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Viewpoints: Controlling long-term-care spending; march madness and health reform; hospital physicians

Prepare to hear a lot about Medicaid, the government health-insurance program for the poor. ... The U.S. government can't put itself on a sustainable fiscal course without doing something to slow health spending. It can't slow health spending costs without treating Medicaid. And it can't treat Medicaid without confronting the fact that it has become the long-term-care insurer of last resort for an aging society.

1 Apr 2011

Roundup: Minn. and Fla. weigh changes in programs for disabled, poor; Iowa lawmakers consider new abortion restrictions

Due to a shockingly large deficit, Gov. Rick Scott is planning to invoke his emergency powers and make deep cuts to the rates charged by group homes and case workers who help the developmentally disabled. Scott could announce a 15 percent rate cut as early as Thursday to close the $170 million budget gap in the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, according to lawmakers who were briefed Wednesday.

1 Apr 2011

HHS unveils ACO details

During a Thursday morning press call, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Donald Berwick unveiled the long-awaited federal rule on accountable care organizations.

1 Apr 2011

Watson, GeneraMedix receive FDA approval for Nulecit to treat iron deficiency anemia

Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that it is initiating launch activities of Nulecit, following FDA approval of GeneraMedix Inc.'s, Abbreviated New Drug Application.

1 Apr 2011

NCI awards Case Western Reserve with $1.6 million grant for cancer research

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has received a $1.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to study how tumor cells avoid detection by the body's immune system, allowing cancer to develop and spread.

1 Apr 2011

Biota wins U.S. drug development contract for Laninamivir

Australian biotechnology company Biota Holdings revealed its US subsidiary has won a five year $US231 million ($A224.36 million) contract from the US government to develop a long-acting, single-dose flu drug for sale in the US. Shares in the Melbourne-based drug development company jumped 60 cents, or 57%, to $1.60 at the market open today falling back to $1.43, 1pm (AEST).

31 Mar 2011

World Stem Cell Report to be published in Regenerative Medicine

The Genetics Policy Institute (GPI) and Future Medicine have announced that its 2011/12 World Stem Cell Report will be published as a special supplement to the award- winning, peer-reviewed journal Regenerative Medicine. It was also announced that Regenerative Medicine becomes the platinum media sponsor of the GPI’s 2011 World Stem Cell Summit that will take place in Pasadena, California, October 3-5.

31 Mar 2011

Clontech launches new SMARTer Ultra Low RNA Kit

Clontech Laboratories, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Takara Bio Inc., today announced the launch of its SMARTer Ultra Low RNA Kit for Illumina Sequencing, which was developed in collaboration with Illumina, Inc.

31 Mar 2011

Important updates on spondyloarthritis highlighted at 2010 SPARTAN meeting

Spondyloarthritis is a group of inflammatory conditions causing spine and joint pain and deformity, mostly in young men. Important updates on the epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of SpA are presented in the April issue of The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, official journal of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation.

31 Mar 2011

Adeona reports $3,164,512 net revenue for 2010

Adeona Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a developer of innovative medicines for serious central nervous system diseases, reported its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2010, as well as updates since the beginning of the 4th quarter.

31 Mar 2011

Vertex announces interim results from VX-222 ongoing Phase 2 study against hepatitis C

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated today announced interim results from an ongoing Phase 2 study designed to assess the safety and tolerability of 12-week response-guided treatment regimens with its polymerase inhibitor, VX-222, and its protease inhibitor, telaprevir, in combination with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin in people with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C who were new to treatment.

31 Mar 2011

SMFM praises FDA's announcement on Makena drug

The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine weighed in on today's FDA announcement to continue to allow pharmacies to compound hydroxyprogesterone caproate, also known as 17P.

31 Mar 2011

McKesson releases Horizon Cardiology 12.2 cardiovascular information system

With its new 12.2 software release, McKesson's Horizon Cardiology™ is the industry's only cardiovascular information system (CVIS) system that offers a single database, including hemodynamics, and presents the entire patient history from fetal to adulthood.

31 Mar 2011

Cancer Commons researchers publish MDMM paper in PLoS ONE journal

Cancer Commons, an initiative of CollabRx, a provider of information technology to personalize cancer treatments and accelerate research, announces the publication of a molecular disease model of melanoma which classifies the disease into molecular subtypes, rather than traditional histological or cellular subtypes, and describes treatment guidelines for each subtype, including specific assays, drugs, and clinical trials.

31 Mar 2011

Foundation for nationwide consensus on access to genetic information

Health privacy is a serious concern, but as genetic testing becomes more common, access to your genetic information raises questions the healthcare industry has never faced before. It is particularly important that we begin to address these questions now that genomic information is being collected to improve the diagnosis and treatment of children.

31 Mar 2011

Two new studies on cancer

Last year, a research team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovered one way the protein Tet 1 helps stem cells keep their pluripotency-the unique ability to become any cell type in the body.

31 Mar 2011

Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine create Texas Children's Center for Global Health

Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) today announced the creation of the Texas Children's Center for Global Health and the appointment of renowned physician-scientist Dr. Russell E. Ware as director.

31 Mar 2011

NEJM publishes MSD's VICTRELIS two pivotal Phase III studies against HCV

MSD, known as Merck in the United States and Canada, announced today that final results from the two pivotal Phase III studies of VICTRELIS, its investigational oral hepatitis C protease inhibitor, will be published in the March 31st edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

31 Mar 2011

Master regulators of cholesterol and fat play key role in liver fibrosis development

UCLA researchers have demonstrated that a key regulator of cholesterol and fat metabolism in the liver also plays an important role in the development of liver fibrosis - the build-up of collagen scar tissue that can develop into cirrhosis. Cirrhosis, in turn, is a major cause of premature death and is incurable without a liver transplant.

31 Mar 2011

First transdisciplinary research center dedicated to identify causes of premature birth

The March of Dimes and Stanford University School of Medicine today launched the nation's first transdisciplinary research center dedicated to identifying the causes of premature birth. Prematurity is the number one reason for newborn death in the United States today, yet in nearly half of the cases of premature birth, there is no identifiable cause.

31 Mar 2011