StemCell Therapy

Most people do their best to avoid contact with Salmonella . This bacteria genus, which often lives on poultry and can find its way into other food products , causes hundreds of thousands of illnesses--and hundreds of deaths--in the U.S. each year. But new research demonstrates that this common food pathogen could be disarmed and reconfigured as a vehicle for gene-based antiviral treatments. [More]

Over 1.5 million new cancer cases were identified in the United States in 2010, and despite continued advances in cancer treatment, approximately 500,000 cancer-related deaths occurred in the same year (1). For a long time, cancer therapies were a one-size-fits-all, depending on the cancer type. In recent years however, the need has emerged to develop a more enlightened paradigm in which treatments are better tailored towards the individual uniqueness of the cancer (2).

Personalized Medicine is a catch phrase that reflects the current understanding that no two patients are alike. The primary goal of personalized medicine is to develop patient-specific treatments that can hopefully reduce unnecessary side effects as well as the overall cost of cancer care by using therapies that are most likely to be effective in the population that is most likely to benefit (3).

[More]

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP (NYSE: AZN) and HealthCore, Inc., the health outcomes research subsidiary of WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP), announced a collaborative agreement to conduct real-world studies designed to determine how to most effectively and economically treat disease

Unlike controlled clinical trials, real-world evidence studies use observational data such as electronic medical records, claims information and patient surveys. By examining data associated with the delivery of care, real-world analyses can assess treatment impact on hospital length of stay, readmissions, overall health status, cost of care and other key evidence-based outcomes.

A leader in health outcomes research, HealthCore maintains the largest data environment in the nation. HealthCore’s near real-time, fully-integrated data environment combines medical, pharmacy, laboratory results and other information drawn from 36 million enrollees in local Blue Cross and/or Blue Shield plans with concentrated populations in 16 states.

A recently-released report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has found that the water supplies of many major cities are contaminated with hexavalent chromium, an industrial chemical toxin that does not get filtered out by most consumer water filtration devices. Thirty-one of the 35 water supplies tested contained hexavalent chromium, and 25 of them contained levels higher than a California-proposed maximum upper threshold for safety.

Topping the list of contaminated water supplies was Norman, Okla., with 12.9 parts per billion (ppb) of hexavalent chromium, followed by Honolulu, Hawaii, at 2.0 ppb and Riverside, Calif., at 1.69 ppb. Other highly-tainted cities include Madison, Wisc., San Jose, Calif., Tallahassee, Fla., and Albuquerque, N.M.

According to the National Toxicology Program, hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium-6, is linked to causing gastrointestinal tumors and other forms of cancer. International governing bodies have stated that it is toxic when inhaled. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared hexavalant chromium "likely to be carcinogenic to humans." Read more...

Cardiofy Heart Care Supplement

GENEVIEVE CARBERY
Tue, Nov 02, 2010

A new study found alcohol was the most dangerous of 20 legal and illegal drugs when the two criteria of harm to the user and harm to others were combined ALCOHOL IS more dangerous than crack cocaine and heroin when damage to users themselves and to wider society are combined, a study has found. The research, published yesterday in theLanc et medical journal, rated alcohol almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco and some eight times as harmful as ecstasy. Alcohol was found to be the most harmful of 20 legal and illegal drugs examined when the two criteria of harm to the user and harm to others were combined. The study was conducted by a group of scientists including Britain’s Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs and an expert adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Read more...

Cardiofy Heart Care Supplement

Eminent geologist Jane Plant is now promoting a dietary program for the treatment of cancer, saying that going dairy-free and eating cancer-protective foods helped cure her breast cancer where conventional Western medicine had failed.

Plant was first diagnosed with cancer at age 42. Over the next five years, the cancer recurred four times "despite a radical mastectomy, three further operations, 35 radiotherapy treatments, several chemotherapy treatments and irradiation of my ovaries to induce the menopause," she writes in her book Your Life in Your Hands.

After the discovery of a cancerous lump in her neck, Plant came across statistics detailing the low rates of breast and prostate cancer in China. Since dairy is almost never consumed in China, she cut it out of her diet entirely and limited her intake of foods containing high levels of chemicals and hormones. She built her diet around foods that have been shown to protect against cancer.

The idea of a connection between diet and cancer is not new.

"The American Cancer Society estimates that of the 500,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States, about one-third can be attributed to dietary factors, with another third being caused by cigarette smoking," writes Phyllis A. Balch in her book Prescription for Nutritional Healing, 4th Edition. Read more...

Cardiofy Heart Care Supplement

The very reputation of so-called "science" has been irreparably damaged by the invocation of the term "science" by GMO lackeys, pesticide pushers, mercury advocates and fluoride poisoners who all claim to have science on their side. It seems that every toxin, contamination and chemical disaster that now infects our planet has been evangelized in the name of "science."

Where "science" used to be highly regarded in the 1950's, today the term is largely exploited by pharmaceutical companies, biotech giants and chemical companies to push their own for-profit agendas. Actual science has little to do with the schemes now being pushed under the veil of science.

To make matters even worse for the sciences, many so-called "science bloggers" have been revealed to have financial ties to the very same companies whose profits are shored up by their activities (http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/08/the-new-york-times-exposes-scienceblogs.html).

Rather than defending any sort of scientific truth, science bloggers have become the internet whores of Big Pharma, Monsanto, pesticide manufacturers, chemical companies and toxic mercury factories. There's hardly a dangerous chemical in widespread use today that the science bloggers haven't venomously defended as safe and effective. Many are just blatantly paid off by corporate entities to run around the internet pushing GMOs, chemicals and vaccines. Read more...

Immunice for Immune Support

Mercury-Caused Endocrine Conditions Causing Widespread Adverse Health Effects, Cognitive Effects, and Fertility Effects B.Windham(Ed.)http://www.home.earthlink.net/~berniew1/endohg.html

Introduction.
As will be documented in this paper, the majority of the population receives significant mercury exposures and significant adverse health effects are common. Mercury has been found to be an endocrine system disrupting chemical in animals and people, disrupting function of the pituitary gland, thyroid gland, thymus gland, adrenal gland, enzyme production processes, and affecting many hormonal functions at very low levels of exposure . The main factors determining whether chronic conditions are induced by metals appear to be exposure and genetic susceptibility, which determines individuals immune sensitivity and ability to detoxify metals(405). Very low levels of exposure have been found to seriously affect large groups of individuals who are immune sensitive to toxic metals, or have an inability to detoxify metals due to such as deficient sulfoxidation or metallothionein function or other inhibited enzymatic processes related to detoxification or excretion of metals. Read more...

Ayurtox for Body Detoxification

Millions of Americans have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, resulting in excessive fatigue and even more serious consequences. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC): "Insufficient sleep is associated with a number of chronic diseases and conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression...it is also responsible for motor vehicle and machinery-related accidents."

Of course, Big Pharma has come up with a huge array of supposedly easy solutions for those who have a hard time getting enough shut-eye. All you have to do is pop a pill such as the heavily hyped Sonata, Rozerem, Lunesta or Silenor and you'll soon be snoozing away happily, the drug advertisements promise. Of course, you might decide that's not the healthiest idea if you check out the side effects which can include hallucinations, thoughts of suicide, loss of coordination, fever, "sleep driving" while not fully awake and memory problems. Read more...

Immunice for Immune Support

Over the past six months I have been honored and pleased to have seen and been part of an increasing focus and attention being paid to the unique manufacturing and bioproduction issues related to cell therapy.

http://www.celltherapyblog.com hosted by http://www.celltherapygroup.com

As some of you may know, much of my recent social media energy has been spent on LinkedIn rather than blogging. This was not a conscious decision but I will admit to finding the immediacy and interconnectivity of the LinkedIn/Twitter combo to be more seductive of my limited time than the more laborious and seemingly more unidirectional facets of blogging. I'm still working on a return to more diligent and regular blogging - we'll see how that goes.

In any event, today's blog entry is ironically about the very thing which has replaced my blogging in many ways for the interim: the LinkedIn Cell Therapy Industry Group which I founded in July 2008 (about the same time as I launched this blog).

Primarily due to the outstanding participation of great members, the group has turned out to be what I had hoped would be and I believe has become a fairly valuable resource for those in or interested in the cell therapy industry.

The group grew exponentially throughout 2010 and we are proud today to announce our 1,000th member. Without his knowledge, Luc Gervais today became the 1,000th member of the LinkedIn Cell Therapy Industry Group.

Luc Gervais lists himself on LinkedIn as a "Technologist Entrepreneur" but is also a Researcher at IBM Research, Zurich Research Laboratory in addition to being a researcher at the University Hospital Basel.

He was recently involved in the development of IBM's novel, microfluidic "lab on a chip" technology that uses capillary action to create a potential one-step diagnostic tool, and which could ultimately test for a wide range of diseases and viruses. The chip requires only a small drop of blood, which it draws through tiny channels within the device. The blood reacts with different disease markers to provide accurate diagnoses in about 15 minutes.

Luc represents what I believe is one of the most exciting signs of development in and maturation of the cell therapy industry. Luc's career has included being a Game Developer at Unlikely Games, a Computational Chemistry Developer at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, and a Quality Assurance Specialist at Steltor. On LinkedIn, he lists "regenerative medicine" as one of his interests.

People with the kind of experience Luc possesses are bringing a world of scientific, technical, and commercial expertise to regenerative medicine and cell therapy from outside the sector. This promises to revolutionize the way we think about, develop, and apply our technologies.

Luc and others like him who are exploding into the regenerative medicine and cell therapy field bring with them the potential for interdisciplinary exploration, the opportunity to draw from lessons already learned in other sectors, and the chance to view our field not just in terms of the incredible potential for new therapeutics which cell therapy represents but how that fits into the broader world in which cell therapy is growing up. A world that includes phenomenal advancements in personalized medicine, diagnostics, theranostics, biomarkers, bioinformatics, the ability to access and interpret personal genomics data, etc.

I have yet to speak to Luc (this was all posted from publicly available information) but I'm hoping to bring you an interview of him shortly not because being the 1,000th member of the LinkedIn Cell Therapy Industry Group is deserving of any particular attention (and certainly will not rank in his list of accomplishments I'm sure) but because I'm curious about what Luc represents.

Stay tuned....

--Lee

http://www.celltherapyblog.com hosted by http://www.celltherapygroup.com

Most people do their best to avoid contact with Salmonella . This bacteria genus, which often lives on poultry and can find its way into other food products , causes hundreds of thousands of illnesses--and hundreds of deaths--in the U.S. each year. But new research demonstrates that this common food pathogen could be disarmed and reconfigured as a vehicle for gene-based antiviral treatments. [More]

Over 1.5 million new cancer cases were identified in the United States in 2010, and despite continued advances in cancer treatment, approximately 500,000 cancer-related deaths occurred in the same year (1). For a long time, cancer therapies were a one-size-fits-all, depending on the cancer type. In recent years however, the need has emerged to develop a more enlightened paradigm in which treatments are better tailored towards the individual uniqueness of the cancer (2).

Personalized Medicine is a catch phrase that reflects the current understanding that no two patients are alike. The primary goal of personalized medicine is to develop patient-specific treatments that can hopefully reduce unnecessary side effects as well as the overall cost of cancer care by using therapies that are most likely to be effective in the population that is most likely to benefit (3).

[More]

Obesity is a national health crisis--that  much we know. If current trends continue, it will soon surpass smoking in the U.S. as the biggest single factor in early death, reduced quality of life and added health care costs. A third of adults in the U.S. are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and another third are overweight, with Americans getting fatter every year. Obesity is responsible for more than 160,000 “excess” deaths a year, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association . The average obese person costs society more than $7,000 a year in lost productiv­ity and added medical treatment, say researchers at George Washington University. Lifetime added medical costs alone for a person 70 pounds or more overweight amount to as much as $30,000, depending on race and gender.

All this lends urgency to the question: Why are extra pounds so difficult to shed and keep off? It doesn’t seem as though it should be so hard. The basic formula for weight loss is simple and widely known: consume fewer calories than you expend. And yet if it really were easy, obesity would not be the nation’s number-one lifestyle-related health concern. For a species that evolved to consume energy-dense foods in an environment where famine was a constant threat, losing weight and staying trimmer in a modern world of plenty fueled by marketing messages and cheap empty calories is, in fact, terrifically difficult. Almost everybody who tries to diet seems to fail in the long run--a review in 2007 by the American Psychological Association of 31 diet studies found that as many as two thirds of dieters end up two years later weighing more than they did before their diet.

[More]

Editor's Note: Carl Zimmer, author of this month's article, "100 Trillion Connections," has just brought out a much-acclaimed e-book, Brain Cuttings: 15 Journeys Through the Mind (Scott & Nix), that compiles a series of his writings on neuroscience. In this chapter, adapted from an article that was first published in Playboy , Zimmer takes the reader on a tour of the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City. His ability to contrast the fantastical predictions of speakers at the conference with the sometimes more skeptical assessments from other scientists makes his account a fascinating read.  

Let's say you transfer your mind into a computer--not all at once but gradually, having electrodes inserted into your brain and then wirelessly outsourcing your faculties. Someone reroutes your vision through cameras. Someone stores your memories on a net of microprocessors. Step by step your metamorphosis continues until at last the transfer is complete. As engineers get to work boosting the performance of your electronic mind so you can now think as a god, a nurse heaves your fleshy brain into a bag of medical waste. As you--for now let's just call it "you"--start a new chapter of existence exclusively within a machine, an existence that will last as long as there are server farms and hard-disk space and the solar power to run them, are "you" still actually you?

[More]

To celebrate the ends of years, decades and other milestones, science publications often churn out "Whither science?" predictions. Just last week, The New York Times Science Times section celebrated its, um, 32nd birthday with a special issue on "What's next in science". What I found fascinating was the issue's overall tone of caution rather than the traditional boosterish enthusiasm.

Gina Kolata recalled a job interview 25 years ago with U.S. News and World Report, an editor of which asked her, "What will be important medical news next year?" Kolata replied that "next year gene therapy will be shown to work." Gene therapy, of course, has been a big bust. Kolata goes on to say that the best answer to "Whither science?" is to expect the unexpected. (Fortunately for her, Kolata didn't get the job with what a mean friend of mine liked to call "U.S. Snooze and World Distort," the print version of which just died after years of terminal illness.)

[More]

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP (NYSE: AZN) and HealthCore, Inc., the health outcomes research subsidiary of WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP), announced a collaborative agreement to conduct real-world studies designed to determine how to most effectively and economically treat disease

Unlike controlled clinical trials, real-world evidence studies use observational data such as electronic medical records, claims information and patient surveys. By examining data associated with the delivery of care, real-world analyses can assess treatment impact on hospital length of stay, readmissions, overall health status, cost of care and other key evidence-based outcomes.

A leader in health outcomes research, HealthCore maintains the largest data environment in the nation. HealthCore’s near real-time, fully-integrated data environment combines medical, pharmacy, laboratory results and other information drawn from 36 million enrollees in local Blue Cross and/or Blue Shield plans with concentrated populations in 16 states.

Ever heard of people getting obnoxious amount of money to conduct research or get a PhD for pointless research. Thats what came to my mind when I first came across this news from IBM.

Just remind these were some of the winning ideas that funded by Government in US for Research papers and PhDs

1. the National Science Foundation once gave $100K grant to research why American players go to greater lengths to mod the popular MMO than do Chinese WoW players.

2.  Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh — Calculations on Avian Defaecation”, Polar Biology, 2004

3. Suicide rates are linked to the amount of country music played on the radio, , Medicine, 2005

4. Rats can’t always tell the difference between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards, winner, Linguistics, 2007

 As much as I stand to loose a chance to get a job at IBM by this post, its  so hard not to think loud, and ask IBM what the heck was wrong with your brains, when you made the decision to patent the patent.

 The Original Post Pasted from http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ibm-patents-the-patent,11868.html

IBM Files Application to Patent The Patent Process

   Reading through IT patents these days requires patience and tolerance. When you can patent common sense, there is clearly something wrong with the system. But as long as no changes are being made, you are inviting people to exploit what is available and IBM has just demonstrated what may be possible, if one of their most recent patent applications is accepted by the USPTO.

OFFICE OF , INSPECTOR GENERAL of US Department of Health and Human Services, released a report on the national incidence of adverse events for hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries, the preventability of such events, and associated costs to Medicare.

The report released last month month found that one in seven of the patients experienced an adverse event such as excessive bleeding, a hospital-acquired infection or aspiration pneumonia. Those events, both preventable and not preventable, led to about 180,000 deaths a year.

The complete report available at

http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-09-00090.pdf