AstraZeneca hunts stem cell cure for eye disorder

LONDON

AstraZeneca took its first significant step into regenerative medicine using stem cells today by signing a deal with University College London to develop ways to repair eyesight in people with diabetes.

Previously, AstraZeneca's interest in stem cells had been primarily in using them as a drug discovery tool.

The three-year research collaboration will see scientists from the drugmaker and the university teaming up to seek new treatments for diabetic retinopathy.

Most patients with type 1 diabetes will develop retinopathy and about 20 to 30 per cent will become blind. A large number of patients with type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes also develop

retinopathy as their underlying disease progresses.

The research work is early stage and will not result in a medicine getting to market for many years but the collaboration is a sign of big drugmakers' growing interest in the therapeutic

potential of stem cells.

The deal also emphasises AstraZeneca's increasing focus on diabetes as a disease area. The Anglo-Swedish company has a recently launched diabetes drug called Onglyza, which was

developed with Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the two partners are also working on a second one called dapagliflozin.

Sep 2010

Artificial "skin" materials can sense pressure

CHICAGO

New artificial ''skin'' fashioned out of flexible semiconductor materials can sense touch, making it possible to create robots with a grip delicate enough to hold an egg, yet strong enough to grasp the frying pan, US researchers said.

Scientists have long struggled with a way to make robotic devices capable of adjusting the amount of force needed to hold and use different objects. The pressure-sensitive materials are

designed to overcome that challenge.

''Humans generally know how to hold a fragile egg without breaking it,'' said Ali Javey, an electrical engineer at the University of California Berkeley, who led one of two teams

reporting on artificial skin discoveries in the journal Nature Materials yesterday.

''If we ever wanted a robot that could unload the dishes, for instance, we'd want to make sure it doesn't break the wine glasses in the process. But we'd also want the robot to be able

to grip a stock pot without dropping it,'' Javey said in a statement.

Javey's team found a way to make ultra tiny ''nanowires'' from an alloy of silicon and germanium. Wires of this material were formed on the outside of a cylindrical drum, which was

then rolled onto a sticky film, depositing the wires in a uniform pattern.

Sheets of this semiconductor film were then coated with a layer of pressure-sensitive rubber. Tests of the material showed it was able to detect a range of force, from typing on a

keyboard to holding an object.

A second team led by Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used a different approach, making a material so sensitive it can detect the weight of a

butterfly resting on it.

Bao's sensors were made by sandwiching a precisely molded, highly elastic rubber layer between two electrodes in a regular grid of tiny pyramids.

''We molded it into some kind of microstructure to incorporate some air pockets,'' Bao said in a telephone interview. ''If we introduce air pockets, then these rubber pieces can bounce back.''

When this material is stretched, the artificial skin measures the change in electrical activity. ''The change in the thickness of the material is converted into an electrical signal,'' she said.

Eventually, the teams hope artificial skin could be used to restore the sense of touch in people with prosthetic limbs, but scientists will first need a better understanding of how to

integrate the system's sensors with the human nervous system.

Javey's artificial skin is the latest application of new ways of processing brittle, inorganic semiconductor materials such as silicon, into flexible electronics and sensors.

Earlier this year, a team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena devised a way to make flexible solar cells with silicon wires that are thin enough to be used in clothing.

Sep 2010

Cilostazol may prevent secondary stroke in Asians

HONG KONG

The anti-clotting drug cilostazol may work better than aspirin in preventing secondary stroke in east Asian patients, a study in Japan has found.

In a paper published on Saturday in The Lancet Neurology, the researchers said cilostazol reduced by 26 per cent the risk of recurrent stroke compared with aspirin.

''Cilostazol ... might be superior to aspirin for prevention of stroke after an ischaemic stroke, and was associated with fewer haemorrhagic events,'' wrote the researchers, led by

Yukito Shinohara at Tachikawa Hospital in Tokyo.

The study was funded by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co, which manufactures cilostazol under the brand name Pletal. The company is a unit of Japan's Otsuka Holdings Co Ltd, a maker of

drugs and food products.

The study involved 2,757 stroke patients, with half of them given 100 mg of cilostazol twice daily and the other half 81 mg of aspirin once daily for between one to five years.

The participants were monitored for an average of 29 months and fewer patients suffered a second stroke in the cilostazol group (82) than in the aspirin group (119).

Twenty-three patients who took cilostazol suffered haemorrhage compared to 57 who were given aspirin.

''Cilostazol reduced the risk of major bleeding by 54 percent,'' the researchers wrote.

However, more of those who took cilostazol complained about side effects such as headache, diarrhoea, palpitations and dizziness.

Sep 2010

B vitamins found to halve brain shrinkage in old

LONDON

Daily tablets of large doses of B vitamins can halve the rate of brain shrinkage in elderly people

with memory problems and may slow their progression towards dementia, data from a British trial showed.

Scientists from Oxford University said their two-year clinical trial was the largest to date into the effect of B vitamins on so-called ''mild cognitive impairment'' -- a major

risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

Experts commenting on the findings said they were important and called for larger, longer full-scale clinical trials to see if the safety and effectiveness of B vitamins in the prevention

of neurodegenerative conditions could be confirmed.

''This is a very dramatic and striking result. It's much more than we could have predicted,'' said David Smith of Oxford's department of pharmacology, who co-led the trial.

''It is our hope that this simple and safe treatment will delay development of Alzheimer's in many people who suffer from mild memory problems.''

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) affects around 16 percent of people aged over 70 worldwide and is characterised by slight problems with memory loss, language or other mental functions.

MCI does not usually interfere with daily life, but around 50 percent of people diagnosed with it go on to develop the far more severe Alzheimer's disease within five years. Alzheimer's

is a mind-wasting disease for which there are few treatments and no cure, and which affects 26 million people around the world.

Smith and colleagues conducted a two-year trial with 168 volunteers with MCI who were given either a vitamin pill containing very high doses of folic acid, vitamin B6 and vitamin

B12, or a placebo dummy pill.

These B vitamins are known to control levels of an amino acid called homocysteine in the blood, and high blood levels of homocysteine are linked to an increased risk of developing

Alzheimer's disease.

Helga Refsum, who also worked on the trial, stressed that vitamins were given in extremely high doses.

''This is a drug, not a vitamin intervention,'' she said. The pills, called ''TrioBe Plus'' contained around 300 times the recommended daily intake of B12, four times daily advised

folate levels and 15 times the recommended amount of B6.

Brain scans were taken at the beginning and the end of the trial to monitor the rate of brain shrinkage, or atrophy.

The results, published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) One journal, showed that on average the brains of those taking the vitamin treatment shrank at a rate of 0.76 percent a

year, while those taking the dummy pill had an average brain shrinkage of 1.08 percent.

People who had the highest levels of homocysteine at the start of the trial benefited the most from the treatment, with their brains shrinking at half the rate of those on the placebo.

Although the trial was not designed to measure cognitive ability, the researchers found those people who had lowest rates of shrinkage had the highest scores in mental tests.

Commenting on the study, Paul Matthews, a professor of clinical neurology at Imperial College London said that although the vitamins used are generally safe and inexpensive, the study

''should not drive an immediate change in clinical practice''

''Instead, it sets out important questions for further study and gives new confidence that effective treatments modifying the course of some dementias may be in sight,'' he said.

Sep 2010

Two gene mutations mark deadly ovarian cancer

WASHINGTON

Researchers have identified two new genetic mutations that cause a significant number of

the hardest-to-treat kinds of ovarian cancer, and say they point to a new ''on-off'' switch for tumors.

They hope their findings may eventually help doctors better tailor cancer treatments and also lead to the development of drugs to treat these forms of cancer.

The findings, published by two separate teams of researchers in the journal Science and the New England Journal of Medicine, also suggest a previously unknown mechanism for

how cancer begins.

The genes affect ovarian clear cell carcinoma, one of the most aggressive forms of ovarian cancer. It accounts for about 10 percent to 12 percent of ovarian cancer, itself one of the

deadliest and most difficult to treat tumor types.

Clear cell carcinoma usually is not affected by chemotherapy. It is sometimes linked to an overgrowth of uterine tissue called endometriosis.

Writing in Science, Dr. Bert Vogelstein and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore named the two new genes as ARID1A and PPP2R1A.

''They may provide opportunities for developing new biomarkers and therapies that target those genes,'' Nickolas Papadopoulos of Johns Hopkins, who worked on the study, said in

a statement.

Vogelstein, Papadopoulos and other members of the team own stock in Inostics, a company based in Hamburg, Germany that is developing tests to help diagnose cancer.

Dr. David Huntsman of the British Columbia Cancer Agency published a separate study in the New England Journal of Medicine focusing on ARID1A. They found it was mutated not only

in ovarian clear-cell carcinoma but also in a second type of ovarian tumor linked with endometriosis.

''Overall, 46 percent of patients with ovarian clear-cell carcinoma and 30 percent of those with endometrioid carcinoma had ... mutations in ARID1A,'' they wrote. They did not find the

mutation in other ovarian tumor types.

The ARID1A gene is also a suspect in some cases of lung and breast cancer, Huntsman's team said.

It is involved in a process called chromatin remodeling, which helps squeeze DNA into cells and control when and how it gets ''read'' to perform a biological function.

The mutation in ARID1A allows DNA to be improperly ''read'' and turned on, the Johns Hopkins team said.

''Taken together, these data suggest that ARID1A is a classic tumor-suppressor gene,'' Huntsman's team wrote. These genes, when not mutated, help stop tumors -- BRCA1 and p53 are two other well-known examples.

About 10 to 20 percent of breast and ovarian cancers are due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.

An estimated 230,000 women worldwide are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year. Most are not diagnosed before the cancer has spread, because it causes only vague symptoms, and

nearly 70 percent of those with advanced disease die within five years.

Sep 2010

Long-term weight loss may be harmful to health

HONG KONG

Long-term weight loss may release into the blood industrial pollutants linked to illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and rheumatoid arthritis, researchers said today.

These compounds are normally stored in fatty tissues, but when fat breaks down during weight loss, they get into the blood stream, said lead researcher Duk-Hee Lee at the Kyungpook

National University in Daegu in South Korea.

''We are living under the strong dogma that weight loss is always beneficial, but weight gain is always harmful...but we think that increased (pollutant) levels (in the blood) due to

weight loss can affect human health in a variety of ways.

Lee and an international team of colleagues studied 1,099 participants in the United States and concentrations of seven such compounds in their blood, they said in a paper published

in the International Journal of Obesity.

''Once released into the bloodstream, these pollutants are able to reach vital organs,'' the researchers said in a statement.

Those who lost most weight over 10 years had the highest concentrations of the compounds, called persistent organic pollutants (POPs), compared to those who gained or maintained a

steady weight.

''There is emerging evidence that POPs ... are not safe. POPs (are) linked to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, periodontal disease,'' Lee

said.

The researchers factored in age, gender and race to explain the differences in concentrations of these pollutants but weight history remained a statistically significant factor.

More studies were needed to establish if such harm outweighed the benefits to be gained from weight loss, Lee said.

Sep 2010

MEMORIES-MEN

NEW YORK

Lost the car keys? Forgot someone's name? Many elderly people suffer slight cognitive problems but men are more likely than women to suffer momentary memory lapse or

senior moments, according to a US study.

Researchers from the Mayo Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minnesota, found 19 per cent of men aged 70 to 89 years had so-called mild cognitive impairment, compared

to only 14 percent of women.

People with mild cognitive impairment have problems with memory but can carry out everyday activities and generally realize that they're forgetful. The National Institutes of

Health says ''mild cognitive impairment'' falls in between normal forgetfulness and dementia.

Researcher Dr Ronald Petersn said the findings were surprising because Alzheimer's disease, which is preceded by this type of mental decline, affects more women than men.

Even after accounting for differences in education, age, and diseases like diabetes and hypertension, men had about 50 percent higher odds than women of having mild cognitive

impairment.

Sep 2010

Experimental Novartis drug shows malaria promise

LONDON

An experimental Novartis drug can clear malaria infection in mice with a single dose and scientists say it shows promise as a possible future treatment for one of the world's

major killer diseases.

In a study published in the journal Science yesterday, an international team of scientists said the drug, called NITD609, is effective against the two most common parasites responsible

for malaria -- Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax -- and also against a range of drug-resistant strains.

In experiments on mice with malaria, the scientists found that NITD609 works in a different way from other antimalarial drugs and that one oral dose was enough to clear the disease.

More safety tests are needed before the drug can be given to humans, but the researchers said that if those are positive, clinical trials in humans could begin at the end of this year.

''A single-dose cure would go a long way to addressing the unmet medical need in malaria, and we look forward to seeing how this compound performs in clinical trials,'' said Rick Davis, of

Britain's Wellcome Trust, which supported the research.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says there are about 243

million cases of malaria each year, causing an estimated 863,000

deaths, mostly among young children in Africa.

Although malaria is preventable and curable, it is estimated

that in Africa a child dies from the disease every 45 seconds.

The best treatments for malaria are artemisinin combination

therapy (ACT) drugs made by firms like France's Sanofi-Aventis,

but they can be expensive. Resistance to chloroquine and

sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, the cheapest malaria drugs, is

becoming more common.

The experimental drug NITD609 belongs to a new class of

drugs called spiroindolenes. It was identified by the Novartis

Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD) working in an

international collaboration supported by the Wellcome Trust, the

international Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), the US

National Institutes of Health (NIH) and several other bodies.

Scientists screened 12,000 chemicals using an ultra-high

throughput robotic screening technique before they singled out

NITD609 as a potential drug candidate.

Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of

Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the experimental compound

had several ''desirable features'', including that it targets a

parasite protein not attacked by any existing malaria drugs.

NITD609 also has properties which could enable it to be

manufactured in pill form and in large quantities.

''From the beginning, NITD609 stood out because it looked

different, in terms of its structure and chemistry, from all

other currently used antimalarials,'' said Elizabeth Winzeler,

also with the NIH, who worked on the team.

If NITD609 behaves similarly in people to the way it works

in mice, she said in a report on the work, it may be possible to

develop it into a drug that could be taken just once -- far

easier than current standard treatments in which malaria drugs

are taken between one and four times a day for up to seven days.

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline is carrying out late-stage

testing in people of an experimental vaccine against malaria and

expects to see results by 2011. The firm says that if it proves

effective, it will seek regulatory approval for the vaccine,

called Mosquirix, by 2012.

Sep 2010

CANCER-LUNG

Diabetes drug may keep lung cancer at bay
CHICAGO
The common diabetes drug metformin may holdpromise as a way to keep smokers from developing lung cancer, US researchers said. They said metformin prevented lung tumor growth in mice exposed to a cancer-causing agent found in tobacco smoke, and because it is already widely used in people, it may be worth further study. Metformin has been shown to switch on an enzyme that blocksmTOR -- a protein that helps tobacco-induced lung tumors grow. A team led by Dr. Philip Dennis of the National CancerInstitute, part of the National Institutes of Health, studied metformin in mice exposed to a potent, cancer-causing agent intobacco called nicotine-derived nitrosamine ketone or NNK. They treated the mice with metformin either orally or withan injection. Mice that got the drug orally had 40 to 50percent fewer tumors, while those injected with the drug had 72 percent fewer tumors. The findings were so strong the team now wants to test itin smokers to see if it can keep then from developing tumors. ''Although smoking cessation is the most important step forcurrent smokers, over half of lung cancer cases are diagnosedin former smokers, raising the importance of identifying thoseat highest risk and identifying effective preventivetreatments,'' Dennis, whose findings were published in thejournal Cancer Prevention Research, said in a statement. Other studies have shown that metformin can cut diabetics' risk of pancreatic and breast cancers, and the latest finding now suggests it may defend the body against smoking-inducedlung tumors. ''This important laboratory study, together with prior laboratory and epidemiology research, suggests that metformin may be useful in cancer prevention and treatment,'' said Dr.Michael Pollak of McGill University in Montreal, who wrote areview on metformin research in the same journal. The World Health Organization says tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death globally, killing more than 5 million people each year from heart disease, cancer and lung disease. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that20 per cent of US adults smoke. Tobacco kills one-third to one-halfof those who smoke.
Sep 2010

OBESITY TEENAGERS

Too little sleep bad for teenagers' diets
CHICAGO
Teenagers who sleep less than eight hours a night on weeknights eat more fatty foods and snacks than those who get more than eight hours of sleep a night, US researchers said.They said getting too little sleep can result in chronic changes in the diet that can increase the risk of obesity, especially in girls.
Prior studies have shown that too little sleep can lead to weight gain, but the new findings show where the extra calories come from. Increasing intake of fatty foods, which are typically highin calories, can increase the overall daily caloric intake, and if it happens routinely, it can lead to excess fat.
''The demonstration of chronically altered dietary patternsin adolescents with shorter sleep provides insight into why shorter sleep has been associated with obesity in prior experimental and observational studies,'' said Dr Susan Redlineof Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Sleep.
Redline and colleagues studied 240 teenagers aged 16 to 19 taking part in an ongoing sleep study. Their sleep wasmonitored at home by a wrist band device and food intake wasmeasured with interviews done by trained staff. They found that teenagers who slept less than eight hourson weeknights consumed 2.2 per cent more calories from fats and3.0 per cent fewer calories from carbohydrates than teenagerswho slept eight hours or more. ''The relative increase in fat consumption among shortersleepers by 2.2 per cent per day chronically may contribute tocumulative increases in energy consumption that would beexpected to increase risk for obesity and cardiovasculardisease,'' Redline said in a statement. But the risk may be easily reversed. The team found that each added hour of sleep lowered theodds of eating a high amount of calories from snacks by anaverage of 21 per cent. Curiously, when they looked by gender, they found theresults were statistically significant in girls, but not boys. While it is not clear why, the team said it may be thatteenage girls are more likely to turn to food for emotionalreasons than boys, but that needs to be studied. Only 34 per cent of the teenagers in the study slept for anaverage of eight hours or more. According to the AmericanAcademy of Sleep Medicine, teenagers need at least 9 hours ofsleep to feel alert and rested.
Sep 2010

MOTHERS-SLEEP

New mothers get enough sleep, just not good sleep-study

NEW YORK

It may come as news to new parents but a US study has found that mothers do get enough sleep in their babies' first few months -- it's just not good quality.

Researchers from West Virginia University in Morgantown followed a group of new mothers and found, on average, the women got just over 7 hours of sleep a night during their

babies' first four months.

That amount is generally what is recommended for adults, and, based on past studies, more than the average American gets.

But the study found that sleep is also frequently disrupted with the women typically being awake for a total of two hours a night which was worrying as sleep problems and exhaustion may

contribute to postpartum depression and impact work performance.

August 2010

HEART-DRUG

STOCKHOLM

Japanese drugmaker Eisai's experimental blood clot preventer E5555 may have the potential to reduce heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths without increased serious

bleeding risks, Japanese researchers said.

Two Phase II clinical trials presented at the European Society of Cardiology congress today showed that while there was a trend towards increased bleeding as the dose of E5555 increased, serious bleeding risks were not significantly higher.

MIGRAINE GENE

LONDON
An international scientific team has identified for the first time a genetic risk factor associated with common migraines and say their research could open the way for new treatments to prevent migraine attacks. Researchers who looked at genetic data from 50,000 people from Finland, Germany and The Netherlands found that patients with a certain DNA variant affecting regulation of a particular brain chemical have a greater risk of developing migraines. The results suggest that a buildup of that chemical, called glutamate, may play a role in the mechanism of migraines.
August 2010

Heart

STOCKHOLM
Giving patients with a history of heart attacks a margarine enriched with omega-3 oils in addition to standard drugs appears to make no difference to their chances of having a repeat attack. A 40-month study of more than 4,800 patients showed taking low doses of omega-3 fatty acids in margarine did not significantly reduce rates of serious heart attacks and other cardiovascular events, Dutch researchers.
August 2010

Cancer

LONDON
Rates of oesophageal cancer in men have risen by 50 per cent in Britain in a generation, an increase that is probably being driven in part by growing rates of obesity and poor diet, scientists said .
August 2010

Cancer

LONDON
Rates of oesophageal cancer in men have risen by 50 per cent in Britain in a generation, an increase that is probably being driven in part by growing rates of obesity and poor diet, scientists said .
August 2010

Insulin-Alzheimer

HONG KONG
People with insulin resistance and type2 diabetes are more likely to develop plaques in the brain associated with Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers in Japan.
August 2010

Amphetamines could damage heart artery....

Washigton
Young adults who abuse amphetamines may be more likely to suffer an often fatal tear in the body's mainartery, the aorta, US researchers said. A study of medical records from 31 million people aged 18 to 49 and hospitalized from 1995 to 2007 found that those who had abused amphetamines had triple the odds of aortic dissection, the team at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said . Amphetamines, often called speed or crank, are widely abused but also legitimately used to treat attention deficit disorder, narcolepsy and other sleep disorders. They can also aid in weight loss. The drugs make the heart beat harder and can raise bloodpressure.
August 2010

Pesticides and attention problems...

Washington
Children whose mothers were exposed to certain types of pesticides while pregnant were more likely to have attention problems as they grew up, US researchers reported today. The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, adds to evidence that organophosphate pesticides can affect the human brain. Researchers at the University of California Berkeley tested pregnant women for evidence that organophosphate pesticides had actually been absorbed by their bodies, and then followed their children as they grew. Women with more chemical traces of the pesticides in their urine while pregnant had children more likely to have symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, at age 5, the researchers found. ''While results of this study are not conclusive, our findingssuggest that prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides mayaffect young children's attention,'' Amy Marks and colleagues wrotein the study, available at http://ehponline.org/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.1002234
August 2010

Kidney donation...

London
Kidneys transplanted from victims of heartattacks and other cardiac deaths are just as good as those from brain-dead patients and could offer a valuable extra source of donororgans, British scientists said .The researchers said fears that kidneys from heart deathvictims may be inferior for transplants are unfounded and they should be treated as equal to kidneys from brain-dead donors.
August 2010

Blood Pressure Drugs...

CHICAGO Tests for a blood-pressure regulating hormone called renin may help doctors decide whichblood pressure drugs their patients should take, researchers said.
August 2010

CANCER chemotherapy

HONG KONG An ancient Chinese brew may help reducethe intestinal damage caused by chemotherapy given to colon andrectal cancer patients, according to researchers. To meet growing consumer demands, researchers in the fieldof traditional medicine are trying to prove the efficacy of ancient drugs using Western-style animal tests and humanclinical trials.
The researchers said they fed cancerous mice the Chinese brew after the rodents had been treated with irinotecan, a chemotherapy drug known to be toxic for the gut and a cause of diarrhoea. ''The researchers treated cancerous mice with chemotherapy, which shrank tumors but also caused massive destruction in the intestinal lining of the animals,'' they said.