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Prevalence Of Artemisinin Monotherapies Raising Risk Of Resistence
Almost half of all artemisinin manufacturers and malaria-endemic countries are "failing to comply" with WHO requirements to sell the treatment in combination with other drugs, which is increasing the risk that malaria parasites will develop resistance to artemsinin, Nature reports. "Of the 69 manufacturers of artemisinin monotherapies that the WHO has identified, 21 have withdrawn monotherapies, and 14 say they intend to comply with the WHO"s recommendations. But the remaining 34 have not yet disclosed their intentions," Nature writes.
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Texas Lawmakers Divert Millions From Family Planning Clinics To Community Health Centers
Specialty clinics that provide family planning services in Texas have seen a significant decrease in state funding over the past four years because lawmakers have redirected millions of dollars to expand family planning at community health centers, the Dallas Morning News reports. The funding changes began in 2005, when lawmakers said they were shifting funding to community health centers because they offered more comprehensive health care to low-income patients. Advocates for the family planning clinics argue that the policy is an attempt by antiabortion-rights advocates to shut the clinics down. Although clinics that receive state funding are prohibited from offering abortion services, some conservative lawmakers believe that limiting the funding will hurt groups like Planned Parenthood, which offers abortion services at other locations, according to some family planning advocates. The Morning News reports that state lawmakers might return some of the funding to the specialty clinics during the current legislative session; however, the funding only would equal any money left unused by the community health centers.The most significant funding change occurred in 2005, when almost 25% of the state"s $45 million annual family planning budget was set aside for "federally qualified health centers" -- community health centers that offer services to uninsured and underserved people. Advocates for family planning clinics say that the number of patients receiving state-funded reproductive services declined by nearly 22%, from 326,000 patients in 2005 to 255,000 in the last fiscal year. They also note that the community health centers have an unused surplus of more than $11.5 million since 2005, which they say the family planning clinics could have used.According to the Morning News, many public health experts believe that specialty clinics that have family planning services offer more efficient and effective reproductive care than community health centers. David Warner, a health care finance and policy expert at the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, said the specialty clinics are "very targeted" and "don"t have a lot of overhead," whereas the community clinics have "limited enrollment and can be a lot less accessible." He added, "Continuing to starve those clinics means that you"re not going to be reaching the number of people you could be reaching with family planning services." Family planning clinics in Texas offer more than a dozen services ranging from birth control prescriptions to breast and cervical cancer screening and sexually transmitted infection testing. However, reproductive health advocates say many people often associate the clinics with abortion services, which gives antiabortion-rights lawmakers an incentive to shut down the clinics by withholding funding. Fran Hagerty, CEO of the Women"s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas, said, "Some lawmakers believe if they can prevent Planned Parenthood from participating in the state"s family planning program, then they"ve accomplished their goal."Supporters of community health centers say that billing issues and other administrative problems have distorted their data on how many reproductive health patients they are treating. Many women receive care at the community centers for family planning services along with treatment of other health problems, so they often are not recorded as reproductive health patients, according to the centers (Ramshaw, Dallas Morning News, 5/22).
News of the day
Provectus Reports Encouraging Clinical Data At ASCO On Treatment Of Metastatic Melanoma With PV-10
Provectus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: PVCT), a development-stage oncology and dermatology biopharmaceutical company, has announced interim data from the first 40 subjects in its Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of metastatic melanoma. PV-10 treatment was well tolerated and caused selective tumor destruction in the majority of subjects. Additional data on untreated tumors corroborated observations of a possible bystander effect seen during earlier Phase 1 testing. These data were presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2009 Annual Meeting, Abstract #9060, entitled "Chemoablation of melanoma with intralesional rose bengal (PV-10)," in the General Poster Session.
Public Health

Combined Stem Cell Gene Therapy Approach Cures Human Genetic Disease In Vitro

A study led by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has catapulted the field of regenerative medicine significantly forward, proving in principle that a human genetic disease can be cured using a combination of gene therapy and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology. The study, published in the May 31, 2009 early online edition of Nature, is a major milestone on the path from the laboratory to the clinic. "It"s been ten years since human stem cells were first cultured in a Petri dish," says the study"s leader Juan-Carlos Izpis��a Belmonte, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory and director of the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMRB), Spain. "The hope in the field has always been that we"ll be able to correct a disease genetically and then make iPS cells that differentiate into the type of tissue where the disease is manifested and bring it to clinic." Although several studies have demonstrated the efficacy of the approach in mice, its feasibility in humans had not been established. The Salk study offers the first proof that this technology can work in human cells. Belmonte"s team, working with Salk colleague Inder Verma, Ph.D., a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics, and colleagues at the CMRB, and the CIEMAT in Madrid, Spain, decided to focus on Fanconi anemia (FA), a genetic disorder responsible for a series of hematological abnormalities that impair the body"s ability to fight infection, deliver oxygen, and clot blood. Caused by mutations in one of 13 Fanconi anemia (FA) genes, the disease often leads to bone marrow failure, leukemia, and other cancers. Even after receiving bone marrow transplants to correct the hematological problems, patients remain at high risk of developing cancer and other serious health conditions. After taking hair or skin cells from patients with Fanconi anemia, the investigators corrected the defective gene in the patients" cells using gene therapy techniques pioneered in Verma"s laboratory. They then successfully reprogrammed the repaired cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells using a combination of transcription factors, OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and cMYC. The resulting FA-iPS cells were indistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells and iPS cells generated from healthy donors. Since bone marrow failure as a result of the progressive decline in the numbers of functional hematopoietic stem cells is the most prominent feature of Fanconi anemia, the researchers then tested whether patient-specific iPS cells could be used as a for transplantable hematopoietic stem cells. They found that FA-iPS cells readily differentiated into hematopoietic progenitor cells primed to differentiate into healthy blood cells. "We haven"t cured a human being, but we have cured a cell," Belmonte explains. "In theory we could transplant it into a human and cure the disease." Although hurdles still loom before that theory can become practice - in particular, preventing the reprogrammed cells from inducing tumors - in coming months Belmonte and Verma will be exploring ways to overcome that and other obstacles. In April 2009, they received a $6.6 million from the California Institute Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to pursue research aimed at translating basic science into clinical cures. "If we can demonstrate that a combined iPS-gene therapy approach works in humans, then there is no limit to what we can do," says Verma. Researchers who also contributed to the work include first author Ángel Raya, as well as Ignasi Rodríguez-Pizà, Rita Vassena, María José Barrero, Antonella Consiglio, Eduard Sleep, Federico González, Gustavo Tiscornia, Elena Garreta, Trond Aasen, and Anna Veiga of the Center for Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, Spain; Guillermo Guenechea, Susana Navarro, Paula Río, and Juan Bueren of the Hematopoiesis and Gene Therapy Division, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnol��gicas in Madrid, Spain; and Maria Castellà and Jordi Surrallés of the Department of Genetics and Microbiology, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Gina Kirchweger Salk Institute


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