"Health News - Medicine, Diet and Fitness"

OXFORD, England, Nov. 1 — Non-emergency Caesarean delivery increases maternal and fetal risk, making its widespread use unjustified, concluded a World Men’s health Organization report.Action Points
Explain to interested patients that elective and intrapartum caesarean delivery increases maternal and fetal/neonatal risk.

Note that use of caesarean delivery has increased despite a lack of clear benefit for non-emergency procedures.

The only clear benefits of Caesarean delivery relate to breech presentations, reported Jose Villar, M.D., of the University of Oxford, and colleagues, online in BMJ.

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NISKAYUNA, N.Y. & INDIANAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct 1, 2007 - GE Global Research, the General Electric Company’s (NYSE:GE) centralized research and development organization, and GE Healthcare today announced a three-year collaborative research agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) to discover and develop advanced in vitro diagnostic assays that may predict cancer treatment response to targeted therapies.

In addition to Lilly’s existing chemotherapy agents, Lilly is developing targeted cancer therapeutics, which are now in both early and late stage clinical development. GE is developing advanced multiplexed tissue-based assays and image analysis tools that can measure multiple biological pathways. The goal of this collaboration is to discover key protein and gene signatures that will predict the likelihood that a medication will be effective in treating certain cancers. Once identified the signatures can then be used to pre-select patients who are good candidates for the targeted therapy.

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BASINGSTOKE, England, 01 Oct 2007 -  – Shire plc (LSE: SHP, NASDAQ: SHPGY, TSX: SHQ) the global specialty biopharmaceutical company, confirms that it will act as an interested party to the application to Appeal announced by Eisai against the High Court judgment handed down by Judge Linda Dobbs on 10th August 2007.

Eisai has today applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal the recent High Court ruling on the process by which the National Institute for Men’s health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) reached its decision on the cost-effectiveness of drugs in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
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TOKYO, Sept. 28, 2007–Kissei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Matsumoto City, Nagano, President & CEO: Mutsuo Kanzawa; hereinafter referred to as “Kissei”) and Eisai Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, President & CEO: Haruo Naito; hereinafter referred to as “Eisai”) announced the conclusion of a license agreement for Glufast® (tablets, generic name: mitiglinide calcium hydrate), a rapid-acting insulin secretagogue originally created by Kissei. In this agreement, Eisai gained the exclusive development and commercialization rights of Glufast® in China from Kissei.

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ROCKVILLE, Md. & ALAMEDA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sep 28, 2007 - Celera (NYSE:CRA), an Applera Corporation business, today announced a clinical milestone payment of $2 million from Merck & Co., Inc. under the cathepsin K inhibitor collaboration agreement between the companies.

This payment recognizes Merck’s advancement of odanacatib (formerly MK-0822), an orally available highly selective inhibitor of the cathepsin K enzyme, into a Phase III clinical trial as a potential treatment for osteoporosis. If this candidate or others developed under the cathepsin K collaboration are advanced further toward commercialization, Celera will receive additional milestone payments and potentially royalties on net sales from Merck.

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Transaction Strengthens Simcere’s Leading Position in China’s Stroke Management Market

NANJING, China, September 28, 2007 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ — Simcere Pharmaceutical Group , the manufacturer of the innovative anti-cancer medication Endu and a leading manufacturer and supplier of branded generic pharmaceuticals in China, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a 51% stake in Boda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (”Boda”) for a total of RMB111 million (US$14.80 million) in cash.

Simcere introduced a neuroprotective stroke management medication, an injectable edaravone, to China in 2004 under the brand name Bicun. As one of the only two injectable edaravone products in China, Bicun has taken the first-to-market advantage and has commanded a leading market share and a strong growth rate. After three years of academic promotion and clinical treatment, Bicun has been broadly accepted by Chinese doctors. It is the leading stroke management medication in the market. From 2004 to 2006, sales of Bicun enjoyed a CAGR of 209.5%. Its sales of RMB110 million in the second quarter of 2007 was a record quarterly sales figure for a single product in Simcere and was an increase of 134% from the corresponding period in 2006.

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BETHESDA, Md., Oct. 30 — Vitamin D levels do not appear to protect against cancer, with the possible exception of colorectal disease, according to data from a nationwide study. Action Points
Explain to interested patients that this study suggests that there may be an association of higher levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D with reduced risk of colon cancer mortality but not with mortality from other types of cancer.

Note that the findings came from a review of a large database, not a randomized, controlled clinical trial and cannot determine causality.

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There are several drugs in the market that are used to increase sexual drive but most of them are chemical-based and man made. The Maca drug is the natural form of Viagra. Maca is a plant grown in Peru, a country in the South American continent. The scientific name of the plant is Lepidium meyenii. It is a plant, which produces a root similar to radish. The root of the plant is dried and later stored. The significance of the root can be gauged from the fact that it was used even during the Inca civilizations.

Medicinal chemistry endeavors around the phytocannabinoids.: Chem Biodivers. 2007 Aug;4(8):1707-28 Authors: Stern E, Lambert DM

Over the past 50 years, a considerable research in medicinal chemistry has been carried out around the natural constituents of Cannabis sativa L. Following the identification of Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta9-THC) in 1964, critical chemical modifications, e.g., variation of the side chain at C3 and the opening of the tricyclic scaffold, have led to the characterization of potent and cannabinoid receptor subtype-selective ligands. Those ligands that demonstrate high affinity for the cannabinoid receptors and good biological efficacy are still used as powerful pharmacological tools. This review summarizes past as well as recent developments in the structure-activity relationships of phytocannabinoids.

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Plant natural products: back to the future or into extinction?: Phytochemistry. 2007 Jul;68(14):2015-22 Authors: McChesney JD, Venkataraman SK, Henri JT

Natural product substances have historically served as the most significant source of new leads for pharmaceutical development. However, with the advent of robotics, bioinformatics, high throughput screening (HTS), molecular biology-biotechnology, combinatorial chemistry, in silico (molecular modeling) and other methodologies, the pharmaceutical industry has largely moved away from plant derived natural products as a source for leads and prospective drug candidates. Can, or will, natural products ever recapture the preeminent position they once held as a foundation for drug discovery and development? The challenges associated with development of natural products as pharmaceuticals are illustrated by the Taxol story. Several misconceptions, which constrain utilization of plant natural products, for discovery and development of pharmaceuticals, are addressed to return natural products to the forefront.

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