC Davis, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Jackson Laboratory (JAX West), whose scientific partnerships advance discovery of new tools to diagnose and treat cancer. Through the Cancer Care Network, UC Davis collaborates with hospitals and clinical centers throughout the Central Valley and Northern California to offer the latest cancer-care services to their communities. UC Davis community-based outreach and education programs address disparities in cancer outcomes across diverse populations. For more information, visit http://cancer.ucdavis.edu.

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Tempus and University of California Davis Comprehensive Cancer ... - GlobeNewswire (press release)

On Thursday evenings beginning Oct. 12, UCSF Imagings world-renowned radiologists will participate in the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicines Mini Medical School for the Public in a six-week series titled Personalized Medicine Powered by Precision Imaging. This informative course is open to the public. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet experts from UCSF Imaging, who are using and developing new and innovative precision imaging tools to enhance diagnosis, improve disease monitoring, and optimize treatment for individual patients.

In close partnership with subspecialty physicians from other UCSF departments, radiologists are now able to use these tools to pinpoint and better treat disorders such as prostate cancer, breast cancer and degenerative spine and joint disease at earlier stages. This series of lectures will explain how emerging technologiesincluding specific artificial intelligence platformswill rely upon imaging to dramatically improve accuracy, safety, and outcomes for patients in the very near future.

This course is co-chaired by William P. Dillon, MD, and Christopher P. Hess, MD, PhD, and there will be 17 faculty members participating in the lectures. The schedule is as follows:

To register for the full course, please visit osherminimed.ucsf.edu. To register for a single class, call (415) 476-5808. Each class will be held in the School of Nursing, Room N225, at 513 Parnassus, accessible through the Medical Science Building.

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Coming Soon: Osher Mini Medical School Series on Personalized Medicine Powered by Precision Imaging - UCSF Department of Radiology & Biomedical...

Calling the move "historic," the Food and Drug Administration announced approval August 30 for the first gene therapy in the U.S.

Its a gene therapy that hospital CIOs and IT shops, particularly those working on precision medicine initiatives, would be smart to watch since experts are already saying it is a fundamental turning point that holds promise to transform the practice of medicine.

Heres what healthcare executives and technologists should know.

Kymriah, the brand name under which Norvatis is marketing the drug tisagenlecleucel, offers a new treatment option that will first be explored for use in cases of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in kids and young adults.

The treatment, a genetically-modified autologous T-cell immunotherapy, was approved by FDA for use in patients aged 25 or younger who demonstrate certain characteristics of cancer.

Doses of Kymriah are customized using an individual patient's own T-cells, which are genetically modified to include a new gene that has a specific protein known as a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR that directs the T-cells to target and kill leukemia cells that have a specific antigen (called CD19) on the surface.

FDA says the safety and efficacy of Kymriah were demonstrated in one multicenter clinical trial of 63 pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor ALL. The overall remission rate within three months of treatment was 83 percent.

"We're entering a new frontier in medical innovation with the ability to reprogram a patient's own cells to attack a deadly cancer," said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD. "New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold out the potential to transform medicine and create an inflection point in our ability to treat and even cure many intractable illnesses."

But the immunotherapy carries a big risk for potentially life-threatening side effects, according to FDA. It could cause cytokine release syndrome, a systemic response to the proliferation of CAR T-cells causing high fever and flu-like symptoms, as well as certain dangerous neurological symptoms.

It's also expensive, at roughly $475,000. That's in addition to traditional chemotherapy, which is administered before the Kymriah with the aim of improving the treatment's success rate.

And because the side effects are potentially so serious, patients will be required to stay within two hours of the 32 hospitals where the immunotherapy is administered, for as long as a month after treatment leading to hefty travel and lodging costs.

Beyond the financial implications, of course, there are significant IT hurdles to overcome, going forward, for widespread and efficient use of personalized medicine.

From data warehousing to EHR design to interoperability, ongoing technology challenges will test IT departments as immunotherapy and other tailored treatments come to the fore.

The research on Kymriah was pioneered at Penn Medicine, for instance, but not before the academic medical center had pursued an extensive retooling of its infrastructure to meet the demands of precision medicine.

"One of the first things we did was to say, look, we're not going to get down this road to precision medicine if we don't have centralized support and a holistic view of IT within the school," Brian Wells, Penn Medicine's then associate vice president of health technology and academic computing, said ahead of the HIMSS and Healthcare IT News Precision Medicine Summit in June of 2017. "The other thing we did was ask, what are the high-priority applications that the school didn't have?

Penn didn't have a common laboratory information management system, for instance, or a common sample management, sample inventory, sample tracking system. Wells said Penn also needed a data warehouse to aggregate all the required information and link it to clinical data so researchers could access it more easily.

Despite the challenges inherent in such a novel treatment, researchers and FDA officials said the promise of this new cellular therapy is very real.

Peter Marks, MD, directory of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, described Kymirah as a first-of-its-kind treatment for serious disease.

"Not only does Kymriah provide these patients with a new treatment option where very limited options existed, Marks said, but a treatment option that has shown promising remission and survival rates in clinical trials."

And one that IT departments are likely to support in the not-too-distant future.

Twitter:@MikeMiliardHITNEmail the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

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The British Lung Foundation (BLF), in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has awarded 1.3 million (about $1.68 million) in grants to three lung disease experts to support research projects on finding new therapeutic targets for personalized medicine inidiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF),bronchiectasis andchronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Our professorships nurture and develop outstanding lung researchers who can bring groundbreaking research and international leadership to lung disease, Ian Jarrold, the BLFs head of research, said in a press release.We witness first-hand the devastating consequences that the long-term neglect of lung disease can have on patients and their families. Considering the impact diseases like bronchiectasis, COPD and IPF have on a patients quality of life, the lack of support and treatment options available is wholly unacceptable.

One of the three recipients is Toby Maher, clinical investigator at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London, and consultant respiratory physician at Royal Brompton Hospitals Interstitial Lung Disease Unit.

Maher and his team are studyingthe underlying mechanism that causes the tissue scaring that leads to IPF. He is also identifying groups of patients who may respond well topersonalized treatments.

Given the poor prognosis of IPF patients, they dont have time to wait years for new treatments, Maher said. I will be identifying blood-based biomarkers which could halve the time taken to validate new medicines, and running clinical trials with a focus on repurposing existing drugs to further cut the time taken to make novel treatments available to individuals with IPF.

He added: As many as 1 in 10 individuals with IPF also develop episodes of acute exacerbation or infection each year, with these episodes leading to 50 percent of people dying within a month. I aim to reduce this through a home monitoring project empowering patients to spot early deterioration in their disease.

Professor Louise Wain of theUniversity of Leicesterandprofessor James Chalmers of the University of Dundeeboth received GSK/BLF Chair in Respiratory Research awards for their contributions inunderstanding lung diseases.

Wains research project will integrate genetic analysis with clinical data to identify genetic susceptibility markers for IPF and COPD. Chalmers project aims toidentify patients that could benefit from personalized therapies, and based on this knowledge develop potential tests to detectinfection or inflammation processes that may respond to personalized treatment.

Work by all three grant recipients has the potential to improve our understanding of these diseases, and provide personalized medicine, something which has already led to huge improvements in the treatment of many cancers, Jarrold said. He added that their work will provide families dealing with a lung disease diagnosis more hope for the future.

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British Lung Foundation Funds 3 Research Projects on Personalized Medicine for IPF, Other Lung Diseases - Pulmonary Fibrosis News

It is the medical sensation of the year: Researchers have succeeded in selectively altering the human genome with the genetic scissors CRISPR. Using this controversial tool, the scientists have remedied gene defects that are responsible for a heart defect in human embryos. In order to find the defective parts in the genome, the genome (the entire genotype of a human being) must be sequenced ahead of time, i.e. decoded. Technological leadership in this area is the US diagnostics specialist Illumina.

In addition to genetic scissors, personalized medicine is currently one of the dominant and hotly debated subjects in medicine. Because the trends that each patient receives a personalized therapy, that is to say, tailored to the individual. The selection of the drugs as alone or combined treatment as well as the subsequent medication in the future depend on which genes are modified or mutated.

And since Illumina comes into play: The Group of San Diego has succeeded in recent years in the area of diagnostics unique product portfolio. Above all, the latest product line called NovaSeq promises an incomparable cost-benefit effect.

These Illumina products are able to decipher a human genome up to 70 percent faster. At the same time, the costs for the process are rapidly reduced. The biotech company has set itself the goal of pushing the financial expenditure for the decoding of a genome to only 100 dollars.

The highlight: On the one hand, the NovaSeq sequencing technology contributes to the cost reduction in the respective health system, de facto entirely according to the taste of Donald Trump. On the other hand, this technological advancement is the key to personalized medicine and allows the targeted use of the genetic scissors CRISPR.

The biotech company is proposing several things together: While the costs of genome analysis fall by another 90 percent, Illuminas profit goes through the ceiling. In the coming year, the diagnostics specialist is likely to implement more than three billion dollars for the first time and benefit more than ever from the medical megatrends. The quarterly figures for the second quarter in this fiscal year have already impressively delivered a taste for what this technological advance will bring.

Illumina is back on track and was able to significantly exceed analysts expectations. In addition to a pleasing result of $0.82 per share, investors were above all convinced by the sales of 662 million dollars. Illumina was able to overcome the growth rate of the past quarters. At the same time, the biotech forge raised the outlook for the current financial year. The fact that the business is gaining momentum is mainly due to the NovaSeq series, which has been on the market since April.

Whether genetic scissors, personalized medicine or artificial intelligence in diagnostics: the basis for the breakthrough or successful use of these trends is genome analysis. Due to the market power and the technological know-how, there is no way around the Illumina biotech weakening.

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Illumina: DNA Sequencing Leader is Gaining Momentum - Markets Morning

This PCT report is a major step in the progress of the patent application which is now being launched into several major countries and territories. The company is securing its achievements through a very active and expanding patent portfolio. Other 2nd. Generation patent applications are in the pipeline and Cannabics Pharmaceuticals is aggressively expanding its patent estate as the company's R&D team continues to break new grounds.

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals has made unique developments in the application of medical cannabis to personalized medicine for cancer patients by providing a high throughput screening System (HTS) able to identify the antitumor effect of cannabis strains for individual patients under treatment.

Dr. Eyal Ballan, CTO of Cannabics Pharmaceuticals noted, "As we progress in the field of cannabinoids and cancer we find the unmet need of personalizing cannabis medicine and fortunate to carry out this mission".

About Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CNBX), a U.S based public company, is dedicated to the development of Personalized Anti-Cancer and Palliative treatments. The Company's R&D is based in Israel, where it is licensed by the Ministry of Health for its work in both scientific and clinical research. The Company's focus is on harnessing the therapeutic properties of natural Cannabinoid formulations and diagnostics. Cannabics engages in developing individually tailored natural therapies for cancer patients, utilizing advanced screening systems and personalized bioinformatics tools.

Disclaimer:

Certain statements contained in this release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include, but are not limited to statements identified by words such as "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates," "intends," "plans," "targets," "projects" and similar expressions. The statements in this release are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of our company's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Numerous factors could cause or contribute to such differences, including, but not limited to, results of clinical trials and/or other studies, the challenges inherent in new product development initiatives, the effect of any competitive products, our ability to license and protect our intellectual property, our ability to raise additional capital in the future that is necessary to maintain our business, changes in government policy and/or regulation, potential litigation by or against us, any governmental review of our products or practices, as well as other risks discussed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, our latest 10-Q Report filed on July 17th, 2017. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statement or any information contained in this press release or in other public disclosures at any time.

For Further Information, please contact:

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. +1-877-424-2429 Info@Cannabics.com http://www.Cannabics.com

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A new study aims to alert medical professionals to the potential of 3D printings future use in the field.

3D printing technology is going to transform medicine, whether it is patient-specific surgical models, custom-made prosthetics, personalized on-demand medicines, or even 3D printed human tissue, says Jason Chuen, Director of Vascular Surgery at Austin Health and a Clinical Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Before inserting and expanding a pen-sized stent into someones aorta, the hose-like artery that carries our blood away from the heart, Chuen, a surgeon, likes to practice on the patient first. Not for real of course, but in plastic.

He has a 3D printer in his office and brightly colored plastic aortas line his window sill at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. They are all modeled from real patients and printed out from CT scans, ultrasounds, and x-rays.

By using the model I can more easily assess that the stent is the right size and bends in exactly the right way when I deploy it, says Chuen.

At the moment 3D printing is at the cutting edge of medical research, but in the future the technology will be taken for granted by all of us in healthcare, he says.

At its core 3D printing is the use of computer guidance technology to create 3D objects from digital plans by applying layers of material, such as heated plastic, or powders in the case of metals and ceramics. It is being used to print out anything from toys and food, to warships producing on-demand spare parts and even drones. Medicine is just another frontier.

The new paper, coauthored by Chuen and Jasamine Coles-Black, from the Austin Hospital in Melbourne, appears in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Here are the top five areas in which 3D printing is set to change medicine, according to the Chuen and Coles-Black:

It sounds like something out of Frankenstein, but could we eventually 3D print human organs? Not exactly, says Chuen. But hes convinced that in the future we will be able to 3D print human tissue structures that can perform the basic functions of an organ, replacing the need for some transplants.

Scientists are already using 3D printing to build organoids that mimic organs at a tiny scale and can be used for research. They are built using stem cells that can be stimulated to grow into the functional unit of a particular organ, such as a liver or kidney. The challenge he says is to scale up organoids into a structure that could boost a failing organ inside a patient.

we are moving towards a world where if you can imagine it, you will be able to print it

Such bioprinting involves using a computer-guided pipette that takes up cell cultures suspended in nutrient rich solution and prints them out in layers suspended in a gel. Without the gel the cells would simply become a watery mess.

The problem, says Chuen, is that once inside the gel, cells can die in a matter of minutes. This isnt a problem for small structures like organoids that can be built quickly and then transferred back into a nutrient solution. But it is a problem when attempting to make something larger like an organ because the initial layers of cells will die before the organ is completed.

Unless there is some breakthrough that enables us to keep the cells alive while we print them, then I think printing a full human organ will remain impossible. But where there is potential is in working out how to reliably build organoids or components that we could then bind together to make them function like an organ, says Chuen.

People suffering from a range of ailments, such as the elderly, are often dependent on taking multiple pills throughout the day. But imagine if one pill could replace the ten pills your doctor has prescribed?

According to Chuen, 3D printing is on the way to making this possible, opening up a whole new world of customized medicines.

Rather than simply embedding a single drug in a pill that is designed to dissolve and release the drug at a set time, the precision of 3D printing means pills can be designed to house several drugs, all with different release times. A 3D printed polypill that contains three different drugs has already been developed for patients with diabetes and hypertension.

It maybe that in the future instead of a prescription your doctor will be giving you a digital file of printing instructions.

Studies of surgeons using 3D printed models to rehearse procedures have shown that operations can be completed faster and with less trauma for patients. The potential cost savings alone are considerable. As Chuenpoints out, running an operating theatre can cost AUD$2,000 an hour. That is over AUD$30 a minute.

Chuen and Coles-Black themselves have begun printing out copies of patient kidneys to help surgeons at the Austin in planning the removal of kidney tumors. Such hard plastic models can be made more realistic by printing them in more expensive flexible material such as thermoplastic polyurethane. The material cost of the hard plastic aortas in Chuens office is about AUD$15 (less than $12 in the United States), whereas if printed in soft plastic the cost can rise to AUD$50 (less than $40 USD).

The real cost in 3D printing biological models is not just materials or printers, but also the software used to translate the scans into files for the printer. The 3D segmentation software Chuen uses costs about AUD$20,000 a year (under $16,000 USD).

As soon as 3D printing began to take off people were quick to see the opportunity for creating amateur prosthetics for their petsfrom puppies to geese, and even tortoises. Unlike for humans, there was no mass-supply chain of prosthetics for pets. But mass-supplied prosthetics are likely to be a thing of the past as 3D printing is increasingly used to manufacture prosthetics that are exactly tailored to a patients needs.

For example, with hip replacements, surgeons have to cut and ream a patients bone to fit the prosthetic, but in the future, it will be normal to 3D print a prosthetic to fit a patient, says Chuen.

Just as 3D printing is allowing customized production of medicines and devices, the production itself is likely to become localized. The warehouses that are full of packaged medicines and prosthetics will in the future likely be replaced by digital files of designs that hospitals and pharmacies will be able to download and print on demand using stored raw materials, says Chuen.

Such distributed manufacturing, he says, could make medicines and devices more equitably available across the world so long as a local hospital for instance has the printing technology in place and access to raw materials.

However, Chuen warns distributed production will present new risks for ensuring the quality control of end products. It will need a fundamental shift in responsibility from the supplier to wherever the medicines or devices are manufactured. That represents a huge shift and we have to work out how it could work. But if we get the regulation right then it will transform access to medical products.

But for Chuen, the immediate overall challenge in medical 3D printing is ensuring that medical professionals themselves are up to speed with the technology because it is their clinical experience that will be needed to drive its successful application.

It is a revolutionary technology that will make medical care better and faster, and more personalized. But what we need is for more medical professionals to start exploring and experimenting with what this new technology can do, because many things that we thought of as impossible are now becoming possible.

I think we are moving towards a world where if you can imagine it, you will be able to print itso we need to start imagining, Chuen says.

Source: University of Melbourne

Original Study DOI: 10.5694/mja16.01073

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5 ways 3D printing could totally change medicine - Futurity: Research News

Researchers say theyve proven a long-held theory about heart disease: that lowering inflammation may be nearly as important as cutting cholesterol levels.

They showed that using a targeted drug to reduce inflammation cut the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other events in patients who had already suffered one heart attack independent of any other treatment they got.

A bonus side-effect the treatment also appeared to have reduced rates of lung cancer diagnosis and death.

The studies, being presented at a meeting in Barcelona this weekend, are just a first step and do not yet open a door to a new way of treating heart patients.

And they dont necessarily apply to everybody. But Dr. Paul Ridker of Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who led the research team, thinks the findings will lead to ways to help people most at risk of dying of heart disease and stroke.

This plays beautifully into the whole idea of personalized medicine and trying to get the right drug to the right patient, Ridker said.

Novartis, which makes the drug, said it would ask the Food and Drug Administration for permission to market the drug as a way to prevent heart attacks and would start further tests on its effect in lung cancer.

Ridkers team tested 10,000 patients who had suffered one heart attack already and thus were at very high risk of having a second one. The patients all had high levels of high sensitivity C-reactive protein or CRP, a measure of inflammation in the body.

Related: FDA Approves Pricey New Cholesterol Drug

They were already taking a basket of medications for their heart disease, from cholesterol-lowering statins to blood pressure drugs.

On top of that, the team added a drug called canakinumab, a monoclonal antibody or magic bullet agent that targets a specific cause of inflammation called interleukin 1 beta.

Volunteers got either a placebo, or injections every three months of low, medium or high doses of canakinumab.

After three to four years, people who got the highest dose of the drug were the least likely to have had another heart attack, stroke or to have died of heart disease.

Those who got the two highest doses of canakinumab had a 15 percent lower chance of having a heart attack, stroke or other major cardiovascular event, the team found. Patients were also less likely to need a heart bypass or angioplasty to clear out clogged arteries.

For the first time, weve been able to definitively show that lowering inflammation independent of cholesterol reduces cardiovascular risk, Ridker said.

Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the study, said the results were impressive. It shows us that people with high levels of inflammation - if you target the inflammation - you can reduce the risk of heart attack stroke and death, Nissen said.

Related: Here's How Stress Might Cause Heart Attacks, Strokes

The results are being presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Barcelona, and also published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet medical journal.

Its been long known that both inflammation and cholesterol buildup are involved in heart and artery disease.

Inflammation is part of the bodys immune process, and the patients in the trial were more likely to suffer serious infections, including pneumonia. The same thing happens to people taking immune-suppressing drugs to fight rheumatoid arthritis.

Physicians would have to be cautious, Ridker said.

But the researchers found some other side-effects. People taking the higher doses of canakinumab had lower rates of cancer, especially lung cancer, as well as lower rates of arthritis and gout.

This makes sense to Ridker.

If you smoke a pack of cigarettes, you chronically inflame the lung. If you are a long-haul truck driver breathing in diesel, you are chronically inflaming the lung, he said. Inflammation can drive cancer as well as heart disease, he said.

These are fascinating, human findings that open a potential new class of therapies for cancer, said Dr. Laurie Glimcher, president and CEO of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Ridker does not believe the drug prevents cancer. He thinks inflammation may fuel the growth of some tumors.

The tumors were obviously already there. They were just small and undiagnosed, he said.

Related: Heart Attacks, Strokes, Fell After Trans-Fat Ban

The findings will not immediately mean new treatments for heart disease patients. For one thing, like any medical finding, theyll have to be replicated by other researchers. Ridkers testing another drug, methotrexate, thats also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

While canakinumab has already been approved by the FDA, it is a so-called orphan drug used to treat a very rare genetic condition. Sold under the brand name Ilaris, it costs about $200,000 a year.

We look forward to submitting the ... data to regulatory authorities for approval in cardiovascular and initiating additional phase III studies in lung cancer," said Vas Narasimhan, who heads drug development for Novartis.

Ridker says he is pressing Novartis to try something different, perhaps offering the first dose of the drug free. People whose CRP levels fell more after their first dose also tended to be those who had lower rates of heart attacks and strokes years later.

It might be worth taking one dose and see if you respond. If you dont, well, there is no reason to be on the drug, he said.

This is the way to really focus these treatments on the patients on whom it really works. I think thats just good medicine.

In the end, Ridker believes, some extreme heart disease patients will be helped more by the newest cholesterol-lowering drugs, called PCSK9 inhibitors, while others may be better helped by targeted anti-inflammatory drugs.

Half of heart attacks occur in people who do not have high cholesterol, he said. For the first time, weve been able to definitively show that lowering inflammation independent of cholesterol reduces cardiovascular risk.

Nissen agrees.

I think its a game changer. The only good therapies weve had so far were statins. But now it seems like we have something new in the future, he said.

It opens up pathways to new research and new treatments in the future. There are many other anti-inflammatory activities going on in our body, not just the one thats tackled by canakinumab. There will be so many more studies now to see if other therapies that tackle other pathways will also reduce the risk.

And the findings may offer some common-sense advice to everyone about lowering inflammation, Ridker said.

Theres a lot you can do about it right now, he said.

If your high sensitivity C-reactive protein is elevated, you are a high-risk patient. This is overwhelming evidence that you should go to the gym, throw out the cigarettes, eat a healthier diet, he said.

Because all three of those well-known interventions lower your inflammatory burden.

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A New Way to Fight Heart Disease May Also Tackle Cancer - NBCNews.com

The doctor straightened and pulled the stethoscope from her ears. I dont hear anything on the right side.

Sometimes silence is a good sign. When it comes to listening to my husband breathing, its not.

One quick X-ray later and we discover that his right lung had collapsed. There was also air putting pressure on his left lung.

The fix was easy. The doctor inserted a slender tube into his chest, sucking out the air. His lung reinflated in a matter of minutes.

I caught the doctor later and asked her why this had happened. When the pain started, hed been watching TV.

She shrugged and admitted that sometimes it was just something that happened to men who are tall and thin.

Of course, the answer to the question of How do we avoid this? was dont be tall and thin.

Not the most satisfying answer. Modern medicine at times can feel vague and frustrating.

But there is a new, growing segment that specializes in pinpointing the exact problem and the treatment that works best.

The companies in this sector stand to make enormous profits if you know where to look

No one likes going to the doctor. Its not just the expense or the waiting.

Its not knowing precisely whats wrong. And then getting a treatment that has maybe a 50% chance of working.

Precision medicine stands to completely revolutionize the health care industry.

Through closely examining our individual DNA and trillions of bytes of collected data, doctors can precisely identify what is wrong with a patient. Whats more, the doctor can tailor the patients treatment to their specific strain of an ailment.

Precision medicine aims to end the broad, one-size-fits-all medicine that weve suffered under for centuries.

And were just at the beginning of this revolution.

Global Market Insights released a report revealing that precision medicine was a $39 billion industry in 2015. By 2023, precision medicine should grow to $87.7 billion.

Credence Research expects precision medicine to swell to $98 billion by 2023, with a compounded annual growth rate of 12.3% from 2016 through 2023.

Cancer treatment has dominated precision medicine over the last several years, accounting for roughly 30% of the sector. It will continue to drive demand for personalized medicine.

In 2015, the global market for cancer treatment was $107 billion. Its expected to reach $161 billion by 2021.

As spending for cancer treatment expands, so will spending in precision medicine as it proves to be a more effective course for beating this disease.

In addition, new advancements in health care technology will push spending in precision medicine.

Precision medicine is largely divided into different technologies such as:

Companies are developing tools that will work through massive amounts of data. These tools locate commonalities between patients with similar ailments and their reaction to specific treatment options.

Pharmaceutical companies are focusing on treating patients with specific genetic markers for improved results.

In fact, precision medicine has the potential to touch nearly every facet of the health care industry.

With this explosive growth underway, its important to know which companies are poised to lead the charge forward within the precision medicine sector.

Thats why Paul Mampilly, editor of Profits Unlimited, has pulled together a special report identifying the next company that is set to skyrocket on the back of massive growth within precision medicine. If you would like to get a copy of this report, click here.

Weve already witnessed revolutions hit industries with the creation of the combustion engine.

And then again with the advent of the internet.

Precision medicine stands to change the entire medical industry. You dont want to miss your chance to take part.

Regards,

Jocelynn Smith

Sr. Managing Editor, Sovereign Investor Daily

P.S. Pauls new video report explains why precision medicine will be more important for your health than every drug, vaccination and medical device combined. To watch Pauls shocking video, click here.

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The Entire Medical Industry Is About To Change - ValueWalk

The global research antibodies market (including reagents) is projected to reach USD 12.60 Billion by 2022 from USD 9.33 Billion in 2017, growing at a CAGR of 6.2% during the forecast period.

Factors such as the increasing R&D activities and expenditure in the life science industry, increasing funding for proteomics research and drug discovery, and growing collaboration between industries and academic institutes are the key drivers of the market.

The report analyzes the global research antibodies market (including reagents) by product, technology, application, end user, and region. Based on product, the market is segmented into reagents and antibodies. The reagents segment accounted for the major share of the research antibodies market (including reagents) in 2016. This can be attributed to the fact that a large number of reagents are used in various routine assays and techniques.

Furthermore, based on type, the reagents market has been further segmented into media & sera, stains & dyes, fixatives, buffers, probes, solvents, enzymes, and others (controls, stabilizers, and diluents). The media & sera segment is expected to dominate the market in 2016 due to its high usage in all types of assays, culture procedures, and techniques.

Market Dynamics

Key Market Drivers

Key Market Opportunities

Key Challenges

Key Topics Covered:

1 Introduction

2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Premium Insights

5 Market Overview

6 Research Antibodies Market, By Product

7 Research Antibodies Market, By Technology

8 Research Antibodies Market, By Application

9 Research Antibodies Market, By End User

10 Research Antibodies Market, By Region

11 Competitive Landscape

12 Company Profiles

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/xgmch2/research

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Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com

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Global Research Antibodies Market 2017-2022 - Increasing Demand for Personalized Medicine and Protein ... - PR Newswire (press release)

Vibrent Health's cloud-based precision medicine platform has gained authority to operate from the National Institutes of Health, a certification that it meets federal privacy and security standards and paving the way for the company's work on the landmark research cohort that will fuel the Precision Medicine Initiative

"This ATO certification marks a significant milestone for Vibrent in its journey to power the next generation of personalized medicine," said the company's CEO Praduman Jain, in a statement.

Vibrent's SaaS platform combines genomic information with data from electronic health records, medical devices, wearables and more.

[Also:NIH All of Us program gearing up for 'precision engagement,' Eric Dishman says]

It will be the technology around which the All of Us Research Program will be based as the precision medicine project works to enroll more than one million participants in its cohort to understand how genomics, lifestyle, behavioral, and environmental factors impact an individuals health.

In addition to NIH, Vibrent's technology is at use at Johns Hopkins, Stanford, the U.S. Veterans Administration, UnitedHealth Group and Medtronic.

For the ATO certification, the company worked with Coalfire, a third-party assessment organization, to develop security plans, policies, procedures, scanning, SSP, and pen testing, per FISMA risk management framework, to ensure the integrity of its platform, officials said. Coalfire confirmed that Vibrent Health has the necessary operational and technical controls in place to provide a secure environment for federal systems, bureaus, departments, and their supporting entities.

Twitter:@MikeMiliardHITNEmail the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

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NIH gives nod to Vibrent Health for precision medicine work - Healthcare IT News

Technology could speed the process of precision medicine; Beaverton firm is at forefront.

Ganapati "Gans" Srinivasa is not a doctor, but he just might hold the key to saving millions of lives.

Srinivasa is famous for being the chief architect of the Xeon processor, a 400 MHz Pentium microprocessor from Intel for use in mid-range enterprise servers and workstations. The device is found in most modern technological devices.

Srinivasa is chief executive officer of Omics Data Automation, a resident company at the Oregon Technology Business Center and one of five winners of the 2017 Beaverton Challenge winners. The company is designing and selling software in the precision medicine area to aggregate data for cancer treatment centers and hospitals.

"We can talk about gadgets, but so what? This is the Holy Grail," Srinivasa said of his current project to assist medical professionals working with cancer patients who are faced with a mountain of data from a wide and confusing array of sources.

And he's not alone in that opinion.

"A patient with a newly diagnosed cancer may undergo many different types of tests, but the results of these tests exist in separate data silos," said Dr. Chris Corless, director of the Knight Diagnostic Laboratories, Oregon Health & Science University. A data silo is a separate database or set ofdatafiles that are not part of an organization's enterprise-widedataadministration.

"Omics will aggregate and analyze the very large quantity of data contained across all of these silos, which will result in faster diagnostics and more effective treatments," Corless said.

According to Srinivasa, there are currently about 16 million cancer survivors in the United States and, of those, about 600,000 are expected to die from some form of cancer, making it the second deadliest disease next to heart disease.

Precision medicine is a lot more than stethoscopes and X-ray machines."It's an eye-opener how dependent precision medicine is on computation,"? saidMichael Wrimm, Ph.D, a principal with Omics.

The treatment of cancer isn't justa "race with time," it's also an expensive effort, Srinivasa said. His goal is to provide this service in a price range of $100 to $500 per patient to compute and store information for 10 years.

Omics recently was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for $224,903 to develop technology that will help patients receive faster and more accurate diagnosis and treatment. This capability has the potential to help patients with cancer and other serious medical conditions. Omics also recently received a $500,000 contract with the University of California, Los Angeles Hospital.

The vision of Omics Data Automation in the Oregon Technology Business Center Incubator, is for effective precision medicine treatment each patient has be characterized, analyzed and targeted with a plan tailored to inhibit their cancer. Precision treatment is an informatics enterprise that aims to expedite and perfect the process so the most precise, tailored treatment plan can be generated in one day using all the information available.

Srinivasa said the specialized computation of treatment for cancer and what Omics is doing is a timesaver and a lifesaver. Omics has grown from about four principals at the beginning of the year to 11 contributors to the project now.

Wrimm said precision medicine seems exotic, but the company tries to make it accessible to all.

Omics develops infrastructure for aggregating multidimensional data to enable customers to build and scale up clinical practices while keeping the costs low, so lifesaving technology is available for everyone.

Omics is designing and selling software in the precision medicine area to aggregate data for cancer treatment centers and hospitals.

Wrimm and Srinivasa said they both left their "cushy Intel jobs" to make a difference in the world.

Omics looks for groups of population cohorts that have a similar set of variations.

Steve Morris, executive director of the Oregon Technology Business Center, said, "I think this project really has exciting potential this whole idea of personalized medicine takes you (the patient) into account right down to the genome. It's a great example of incubation. Gans (Srinivasa) is awesome in terms of technology and this has excellent potential to make a very big splash worldwide."

The broader impact/commercial potential of this small business innovation project is that patient medical information comes in many diverse forms including genomic sequences, medical images and clinical observations.

The integration of the various data sources across patient populations have shown to reveal patterns and similarities among patients, which inform treatment options. With advances in imaging and genomic sequencing technologies, the sheer volume of available information is growing exponentially, straining current computational approaches and creating an imminent need for scalable data integration, Srinivasa said.

The ability to overcome the data mountain opens the door to support precision medicine and provide enhanced services to medical institutions. With Omics innovations, patients can receive faster and more accurate diagnoses and treatments, clinicians can deliver verified treatment decisions through patient cohort comparison, hospitals have better standard of care and society overall will potentially be empowered by supporting global treatment options and well-informed pharmaceutical development, Srinivasa added.

The project develops a scalable aggregation, a technique for improving the interactive behavior of database systems, and analysis of factors and circumstances that cause a patient's symptoms to improve or worsen. The project blends all that information to help create personalized diagnosis and therapy for each patient.

But bringing all that information together in one place for the doctors to find is the trick.

The project aggregates features from genomics (the branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, evolution and mapping of genomes), imaging and clinical characterization of patients. This enables identification of groups of patients based on both genotypes (the genetic constitution of an individual organism) and phenotypes (the set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment).

For more information, visit omicsautomation.com.

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Computing cancer - Pamplin Media Group

As a result, there are more than 1,000 immunotherapy trials underway, and the number keeps growing. Its hard to imagine we can support more than 1,000 studies, said Dr. Daniel Chen, a vice president at Genentech, a biotechnology company.

In a commentary in the journal Nature, he and Ira Mellman, also a vice president at the company, wrote that the proliferating trials have outstripped our progress in understanding the basic underlying science.

I think there is a lot of exuberant rush to market, said Dr. Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. And we are squandering our most precious resource patients.

Take melanoma: There are more than 85,000 cases a year in the United States, according to Dr. Norman Sharpless, director of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina, who was recently named director of the National Cancer Institute.

Most melanomas are cured by surgery, leaving about 10,000 patients who have had relapses and could be candidates for an experimental treatment. But nearly all will be treated by doctors outside of academic medical centers, who are not part of the clinical trials network and so do not offer patients experimental treatments.

Companies therefore must compete for the few patients with relapsed melanoma who are at centers offering clinical trials. Many end up struggling to find enough subjects to determine whether a treatment actually works and if so, for whom.

And these drugs often are not so different from one another.

Immunotherapy drugs that attack a protein known as PD-1 are approved for treatment of lung cancer, renal cell cancer, bladder cancer and Hodgkins disease, noted Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the F.D.A.s Oncology Center of Excellence.

Yet many pharmaceutical companies want their own anti-PD-1. Companies are hoping to combine immunotherapy drugs with other cancer drugs for added effect, and many do not want to have to rely on a competitors anti-PD-1 drug along with their own secondary drugs.

So in new trials, additional anti-PD-1 drugs are being tested all over again against the same cancers a me-too business strategy taken to multibillion-dollar extremes.

How many PD-1 antibodies does Planet Earth need? wondered Dr. Roy Baynes, a senior vice president at Merck, which received approval for its first such drug in 2014.

Immunotherapy trials have proliferated so quickly that major medical centers are declining to furnish patients to them. The Yale Cancer Center participates in fewer than 10 percent of the immunotherapy trials it is asked to join.

The problem is that many of the trials are uninteresting from a scientific view, said Dr. Roy Herbst, the centers chief of medical oncology. The companies sponsoring these trials are not addressing new research questions, he said; they are trying to get proprietary drugs approved.

If the struggle to find patients for immunotherapy trials is challenging, finding patients for another new type of cancer treatment can be next to impossible.

These are drugs that attack mutations that tumors need to grow and thrive so-called targeted therapies. The idea is that tumors can be reliant on certain gene mutations. Block those mutations and the tumors will die.

The problem is that the mutations can be extraordinarily rare. Most patients who have cancers with the mutation in question have no idea; to find them, large groups of cancer patients must have their tumors genetically tested.

Thats expensive: Genetic sequencing costs about $5,000, and insurers rarely pay. Most cancer patients treated outside of academic centers do not have their tumors sequenced.

So what to do if youre a company with a drug that seems to be dramatically effective, but only in a few patients?

You may be forced to undertake a worldwide search for subjects that can last for years.

To test a two-drug combination against lung cancer, GlaxoSmithKline searched the United States, Japan, South Korea and Europe for 13 months just to find 59 patients whose tumors shared a rare mutation.

It took Pfizer three years to locate 50 lung cancer patients who carried a rare aberration called ROS1, found in just 1 percent of patients.

Clinical trials with patient searches like these are not for the faint of heart, said Dr. Mace Rothenberg, a senior vice president at Pfizer.

It helps that the F.D.A. has not insisted on large trials with control groups in instances of targeted therapies with few who qualify.

Instead the agency is looking for drugs with effects so powerful there is no question that they work studies in which patients went into remission, for example, when all evidence suggested they would die.

We used to have trials not long ago that had 700 patients per arm, Dr. Sharpless said, referring to the treatment groups in a study. Thats almost undoable now.

Today, trials can be eight patients.

To test a drug that attacks a tumor with a mutation found in just 1 percent of cancer patients, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering fanned out to the nonacademic medical centers where the majority of patients are treated, offering to pay for most of the cost of genetic testing, seeking patients at practices in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania; Hartford, Conn.; and Miami.

That is how Bruce Fenstermacher, 67, a retired long-distance truck driver who lives in Allentown, Pa., discovered he had the rare mutation that the drugs manufacturer, Loxo Oncology, had been looking for.

He had been receiving immunotherapy for his melanoma, but it had stopped working and his cancer was spreading again. Discovering that mutation was like hitting the jackpot for Mr. Fenstermacher, said Dr. Suresh Nair, an oncologist with Lehigh Valley Health Network.

The experimental drug seems to be working for Mr. Fenstermacher. But since so few patients have tumors that might respond, oncologists wonder how they will find them.

Is it worth it? Is it even possible?

If, God forbid, I had a family member with cancer, I would insist on this type of testing, said Dr. David Hyman, chief of the Early Drug Development Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. But I dont know what the rate has to be for society to say, We cant afford to miss these people.

And trials involving limited numbers of patients can be perilous. The smaller the study and the shorter its duration, the more likely that what looks like an effect in a trial might simply be a result of chance, Dr. Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering said.

That leaves some of us evidence geeks wondering if it works, he said.

Some of the new cancer drugs have had such impressive results that their effectiveness was not in doubt, said Dr. Vinay Prasad, an oncologist at Oregon Health and Sciences University.

But, there also were drugs approved without control groups that did not provide such stunning benefits, and others that markedly slowed the growth of tumors but did not extend life.

In tiny studies, serious side effects can be missed, said Dr. Scott Ramsey, an oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

He worries about the expense of the new drugs, including out-of-pocket costs to patients. They may want the new cancer drugs reaching the market, he said, but you wonder if you are doing them any favors.

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A Cancer Conundrum: Too Many Drug Trials, Too Few Patients - New York Times

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Aug. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Biovista announced today that it is collaborating with HPE to advance Biovista's Project Prodigy Big Data AI healthcare platform applied in the personalized medicine vertical. Advances from the HPE-Biovista collaboration will be used initially within the context of Biovista's existing collaboration with Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center (SBL), a hospital and health care organization that is home to more than 300,000 provider office visits per year.

HPE is joining the ongoing effort between Biovista and SBL and will work with Biovista to help advance the capabilities and productization of Project Prodigy as a Big Data AI engine in the personalized medicine vertical as a start.

Biovista develops advanced technologies that use Big Data and next generation analytics to address major needs in data-heavy verticals, with healthcare and personalized medicine as an initial focus. HPE and Biovista's new collaboration will leverage HPE computing and Biovista's Big Data AI engine, Project Prodigy, to identify and validate new therapeutic options for personalized medicine, starting with the community hospital setting.

"It's exciting to see Project Prodigy help advance the practice of healthcare," Aris Persidis, Ph.D. Biovista's president said. "The aim is to help doctors deliver more targeted care with fewer side effects in a way that integrates well with their workflow and is also cost effective. We are happy to be working with HPE within the context of our work at SBL to accelerate the advances of Project Prodigy in personalized medicine."

"Medicine as currently practiced in the United States is hardly sustainable financially," noted James Hildebrandt, MD, VP Medical Affairs at SBL . "We need to deliver better care with fewer side effects at a lower cost, or the system will fail. Efforts like the SBL-Biovista-HPE collaboration in personalized medicine that aim to combine IT efficiencies with sound medical practice promise to move us in the right direction."

"Project Prodigy offers unique prospects to apply AI Deep Learning techniques and Big Data analytics to personalized medicine," said Dr. Stephen Wheat, Director, HPC Vertical Solutions and Apollo Pursuits. "Combining HPE capabilities with Project Prodigy is a powerful and exciting path forward for us in personalized medicine, as well as in other verticals that have emerging AI Deep Learning workflows."

James Hildebrandt further noted, "We are very happy to work with Biovista to advance the practice of personalized medicine using the very best technologies available. SBL continually works to incorporate leading edge capabilities, including those at the forefront of big data healthcare analytics, such as Biovista's Project Prodigy, as we deliver high quality care close to home for our patients and communities. We see the Biovista-HPE link within the context of our SBL-Biovista collaboration as very positive for SBL and our patient community."

About Biovista: Biovista develops advanced technologies that use big data and next generation analytics to address major needs in biomedical R&D and clinical practice. Project Prodigy is a new category of inference generation and validation system. Biovista is using Project Prodigy to advance its own drug repositioning programs, as well as in programs with biopharmaceutical companies, regulators, and patient advocacy groups.

About SBL: Sarah Bush Lincoln provides a full range of acute care services to residents of East Central Illinois' Coles County and the surrounding eight counties. Primary care services are provided through 14 extended campus primary care locations and three walk-in clinics. Post Acute Care services extend to the surrounding 19 counties in East Central and Southern Illinois through active and consulting medical staffs that include approximately 175 providers representing 28 specialties delivered throughout the health center, including its 129 bed hospital, its cancer center, heart center and other centers of excellence.

Employing about 2,300 area residents, the health center promotes a culture of excellence through continuing personal and professional growth. SBL has received the Illinois Performance Excellence Gold Award for Achievement of Excellence in 2011, and is accredited by The Joint Commission, the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in healthcare.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/biovista-expands-project-prodigy-collaborations-in-personalized-medicine-300502425.html

SOURCE Biovista

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Biovista expands Project Prodigy collaborations in personalized medicine - Markets Insider

Identifying the best care for a patient can be extremely challenging. To support the creation of multifactorial Decision Support Systems (DSSs), we propose an Umbrella Protocol, focusing on prostate cancer.

The PRODIGE project consisted of a workflow for standardizing data, and procedures, to create a consistent dataset useful to elaborate DSSs. Techniques from classical statistics and machine learning will be adopted. The general protocol accepted by our Ethical Committee can be downloaded from cancerdata.org .

A standardized knowledge sharing process has been implemented by using a semi-formal ontology for the representation of relevant clinical variables.

The development of DSSs, based on standardized knowledge, could be a tool to achieve a personalized decision-making.

Future oncology (London, England). 2017 Jul 31 [Epub ahead of print]

A R Alitto, R Gatta, Bgl Vanneste, M Vallati, E Meldolesi, A Damiani, V Lanzotti, G C Mattiucci, V Frascino, C Masciocchi, F Catucci, A Dekker, P Lambin, V Valentini, G Mantini

Radiation Oncology Area, Gemelli-ART, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy., Department of Radiation Oncology (MAASTRO), GROW - School for Oncology & Developmental Biology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands., School of Computing & Engineering, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28758431

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PRODIGE: PRediction models in prOstate cancer for personalized meDIcine challenGE. - UroToday

BUFFALO, N.Y. Personalized medicine, tracking of deadlyepidemics and new insights into drug side effects are just a few ofthe ways that biomedical informatics is helping enhance medicalresearch and clinical care. Big data science holds the promise ofrevolutionizing how health care data are used to provide bettercare for patients.

But as more and more health care data become available, theability to efficiently analyze and utilize these data is growingincreasingly problematic. At the same time, there arentenough people trained in the field of biomedical informatics.

Now, a new five-year $2.5 million grant to the Department ofBiomedical Informatics in the Jacobs School of Medicine andBiomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo will train a newcadre of research leaders skilled in analyzing and interpretingthese data.

The funding, known as T15, from the National Library of Medicineof the National Institutes of Health, supports doctoral andpostdoctoral level training for research careers in biomedicalinformatics and data science. The training programs are designed tomeet the growing need for investigators trained in biomedicalcomputing, data science and related fields with applications inhealth care clinical informatics, translational bioinformatics andclinical research informatics.

Over the five years of the grant, the department will be able totrain as many as 15 doctoral and postdoctoral researchers inbiomedical informatics.

UBs program will focus on three major areas:

clinical informatics, including socio-technical and human-centereddesign, workflow analysis and cybersecurity.

translational bioinformatics, including database management,pharmacogenomics and predictive modeling.

clinical research informatics, including a big data sciencetraining program, statistical machine learning and data mining.

The NLM grant puts the department at the forefront ofthis rapidly changing field, said Peter Elkin, MD, professorand chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics, and directorof the new training program. Elkin also is director of theinformatics core of UBs Clinical and Translational ScienceInstitute.

Biomedical informatics is the field that will provide theinfrastructure necessary to allow scientists to performtranslational and clinical genomic research moreefficiently, he explained. The National Library ofMedicine funding, together with our established fellowship programin clinical informatics, will allow our department to play a keyrole in developing tomorrows research leaders in biomedicalinformatics.

He added that trainees in the new program will benefit fromUBs existing Big Data-Scientist Training EnhancementProgram, funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs incollaboration with the National Cancer Institute of the NIH. The UBprogram was one of just six sites funded nationally in 2015.

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Biomedical informatics gets a boost with $2.5 million grant - UB News Center

Every human on earth is unique our genes are different, we eat different things, we live in different places. As a result, medical treatments tend to work differently on different people. Depending on your genes, a drug might cure your sickness or it might cause a side effect that makes you sicker.

In the past, many of humanitys individual variations were invisible to us, but today, new technology offers us a way to peer into each persons genome, allowing doctors to personalize treatments for each patient. This approach, called precision medicine, has been a major focus of research and investment in the last few years.

But precision medicine only works if scientists have studied people who are similar to you. If your genes are rare or unusual compared to those researchers have examined in the past, you could end up getting the wrong treatment. Since the vast majority of genetics studies are done on people of European ancestry, members of other racial groups may lose out on the benefits of precision medicine entirely. Those same groups already often receive worse health care in the United States than people of European descent get, and personalized medical treatment could make the gap in care larger.

Precision medicine is based on the idea that genes can be linked to diseases. To study this, scientists assemble a group of people, some with a disease and some without, and identify their genetic differences. If particular differences are common among the people who have the disease and absent from the people without it, then scientists can infer that those genetic patterns might be involved in the disease.

But each person has their own catalogue of genetic characteristics. Some are common in people of certain ancestral backgrounds and rare in those from other backgrounds. If scientists exclusively study individuals of one ethnic group, they may not know how to refine their treatments for a person from a different group.

A 2009 analysis of the studies that can link a genetic variant to a disease or trait showed that fully 96 percent of participants were of European descent. In a 2016 commentary in the journal Nature, Alice Popejoy and Stephanie Fullerton, respectively a graduate student and a professor at the University of Washington, showed that these studies had grown more diverse and people of European ancestry now account for 81 percent of research subjects. Things are getting better, and its still pretty darn slow, Fullerton said in an interview. And of the progress that has been made, much of it is attributable not to an increase in diversity in U.S. research but to studies conducted in Asian countries, which involve local participants.

Disparities in biomedical research exacerbate an existing gap in U.S. health care. African-Americans and Latinos are less likely to have health insurance and more likely to suffer from chronic diseases. Even controlling for wealth differences between populations, African-Americans receive worse health care.

The science underlying precision medicine threatens to make these disparities worse because it could leave any genetic differences that primarily affect nonwhite groups unstudied. Some genetic differences are prevalent in one population and rare in another. A prominent example is a gene called APOL1. Differences in this gene are common in people whose ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa but rare in those of other backgrounds. Some of these variations increase the risk of developing kidney disease more than sevenfold, but they also seem to confer protection against African sleeping sickness. Knowing a patients APOL1 genetic makeup might be useful for guiding kidney disease treatment, and APOL1 is likely one of many genes that must be studied within a nonwhite population.

Its possible to solve the problem of underrepresentation. The National Institutes of Health fund a number of large-scale genetic research projects in the United States, and scientists there consider this a major issue. We are aware of this situation, and work is being funded to rectify the situation, said Charles Rotimi, an investigator at NIH. He pointed to initiatives like Human Heredity and Health in Africa and the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology Consortium. These projects are developing more diverse study populations to address the underrepresentation of people of non-European ancestries, in some cases going to African countries to collect genetic data. In the United States, individual investigators can also apply for smaller-scale NIH grants to study particular diseases.

Even when scientists make a conscious effort to recruit a diverse study population, they can run into hurdles. For very good reason, minority populations can be more skeptical and concerned about being involved in biomedical research, said professor Danielle Dick of Virginia Commonwealth University, who studies how genetics contribute to a persons risk of substance abuse. The good reason Dick referred to is a long history of biomedical researchers mistreating people of color, including in the Tuskegee trials and through the forced sterilization of Puerto Ricans. Dicks team and others have tried to address issues of underrepresentation by visiting various hospitals to recruit Hispanic or African-American study participants, providing educational materials about genetics research, arranging to collect samples when patients may be off work, and taking other measures to encourage participation.

But the imbalance in samples is so severe, and the rush to develop precision medicine is so swift, that the problem may not be solved before treatments are developed, and as a result, those treatments will likely predominantly help people of European ancestry. The time horizon for a lot of therapies is typically in the 10- to 15-year range, Fullerton said. Could we solve it in that time frame? Possibly. But genetic differences may already be causing disparities in treatment results between groups. Some genetic variants that are common to certain racial or ethnic groups can affect a patients tolerance for drugs, for example, so knowing about a patients genetic code can guide a physicians prescription. Doctors are observing these phenomena in the clinic already, said Nishadi Rajapakse, an NIH administrator at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Clinical differences in health care are only likely to become more severe as precision medicine advances. New drugs are already targeting certain genetic differences, although none that would function primarily in one ethnic group and not in others. In the long run, people of European ancestry could benefit from ever more specialized treatments while people of color are left behind.

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Medicine Is Getting More Precise For White People - FiveThirtyEight

The secret to healing what ails you lies within your own DNA.(photo credit:DREAMSTIME)

Israeli genetic researchers have opened the door to new avenues of medical innovation with their research into the role that RNA plays in gene regulation.

Genomes, a complete set of genes, are divided into two categories: coding DNA and noncoding DNA (known as RNA). Dr. Ramon Birnbaum, co-founder of Ben-Gurion University of the Negevs Center for Evolutionary Genomics and Medicine (EGM), had long been fascinated with the latter. His pioneering research found that noncoding DNA, once labeled junk, plays an essential role in gene regulation.

His research focuses on understanding gene regulation during the brains development and specifically in early onset epilepsy. He explains why diagnosis and treatment can be difficult in infants: The symptoms can look the same, but the causes can be very different. Diving into the mechanisms that cause genes to express or not express will lead to more accurate diagnoses and avoid inefficient or even damaging medication."

Dr. Barak Rotblat, a member of the EGM Center, focuses on how genes affect cancer cells. He explains the potential for personalized medicine treating cancer patients. You can take a biopsy, see the specific tumor, know which genes are highly expressed, and which promote the cancers growth. You then create a cocktail to hit the tumor cells of the individual patient.

Meanwhile, Dr. Debbie Toiber, also of the EGM Center and Department of Life Sciences, is taking the RNA research in another direction. Her focus is on how mapping DNA can improve health and potentially increase lifespans.

DNA damage is one of the major causes of aging and age-related diseases, she explains. Most of the damage is repaired, but not everything. So as we age the DNA damage accumulates. With the accumulated damage, cells and neurons die, and organs become debilitated, causing the body to be more susceptible to disease and aging disorders.

Damage to the body is inevitable on some level by simply living, with the environment causing additional damage. While lifestyle plays a major role in the bodys ability to repair DNA damage on its own, genetic makeup contributes as well.

For example, if someone has an inherited gene mutation, it could limit his or her bodys ability to repair itself, leaving the individual prone to immune system damage, cancer, neurodegeneration, and premature aging. By looking into a persons genetic makeup, researchers are opening the door to personalized medicine, designed to uniquely address an individuals needs.

As Israeli researchers move forward with their studies, we come closer to gaining a deeper understanding of the human genome and providing the right personalized treatment for a myriad of medical conditions, from birth to old age and everything in between.

Making lives better in the Negev, in Israel and around the world, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev inter-disciplinary research and applied science teams are shaping the world of tomorrow with groundbreaking innovation. Sign up for eIMPACT newsletter to learn about the latest innovations as they happen.

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Ben-Gurion University scholars uncover the secret to personalized medicine - The Jerusalem Post

The Report Global Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Market 2017-2021 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz

This press release was orginally distributed by SBWire

Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/01/2017 -- MarketResearchReports.biz has announced the availability of a new report in its repository, titled "Global Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Market 2017-2021." The report has been developed by a group of experienced market research analysts and aspires to armor its targeted audiences as a credible business tool. The report provides comprehensive assessment of all factors that may drive or obstruct the inflow of the demand for therapeutic drug monitoring, catches the recent trends, segments the market on the basis of product type, drug class, end-users, and region, and profiles some of the leading companies in order to showcase the competitive landscape.

As per the findings of the report, the global therapeutic drug monitoring market is gaining traction from a number of factors, such as increasing demand for personalized medicine, advances in drug pharmacogenetics, and the growing use of TDM in traditional anticancer therapies. On the other hand, the shortage of skilled technicians to perform the peculiar diagnostic tests and unavailability of financial provisions for clinical interpretations of TDM results are some of the challenges faced by the vendors operating in the global therapeutic drug monitoring market. Nevertheless, this market is expected to gain additional traction from a number of trends, such as increased focus on the development of novel therapeutic drug monitoring tools for new indications, advances in technologies, and the advent of POC tests.

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Based on product, the global therapeutic drug monitoring market is segmented into equipment and consumables. As of now, consumables form the largest chunk of demand, which can be attributed to growing number of grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for R&D activities. As an increasing number of vendors are focusing on the production of consumables for its high margin, the segment is expected to remain highly profitable throughout the forecast period. Based on end-users, the report classifies the global therapeutic drug monitoring market into hospitals and private laboratories, while on the basis of drug class, the market has been bifurcated into immunosuppressants, antiepileptics, antiarrhythmics, antibiotics, and others. Geographically, the report gauges the potential of therapeutic drug monitoring market in the regions of Americas, Asia Pacific (APAC), and Europe, The Middle East, and Africa.

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The report finds the global therapeutic drug monitoring market to be fragmented in nature with the presence of several global and regional players, who are consistently competing on factors such as automated systems, aggressive pricing, diverse applications, and improved standardization. Some of the key players of the global therapeutic drug monitoring market, who have been profiled in the report, are Bio-Rad Laboratories, Beckman Coulter, Siemens Healthcare, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Exagen Diagnostics, bioMerieu, AESKU.Diagnostics, Adaptive Biotechnologies, Alere, Bio-Techne, DiaSorin, BUeHLMANN Laboratories, Euro Diagnostica, Quest Diagnostics, InSource Diagnostics, IDEXX Laboratories, Merck Millipore, Myriad Genetics, Miraca Life Sciences, Phadia, SEKISUI MEDICAL, Tecan, and SQI Diagnostics.

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Growing Demand for Personalized Medicine Driving Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Market - Digital Journal

HAMBURG, Germany, August 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Indivumed is pleased to announce a collaboration with MedStar Health to individualize anti-cancer medical therapies through state-of-the-art biospecimen collection, preservation and analysis.

Indivumed, a Germany-based oncology research company has developed a unique global standard for tissue and clinical data collection, establishing the leading cancer database which provides a unique basis for developing precision medicine in cancer.

MedStar cares for thousands of cancer patients and survivors through the MedStar Health Cancer Network. In collaboration with the MedStar Health Research Institute, MedStar is increasing biospecimen collection started nearly a decade ago at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Over the term of the agreement, the cancer biobank will encompass MedStar's most active cancer programs throughout the system to partner with Indivumed's global annotated cancer biobank of human tumor tissue samples used to develop anti-tumor drugs and personalized medicine for cancer.

This international partnership will allow MedStar researchers to access highest quality biospecimens and associated clinical data contributed by consenting patients. In addition, MedStar cancer researchers will have access to samples contributed by more than 30,000 patients within Indivumed's global cancer database operating within Europe, Asia and the United States.

"Attaining individualized cancer diagnosis and treatment for every patient based on reliable clinical data and molecularly intact biospecimens is our goal," said Hartmut Juhl, M.D., founder and CEO of Indivumed, and a cancer researcher. "Our tool for achieving this goal is the establishment of a unique global cancer database using molecular information from tissues collected under stringent protocols. MedStar Health brings a special blend of clinical care, research and patient outreach within the largest hospital network in the Mid-Atlantic Region.Our long-standing partnership with Georgetown's Lombardi Cancer Center has made possible our expanded commitment to partner throughout the MedStar System. By building a biobank together, we can make a dramatic difference in phenotype-based precision medicine worldwide," Juhl went on to say.

"By participating in the Indivumed global network, we'll have access to a critical mass of biological samples and clinical data for use in unique research for our community," said Neil Weissman, MD, President of the MedStar Health Research Institute. "Indivumed is a world leader in tissue collection and preservation and will expand our ability to conduct metabolic, as well as gene-based, cancer research."

MedStar's Cancer Network has recently been granteda three-year accreditation with Commendationfrom the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons (ACoS). In addition, the Georgetown University Lombardi Cancer Center holds the distinction of being a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, the only cancer center in the Washington area with such distinction. Louis M. Weiner, MD, director of Georgetown Lombardi and Director of MedStar's integrated cancer network stated firmly that, "the MedStar Cancer Network and Georgetown Lombardi are committed to delivering the highest standards of care and providing access to the most current cutting-edge research for our patients suffering from this horrendous disease." Weiner continued, "the Indivumed cancer biobank has been and will continue to be a critical asset to our physicians and researchers in their quest to defeat cancer."

Under an initial multi-year agreement, MedStar will collect lung, breast, colorectal, pancreatic and other cancer tissues at its most active cancer programs throughout the system for research and storage according to Indivumed's unique biobanking standard. Tissue collection at Georgetown Lombardi will continue pursuant to Georgetown University's existing agreement with Indivumed.

AboutIndivumed GmbH

INDIVUMED an ISO certified global oncology research company based in Hamburg, Germany, has established the world's leading Cancer Database and biobank, retaining unique patterns of biomolecules such as RNA, DNA, and proteins as they existed in the human body. This Cancer Database makes possible multi-omics capabilities that will allow for characterization of samples and data such as whole genome gene expression analysis, expression analysis of cancer relevant proteins, expression analysis of cancer relevant phosphoproteins and bioinformatic solutions for integrating molecular, biological and clinical information.

Indivumed's products and services allow for in-depth understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a patient's cancer, addressing important demands in translational research and molecular diagnostics to support implementation of personalized healthcare.

For more information, please visithttp://www.indivumed.com

About MedStar Health

MedStar Health is a not-for-profit health system dedicated to caring for people in Maryland and the Washington, D.C. region, while advancing the practice of medicine through education, innovation and research. MedStar's 30,000 associates, 6,000 affiliated physicians, 10 hospitals, ambulatory care and urgent care centers, and the MedStar Health Research Institute are recognized regionally and nationally for excellence in medical care. As the medical education and clinical partner of Georgetown University, MedStar trains more than 1,100 medical residents annually. MedStar Health's patient-first philosophy combines care, compassion and clinical excellence with an emphasis on customer service. For more information, visithttp://www.MedStarHealth.org.

Contact:Hartmut Juhl, MDFounder and Chief Executive OfficerIndivumed GmbHTel.: +49-40-413383-0rel="nofollow">press@indivumed.com

Link:
MedStar Health Collaborates With Indivumed to Advance Precision Oncology Research - Markets Insider