Monthly Archives: March 2012

Biotech Industry Growing Domestically and Abroad — Oncothyreon and AEterna Zentaris Poised for Growth

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NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire -03/12/12)- The biotechnology industry has been on an impressive run this year as companies -- both large and small -- show impressive growth. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (IBB) Fund is outperforming the broader market by a wide margin and is up more than 14 percent this year. The Paragon Report examines investing opportunities in the Biotechnology Industry and provides equity research on Oncothyreon Inc. (NASDAQ: ONTY - News) & AEterna Zentaris Inc. (NASDAQ: AEZS - News) (TSX: AEZ.TO - News). Access to the full company reports can be found at:

http://www.paragonreport.com/ONTY

http://www.paragonreport.com/AEZS

Last week, The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) -- which represents more than 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations -- applauded the U.S. House on the passage of H.R. 3606, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act and explained the legislation's significance on the biotech industry. According to BIO, provisions of the Act would make the pathway to capital formation more attainable for small biotechnology companies.

"This legislation would make capital formation easier for small biotechnology companies, enabling them to focus more on curing and treating disease," BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood said in a statement.

The Paragon Report provides investors with an excellent first step in their due diligence by providing daily trading ideas, and consolidating the public information available on them. For more investment research on the biotechnology industry register with us free at http://www.paragonreport.com and get exclusive access to our numerous stock reports and industry newsletters.

Larger biotech firms, meanwhile, are looking to rein in costs and plan to outsource R&D and clinical trials and shift this work overseas to places such as China and India, according to a survey released by global consulting firm Booz & Company. The study says that many biopharmaceutical companies will begin outsourcing formerly core activities such as clinical trial monitoring and protocol development to contract research organizations (CROs).

According to the survey, companies are outsourcing for three main reasons: They lack certain internal capabilities (53 percent), they lack internal capacity (38 percent), and they need to cut costs (44 percent).

The Paragon Report has not been compensated by any of the above-mentioned publicly traded companies. Paragon Report is compensated by other third party organizations for advertising services. We act as an independent research portal and are aware that all investment entails inherent risks. Please view the full disclaimer at http://www.paragonreport.com/disclaimer

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Biotech Industry Growing Domestically and Abroad -- Oncothyreon and AEterna Zentaris Poised for Growth

Cell Therapeutics and Avanir Pharmaceuticals Look to Make Headway in Strengthening Biotech Industry

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NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire -03/12/12)- The biotechnology industry has been on an impressive run this year as companies -- both large and small -- show impressive growth. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (IBB) Fund is outperforming the broader market by a wide margin and is up more than 14 percent this year. The Paragon Report examines investing opportunities in the Biotechnology Industry and provides equity research on Cell Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: CTIC - News) & Avanir Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: AVNR - News). Access to the full company reports can be found at:

http://www.paragonreport.com/CTIC

http://www.paragonreport.com/AVNR

Last week, The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) -- which represents more than 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations -- applauded the U.S. House on the passage of H.R. 3606, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act and explained the legislation's significance on the biotech industry. According to BIO, provisions of the Act would make the pathway to capital formation more attainable for small biotechnology companies.

"This legislation would make capital formation easier for small biotechnology companies, enabling them to focus more on curing and treating disease," BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood said in a statement.

The Paragon Report provides investors with an excellent first step in their due diligence by providing daily trading ideas, and consolidating the public information available on them. For more investment research on the biotechnology industry register with us free at http://www.paragonreport.com and get exclusive access to our numerous stock reports and industry newsletters.

Larger biotech firms, meanwhile, are looking to rein in costs and plan to outsource R&D and clinical trials and shift this work overseas to places such as China and India, according to a survey released by global consulting firm Booz & Company. The study says that many biopharmaceutical companies will begin outsourcing formerly core activities such as clinical trial monitoring and protocol development to contract research organizations (CROs).

According to the survey, companies are outsourcing for three main reasons: They lack certain internal capabilities (53 percent), they lack internal capacity (38 percent), and they need to cut costs (44 percent).

The Paragon Report has not been compensated by any of the above-mentioned publicly traded companies. Paragon Report is compensated by other third party organizations for advertising services. We act as an independent research portal and are aware that all investment entails inherent risks. Please view the full disclaimer at http://www.paragonreport.com/disclaimer

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Cell Therapeutics and Avanir Pharmaceuticals Look to Make Headway in Strengthening Biotech Industry

Biotech Industry Poised for Growth — Dendreon and Arena Pharmaceuticals Looking Strong

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NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire -03/12/12)- The biotechnology industry has been on an impressive run this year as companies -- both large and small -- show impressive growth. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (IBB) Fund is outperforming the broader market by a wide margin and is up more than 14 percent this year. The Paragon Report examines investing opportunities in the Biotechnology Industry and provides equity research on Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN - News) & Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ARNA - News). Access to the full company reports can be found at:

http://www.paragonreport.com/DNDN

http://www.paragonreport.com/ARNA

Last week, The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) -- which represents more than 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations -- applauded the U.S. House on the passage of H.R. 3606, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act and explained the legislation's significance on the biotech industry. According to BIO, provisions of the Act would make the pathway to capital formation more attainable for small biotechnology companies.

"This legislation would make capital formation easier for small biotechnology companies, enabling them to focus more on curing and treating disease," BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood said in a statement.

The Paragon Report provides investors with an excellent first step in their due diligence by providing daily trading ideas, and consolidating the public information available on them. For more investment research on the biotechnology industry register with us free at http://www.paragonreport.com and get exclusive access to our numerous stock reports and industry newsletters.

Larger biotech firms, meanwhile, are looking to rein in costs and plan to outsource R&D and clinical trials and shift this work overseas to places such as China and India, according to a survey released by global consulting firm Booz & Company. The study says that many biopharmaceutical companies will begin outsourcing formerly core activities such as clinical trial monitoring and protocol development to contract research organizations (CROs).

According to the survey, companies are outsourcing for three main reasons: They lack certain internal capabilities (53 percent), they lack internal capacity (38 percent), and they need to cut costs (44 percent).

The Paragon Report has not been compensated by any of the above-mentioned publicly traded companies. Paragon Report is compensated by other third party organizations for advertising services. We act as an independent research portal and are aware that all investment entails inherent risks. Please view the full disclaimer at http://www.paragonreport.com/disclaimer

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Biotech Industry Poised for Growth -- Dendreon and Arena Pharmaceuticals Looking Strong

InflammaGen™ Therapeutics to Commence Phase 2 Pilot Study of InflammaGen Shok-Pak

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SAN DIEGO, March 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --InflammaGen Therapeutics, a development-stage, critical care company initially focused on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of multi-organ failure (MOF), announced today that the Company has initiated a 200-patient Phase 2 pilot study to examine the efficacy and safety of InflammaGen Shok-Pak as a potential treatment for critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Conditions expected to qualify for the study include new-onset sepsis and septic shock, post-operative complications and new-onset gastrointestinal bleeding.

The InflammaGen Shok-Pak is the result of decades of research by University of California, San Diego Bioengineering Professor Geert Schmid-Schonbein on the microvascular and cellular reactions that lead to organ failure after a patient has gone into shock, which is the second-leading cause of in-hospital deaths in the United States. Schmid-Schonbein and his colleagues at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering discovered that under conditions of shock, the epithelial cell barrier that lines the small intestine becomes permeable thereby causing potent digestive enzymes to be carried into the bloodstream and lymphatic system where they digest and destroy healthy tissue, a process he named Autodigestion. With the InflammaGen Shok-Pak, an enzyme inhibitor is administered directly into the stomach and lumen of the intestine, blockading the enzymes.

To date, the technology has been used successfully outside the United States as a rescue therapy in 15 patients, most of whom were diagnosed with life-threatening conditions. In addition, pre-clinical studies of InflammaGen Shok-Pak in two animal species have demonstrated significant increases in long-term survival.

"Currently, patients in shock who survive their initial insult don't necessarily survive long-term. In addition, morbidity is very high in those patients that do survive. Our animal studies suggest that InflammaGen Shok-Pak could improve functional outcomes and reduce the time patients remain in intensive care, as well as increase long-term survival rates," said principal investigator Dr. Erik Kistler, who currently serves as an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration Healthcare System, San Diego. "While ICU costs can approach one-third of the entire hospital costs, decreasing ICU time by even a small percentage a day will have significant financial savings for patients and payors as well as result in significantly improved patient wellness," said Kistler.

"We are testing for the first time whether it is possible to help severely ill patients by blocking autodigestion, a condition in which digestive enzymes not only break down food inside the intestine but also the intestine itself," Schmid-Schonbein said. "We have pre-clinical results that this blockade can save lives."

The Phase 2 pilot is designed as a double-blind, standard-therapy controlled study of 200 critically ill ICU patients. The primary endpoint is to provide preliminary efficacy and safety data on the gastrointestinal administration of InflammaGen Shok-Pak in the reduction of morbidity at discharge or at day 28. The secondary endpoint is the efficacy of InflammaGen Shok-Pak in reducing ICU and hospital length-of-stay, as well as morbidity and mortality at six months. The Phase 2 pilot study will be conducted at the ICU at the Veterans Administration San Diego Healthcare System, with additional sites being added as appropriate.

John Rodenrys, CEO of InflammaGen Therapeutics, remarked, "Initiation of the Phase 2 pilot study is a key milestone in the development of InflammaGen Shok-Pak as a potential treatment for sepsis and septic shock, which may result in multi-organ failure, a highly-invasive condition for which there is currently no effective therapy option."

Hank Loy, president of InflammaGen Therapeutics, added, "We look forward to working with the investigative team at the VA San Diego Healthcare System and expect their experiences to demonstrate the benefits of InflammaGen Shok-Pak, which have been evident in the pre-clinical studies and ex-U.S. patient experiences."

InflammaGen Shok-Pak was developed based on Schmid-Schonbein's research at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and was supported by the NIH and the von Liebig Center at UC San Diego. Schmid-Schonbein was awarded the 2008 Landis Award for his discovery.

About Multi-Organ Failure Multi-organ failure is a potentially life-threatening disturbance in normal organ function caused by acute shock (trauma, sepsis, burn and SIRS). Without swift medical intervention, the patient's organs will progressively continue to fail, decreasing one's chances of survival. In the United States, shock is the second leading cause of in-hospital deaths, with approximately 750,000 cases occurring annually.(1) It is estimated that between 28 and 50 percent of these patients die, exceeding the number of U.S. deaths from prostate cancer, breast cancer and AIDS combined.(2) In 2007, sepsis accounted for an estimated $38 billion in hospital billings.

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InflammaGen™ Therapeutics to Commence Phase 2 Pilot Study of InflammaGen Shok-Pak

Szatmçry elected to board

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Gabriella Szatmry, M.D., Ph.D., a physician in Hattiesburg Clinics Neurology department, has been elected to serve as a board member of the American Society of Neuroimaging. Szatmry currently practices general neurology, neuro-ophthalmology and neuroimaging of the brain and spine. Her experience includes postgraduate training in ophthalmology, internal medicine and neurology residencies, as well as a fellowship in neuro-ophthalmology and neuroimaging. In addition, she has participated and assisted in medical research at facilities such as the First Institute of Pathology and Experimental Cancer Research in Budapest, Hungary, State University of New York at Buffalo in Buffalo, N.Y., and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. She has also been recognized and published in several books, magazines and medical reference journals.

Szatmry earned her medical degree from Semmelweis Medical School in Hungary and holds a doctorate on role of functional MRI in neuro-ophthalmology from Semmelweis University Clinical Medicine Doctoral School in Hungary. She is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Board of Medical Specialties in Neuroimaging and Hungarian Board of Neurology. Szatmry holds several professional memberships including the American Academy of Neurology, North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society, European Neuro-Ophthalmology Society and is the founder of Hungarian Ophthalmology Societys neuro-ophthalmology section. Additionally, she serves as president of the first European Neuro-Ophthalmology update course.

Szatmry was selected and recognized as a board member of the American Society of Neuroimaging at its 35th annual meeting held in Miami, Fla. In this role she serves in an advisory capacity to help promote the highest standards of neuroimaging in clinical practice, thereby improving the quality of medical care of patients with diseases of the nervous system.

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Szatmçry elected to board

Six Secret Weapons of Nanotechnology Commercialization: Nanofilm CEO offers “Bootcamp for Nanotechnology and Industry”

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In his regular IndustryWeek nanotechnology column, Nanofilm president and CEO Scott Rickert suggests a bootcamp for nanotechnology and industry about commercialization to capitalize on the current interest in advanced manufacturing.

Valley View, OH (PRWEB) March 12, 2012

Rickert, a 20+ year veteran in nanotechnology, suggests that companies approach their commercialization efforts as they would a military campaign.

1. Send out more scouts. Cast a wide net to find compatible partners, he notes, saying that Nanofilms R&D labs are constantly doing hands-on testing of early-stage technology to identify potential product advancements.

2. Meet with the generals. Avoid a buyer-vendor relationship by building a task force with C-Level personnel in all disciplines.

3. Keep the battle plans flexible. Consider all forms of partnership, including joint development, tech sharing, market sharing and licensing.

4. Embrace guerilla warfare. Dont miss the smaller incremental opportunities in the search for a silver bullet

5. Be ready for hand-to-hand combat. Be sure everyone gets out of the lab and into the real world.

6. Never retreat. When necessary, tweak, reformulate, rethink; find another path, another partner, another idea.

The full article, titled The Six Secret Weapons of Nanotechnology Commercialization, can be read at IndustryWeek.com.

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Six Secret Weapons of Nanotechnology Commercialization: Nanofilm CEO offers “Bootcamp for Nanotechnology and Industry”

Nanotube Tech Leading To Faster, Lower-cost Medical Diagnostics

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March 11, 2012

Researchers at Oregon State University have tapped into the extraordinary power of carbon nanotubes to increase the speed of biological sensors, a technology that might one day allow a doctor to routinely perform lab tests in minutes, speeding diagnosis and treatment while reducing costs.

The new findings have almost tripled the speed of prototype nano-biosensors, and should find applications not only in medicine but in toxicology, environmental monitoring, new drug development and other fields.

The research was just reported in Lab on a Chip, a professional journal. More refinements are necessary before the systems are ready for commercial production, scientists say, but they hold great potential.

With these types of sensors, it should be possible to do many medical lab tests in minutes, allowing the doctor to make a diagnosis during a single office visit, said Ethan Minot, an OSU assistant professor of physics. Many existing tests take days, cost quite a bit and require trained laboratory technicians.

This approach should accomplish the same thing with a hand-held sensor, and might cut the cost of an existing $50 lab test to about $1, he said.

The key to the new technology, the researchers say, is the unusual capability of carbon nanotubes. An outgrowth of nanotechnology, which deals with extraordinarily small particles near the molecular level, these nanotubes are long, hollow structures that have unique mechanical, optical and electronic properties, and are finding many applications.

In this case, carbon nanotubes can be used to detect a protein on the surface of a sensor. The nanotubes change their electrical resistance when a protein lands on them, and the extent of this change can be measured to determine the presence of a particular protein such as serum and ductal protein biomarkers that may be indicators of breast cancer.

The newest advance was the creation of a way to keep proteins from sticking to other surfaces, like fluid sticking to the wall of a pipe. By finding a way to essentially grease the pipe, OSU researchers were able to speed the sensing process by 2.5 times.

Further work is needed to improve the selective binding of proteins, the scientists said, before it is ready to develop into commercial biosensors.

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Nanotube Tech Leading To Faster, Lower-cost Medical Diagnostics

ENC facing primary physician shortfall, bracing itself for Medicaid expansion

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After four years of medical school and at least three years of a medical residency, young doctors are eager to start their journey into practicing medicine, something many have trained for most of their lives.

As baby boomer doctors with practices in quiet, rural areas continue to retire, the newest generations of doctors arent replacing them. This is especially evident in Eastern North Carolina, as Hyde and Tyrrell counties have no physicians.

The number of rural doctors continues to drop, and health problems of rural America steadily increase and become more severe.

North Carolina has always been a medically-underserved area, something Dr. Paul Cunningham, dean of the Brody School of Medicine at ECU, said he has seen plaguing the East since first coming to the region in 1981.

What we are seeing is that and this is typical across the country there are specialties in short supply, Cunningham said. Its more acute in rural and remote areas than it is in built-up areas. Greenville, for example, has an adequate supply of all specialties and physicians, with few exceptions. But the region around it is having desperate needs for surgeons, more obstetricians and gynecologists and, of course, primary care doctors.

Primary care doctors i.e. family physicians, internal medicine physicians and pediatricians are supposed to be a leading force in prevention and early detection. But Eastern North Carolina has a long way to go before it has a sufficient number of doctors to fight the health problems facing rural areas, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Jim Dobbins, vice president of human resources at Lenoir Memorial Hospital, is in charge of recruiting physicians to the area and reported 24 of the 85 physicians in the county are primary care doctors. A recent study showed that the number needs to double to 48 for sufficient coverage.

Medicaid expansion

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ENC facing primary physician shortfall, bracing itself for Medicaid expansion

U's Mini Med School offers just a taste of medicine

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March 11, 2012

By KALI DINGMAN, The Minnesota Daily

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Sitting in a medical school classroom in Moos Tower, middle schoolers, retirees, businessmen and dozens of others listened intently to a speaker talking about the importance of the brain.

They're all students in the Mini Medical School, created by the University of Minnesota's Academic Health Center in 1999 to provide education for community members who want to learn about the medical field.

Each semester, roughly 200 students pile into a lecture hall once a week over a five-week term to listen to a professor speak about research or clinical applications he or she is conducting.

The two and a half hour long sessions include two speakers. Each speaker presents for about 45 minutes, followed by a question-and-answer session, The Minnesota Daily reports.

"Mini Medical School offers the public a place to learn about disease, physiology and anatomy by those clinicians and researchers at the top of their fields," said second-year medical student and emcee Tori Bahr.

According to a survey done by the school, 71 percent of the students are between the ages of 46 and 80, but they've had students as young as 12 years old.

"The classes bring an engaged group of people to campus who would not usually (take medical school classes)," said Steve Jepsen, coordinator of Mini Medical School.

The school is modeled after the Washington, D.C.-based National Institutes of Health's community education program, he said.

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U's Mini Med School offers just a taste of medicine

IBM Sends Jeopardy Supercomputer to Medical School

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IBM's Watson ruled on Jeopardy, but how can scientists make it into a doctor or a banker? Photo: Courtesy IBM/Bob Goldberg/Feature Photo Service

IBMs Watson may have trounced former champion Ken Jennings in Jeopardy, but now its facing an even bigger challenge: proving that it can make money for its creators.

Its well on the way. Last week, IBM said that it was working with Citi to explore how the Watson technology could help improve and simplify the banking experience, but for the past six months, Big Blue has also teamed up with health insurer WellPoint to turn Watson into a machine that can support the doctors of the world.

IBM isnt saying too much about what Watson will be doing at Citi. The two companies plan to build the first consumer banking applications for the supercomputer. WellPoint is a bit more forthcoming. In December, the health insurer said that it was working with Cedars-Sinai Hospitals Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute to help physicians treat cancer patients.

It turns out that training Watson to help doctors and financial services customers has a lot in common with cramming for Jeopardy. In both cases, the computer has to do two things that machines have traditionally flubbed. First off, theres natural language processing. That means figuring out what the question actually is. Then theres machine learning: understanding what facts are important for which question. In others words, you give Watson questions, it gives you answers.

If we can parse the clue and understand what the question is asking about, and we can parse this text in our documents and understand what our text is talking about then we can try to match, says David Gondek, a scientist with IBM who has worked on Watson for the past five years.

But there are differences too. When Watson helps out Cedars-Sinai doctors, its not engaging in a vicious death-match for Triva-God bragging rights. Its a collaboration.

Its a very different situation. Because in Jeopardy we were kind of constrained in that you get a question, you get an answer, and thats it, says Gondek. In the medical case, we think more about interacting with a medical professional. that means that its not just a question and answer.

The processing is different, too. The Jeopardy system was trained to answer quiz show questions, where the answers are pretty much black and white. Feed Watson a copy of the Bible, and its pretty much good to go on Bible trivia questions. In business and medicine, there are a lot of different sources, and some of them are considered more important than others.

So IBM is working with doctors to ensure that it has the right data sources and that the different sources its using medical journals, papers and textbooks are given each given the proper weight.

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IBM Sends Jeopardy Supercomputer to Medical School

A New Study Addressing the Benefits of Using the SELPHYL® System with Fat Transfer Published in the American Journal …

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WAYNE,N.J., March 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Aesthetic Factors, LLC, an emerging company focused on autologous, point-of-care systems in regenerative medicine, is pleased to announce that a study examining the efficacy of the SELPHYL System used with fat grafting procedures has been published in Volume 29 Issue 1 of the American Journal of Cosmetic Surgery.

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/a-new-study-addressing-the-benefits-of-using-the-selphyl-system-with-fat-transfer-published-in-the-american-journal-of-cosmetic-surgery-142117143.html

SELPHYL is an ultrapure Platelet-Rich Fibrin Matrix (PRFM) preparation. Using a small amount of the patient's own blood, the system isolates and prepares PRFM for injection back into the patient. SELPHYL naturally produces and releases a host of biologic growth factors that have been shown to promote tissue regeneration.

In the study entitled, "Benefits of Autologous Fat Grafting Using Fat Mixed with Platelet-Rich Fibrin Matrix (PRFM) SELPHYL," Lead Researcher, Richard Goldfarb, MD, FACS Center for SmartlipoLanghorne, PA analyzed the potential of SELPHYL to increase vascularity in fat transfer thus improving longevity potential. Fat grafting is used for facial rejuvenation, primarily to smooth out wrinkles and restore volume to areas of the face that have been deflated over time. However, historically, the long-term survival rates of autologous fat grafting have been variable. Consequently, fat grafting does not always produce the long-term correction for which patients are looking. The duration of fat transfer alone varies considerably, lasting anywhere from 6 months to several years.

The study follows a 37-year-old female who had fat from her outer thighs injected into her lower abdominal area. In one site on her lower abdomen, 8ccs of fat was injected; in another site, 8ccs of fat combined with 4ccs of SELPHYL was injected. After eight weeks, the tissue was analyzed, showing viable fat in both sites, but the area injected with SELPHYL showed an increase in blood vessels, which is key to improving the chances of long-term fat survival. The researchers concluded that the fat mixed with SELPHYL improved fat cell survival.

"After 3 to 16 months of consistent follow-up, outcomes reflect that SELPHYL has given fat grafts not only a higher rate of permanency, but also a greater take rate," commented researcher Aaron L. Shapiro, M.D., a facial plastic surgeon in Bryn Mawr, PA. "SELPHYL has been easy to use and patients have been very pleased with their results. Preliminary findings reflect that the addition of SELPHYL enhances and improves the long-term survival of my fat grafts."

"Any technique or mechanism that demonstrates efficacy in enhancing the graft survival would be very beneficial in cosmetic surgery. We are confident that this important clinical finding will lead to wider acceptance of the SELPHYL plus fat technique," writes Dr. Goldfarb.

SELPHYL is only available through qualified healthcare practitioners. Over 350 physicians and clinics worldwide currently feature the SELPHYL System.

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A New Study Addressing the Benefits of Using the SELPHYL® System with Fat Transfer Published in the American Journal ...

MDPrevent Preventive Medicine & Learning Centers Retains Simply the Best PR to Launch National Program

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DELRAY BEACH, Fla., March 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --MDPrevent (www.MDPrevent.net) Preventive Medicine & Learning Centers, based in Delray Beach, FL, announced today retention of Simply the Best Public Relations (www.simplythebestpublicrelations.com) as its PR firm to position founder Steven Charlap, MD, MBA as a visionary in preventive medicine.

Dr. Charlap, who received his MBA from Harvard and his MD from New York University, was the founder of the largest medical and dental practice in the United States serving extended care facilities. He witnessed what happened to 5 million people who didn't take adequate care of their health, ended up being institutionalized and who became dependent on the kindness of strangers. This experience fuels his commitment to help future generations avoid the same fate.

The mission of Charlap and the medical professionals at MDPrevent is to increase longevity, improve well-being, and restore the vitality of their patients. Their goal is to help people reduce health care costs, stay healthy, get off unnecessary medications and supplements, primarily through preventive services and education provided at no cost to Medicare beneficiaries. MDPrevent's team approach to preventing chronic illness includes doctors, nurse practitioners, psychologists, nutritionists, fitness experts, and health educators.

According to Dr. Charlap, "Diabetes, heart diseases, cancer, depression, dementia, and obesity, are the world's leading cause of preventable death. By addressing the root causes of these diseases instead of just reducing symptoms, MDPrevent's medical professionals help people enjoy longer, happier lives because the longer you live, the healthier you've been."

"Our targeted publicity campaigns will introduce MDPrevent and Dr. Charlap to consumers and other healthcare professionals as a practical solution to the tsunami of chronic diseases crippling our society," says Kim Morgan, President of Simply the Best PR. She adds, "Dr. Charlap's passion is to change the healthcare status quo. Due to his previous success, he is not motivated by personal financial gain; rather, he is on a mission to educate society how the right lifestyle choices can improve quality of life and longevity."

MDPrevent 5130 Linton Blvd. Suite H1 Delray Beach, FL 33484 (561) 807-2561 http://www.mdprevent.net

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MDPrevent Preventive Medicine & Learning Centers Retains Simply the Best PR to Launch National Program

Monsanto’s Crimes Against Humanity with Jeffrey M. Smith 2/2 – Video

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18-10-2011 02:20 Host Aaron Dykes interviews Jeffrey Smith about a Bertram Verhaag documentary, Scientists Under Attack: Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money, about GMOs and the need for the independence of science. http://www.seedsofdeception.com http://www.prisonplanet.tv Scientists Under Attack: Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money is a 60 minute, award winning film by Bertram Verhaag about GMOs and the need for the independence of science. Nearly 95% of genetic engineering research is paid for and controlled by international corporations such as Monsanto. This film exposes how these globalist companies manipulate scientific research to hide the dangers of genetically altered plants and animals. (Buy Your Copy Today at The Infowars Store) http://www.infowarsshop.com

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Monsanto's Crimes Against Humanity with Jeffrey M. Smith 2/2 - Video

Red Ice Radio – Shannon Dorey – Hour 1 – The Nummo

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09-01-2012 15:45 Dorey is a graduate of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario where she studied English, History and mythology. Her interests were expanded into religious studies after studying the New Testament at the University of Windsor in 1991. She began her writing career as a journalist and still continues writing articles for various online publications. She joins us to discuss her second book, The Nummo. The Dogon talked about alien beings known as Nummo who came to Earth from another star system. These fish and serpent like beings were hermaphrodites who spent more time in water than on land. Shannon presents examples of how these amphibious aliens appeared all over the ancient world and makes connection with mitochondrial Eve, Mary Magdalene, Masonic symbolism and more. She reveals how the Dogon religion is the core religion from which other religions including Judaism and Christianity have evolved. We'll discuss the Nummo's voyage to Earth, their knowledge of genetic engineering, Dogon mythology and their intention with humanity. http://www.redicecreations.com

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Red Ice Radio - Shannon Dorey - Hour 1 - The Nummo

Progress, no big breakthrough, in hunt for HIV cure

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(Reuters) - Scientists, stymied for decades by the complexity of the human immunodeficiency virus, are making progress on several fronts in the search for a cure for HIV infections, a leading medical research conference was told this week in Seattle.

Promising tactics range from flushing hidden HIV from cells to changing out a person's own immune system cells, making them resistant to HIV and then putting them back into the patient's body.

A major stumbling block is the fact that HIV lies low in pools or reservoirs of latent infection that even powerful drugs cannot reach, scientists told the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, one of the world's largest scientific meetings on HIV/AIDS.

"We need to get the virus to come out of the latent state, then rely on the immune system or some other treatment to kill the virus," said Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of the Center for Global Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HIV, which surfaced more than 30 years ago, infects more than 33 million people worldwide. Thanks to prevention measures, tests that detect HIV early and new antiretroviral drugs that can control the virus for decades, infection with the virus that causes AIDS is no longer a death sentence.

Still, questions of cost, side effects, drug resistance and ultimate lifespan, make lifelong use of antiviral drugs a less-than-ideal solution.

The International AIDS Society last year formally added the aim of finding a cure to its HIV strategy of prevention, treatment and care.

Early human trials of vaccines designed to prevent or treat infection with the difficult to target virus have proved disappointing. HIV is a "provirus" that is integrated into the DNA of a host cell, where it can remain latent or eventually reactivate.

"It has proven to be an incredibly formidable challenge to develop a vaccine," said John Coffin, professor of molecular biology at Tufts University in Boston. "In recent years the pendulum is swinging back."

Scientific advances in molecular engineering are allowing researchers to delve more deeply into the mechanism of HIV.

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Progress, no big breakthrough, in hunt for HIV cure

UC Irvine Nobel winner F. Sherwood Rowland dies

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F. Sherwood Rowland, the UC Irvine chemistry professor who warned the world that man-made chemicals could erode the ozone layer, has died. He was 84.

Rowland, known as Sherry, died Saturday at his home in Corona del Mar, the university announced. He had Parkinson's disease.

In 1995, Rowland was one of three people awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work explaining how chlorofluorocarbons, ubiquitous substances once used in an array of products from spray deodorant to industrial solvents, could destroy the ozone layer, the protective atmospheric blanket that screens out many of the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays.

The prize was awarded more than two decades after Rowland warned of the problem, and challenges to his theory plagued him for many years before he won widespread recognition for his work and leaders of nations worldwide began to act to ban or reduce usage of the chemicals.

The discovery was about more than just stratospheric ozone, said Donald Blake, a chemistry professor at UC Irvine who worked closely with Rowland for more than two decades. It was about the whole environment and the realization that something we can do in California could have effects somewhere else in the world. It was the start of the global era of the environment.

Born on June 28, 1927, in Delaware, Ohio, Rowland attended college before joining the Navy. He resumed his studies in chemistry at the University of Chicago in 1948.

As Rowland later acknowledged, his timing was superb. The university was home to Nobel Prize winner Willard F. Libby--the chemist who developed the carbon-14 dating technique and who became Rowland's mentor--and hosted such esteemed scientists as Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller.

After completing his doctorate, he took a job at Princeton University as a chemistry instructor. He later joined the faculty at the University of Kansas, but when the UC Irvine campus opened in 1965, he was lured from Kansas to become the school's inaugural chairman of the chemistry department. A full obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.

-- Shari Roan and Claire Noland

Photo: F. Sherwood Rowland in his lab. Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

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UC Irvine Nobel winner F. Sherwood Rowland dies

A lifetime of research may be leading to a life-saving treatment for shock

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Public release date: 12-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Catherine Hockmuth chockmuth@ucsd.edu 858-822-1359 University of California - San Diego

A 200-patient Phase 2 clinical pilot study will be initiated this month to test the efficacy and safety of a new use, and method of administering, an enzyme inhibitor for critically ill patients developed by University of California, San Diego Bioengineering Professor Geert Schmid-Schnbein. Conditions expected to qualify for the study include new-onset sepsis and septic shock, post-operative complications, and new-onset gastrointestinal bleeding.

This new use of a Food and Drug Administration-approved drug is based on decades of research by Schmid-Schnbein on the microvascular and cellular reactions that lead to multi-organ failure after a patient has gone into shock, which is the second-leading cause of in-hospital deaths in the United States.

Schmid-Schnbein and his colleagues at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering discovered that under conditions of shock, the epithelial cell barrier that lines the small intestine becomes permeable causing potent digestive enzymes to be carried into the bloodstream and lymphatic system where they digest and destroy healthy tissue, a process he named Autodigestion. The treatment involves blockading the enzymes with an enzyme inhibitor.

In 2005, the team's protocol was licensed to San Diego-startup InflammaGen Therapeutics under an agreement developed by UC San Diego's Technology Transfer Office. InflammaGen Therapeutics, a development-stage, critical care company, developed the InflammaGen Shok-Pak, a drug/delivery platform that delivers the enzyme inhibitor through a nasogastric tube directly into the stomach and lumen of the intestine, preventing shock and multi-organ failure. Schmid-Schnbein serves as a scientific advisor to InflammaGen but is not an employee of the company. Instead, he has chosen to focus on continuing to conduct fundamental research on autodigestion at UC San Diego.

"We are testing for the first time whether it is possible to help severely ill patients by blocking autodigestion, a condition in which digestive enzymes not only break down food inside the intestine but also the intestine itself," Schmid-Schnbein said. "We have pre-clinical results that this treatment can save lives."

To date, InflammaGen Shok-Pak has been used successfully outside the United States as a rescue therapy in 15 patients, most of whom were diagnosed with life-threatening conditions. In addition, pre-clinical studies of the technology in two animal species have demonstrated significant increases in long-term survival.

"Currently, patients in shock who survive their initial insult don't necessarily survive long-term. In addition, morbidity is very high in those patients that do survive. Our animal studies suggest that the treatment could improve functional outcomes and reduce the time patients remain in intensive care, as well as increase long-term survival rates," said principal investigator Dr. Erik Kistler, who currently serves as an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration Healthcare System, San Diego. "While ICU costs can approach one-third of the entire hospital costs, decreasing ICU time by even a small percentage a day will have significant financial savings for patients and payors as well as result in significantly improved patient wellness," said Kistler, who earned a doctorate (1998) and master's (1994) in bioengineering from the Jacobs School of Engineering as a student of Schmid-Schnbein's.

The Phase 2 pilot is designed as a double-blind, standard-therapy controlled study of 200 critically ill ICU patients. The goal is to determine the safety and efficacy of the gastrointestinal administration of InflammaGen Shok-Pak in the reduction of morbidity, which is defined as the incidence of disease. The team wants to know whether the treatment will reduce the time patients spend in intensive care and the hospital, and improve long-term survival rates. To determine this, researchers will follow up with patients 28 days and six months after discharge. The Phase 2 pilot study will be conducted at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the VA San Diego Healthcare System, with additional sites being added as appropriate.

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A lifetime of research may be leading to a life-saving treatment for shock

Concorde Career Colleges Goes Digital with Online Human Anatomy Learning Tools Now in Use at 15 Schools

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Every Concorde anatomy & physiology student can now access to Anatomy & Physiology Online, an interactive, 3D, digital learning tool developed by Primal Pictures. Anatomy & Physiology Online offers virtual, 3D access to every part of the human body, with 3D, adjustable images, interactive models, and narrated animations.

London, UK and Mission, Kansas (PRWEB) March 12, 2012

We are excited to be among the first career colleges to offer this innovative learning tool that can transform and enhance our students understanding of human anatomy, says Pat Debold, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Concorde. A deep and foundational understanding of the human body is critical to all of our students, and 3D, virtual learning will better prepare them to work as health professionals.

Todays students are often more comfortable with online learning, and many independently seek interactive learning tools for complex, visual topics such as human anatomy, said Laurie Wiseman, Founder and Publishing Director for Primal Pictures. Concorde is a step ahead in meeting student learning needs, and we are happy to partner with them on this innovative shift in teaching and learning.

Primal Pictures developed its 3D models using real medical scan data to create a highly detailed model. Anatomy & Physiology Online offers 3D anatomy that can be peeled away, rotated and labelled, along with narrated animations of physiology, learning objectives, self-testing, summary text, and pronunciation guides. It includes hundreds of lab activities to be performed by the student as they learn, ranging from labelling exercises to online quizzing and coloring pages.

Textbooks are wordy and cumbersome for learning A&P, says Mark Holcomb, Curriculum Development Specialist at Concorde. Primal offers us an innovative way to engage students. Anatomy &Physiology Online will enliven the classroom, and give students a unique understanding of anatomy. Best of all, we will transform the way we provide lab activities on our campuses. Going digital in A&P is the way ahead, we believe.

Students using the resource agree.

If we didnt have Primal, we would be learning from books: flat, 2D, boring, says Amy Cangelosi, a Dental Hygiene Student at Concorde. This makes a huge difference to how I can learn and study anatomy.

ABOUT PRIMAL PICTURES

Primal Pictures offers the most complete, detailed and medically-accurate 3D model of human anatomy for students, educators and health care practitioners. Primal Pictures 3D anatomy software is widely adopted in education and it is used for patient, practitioner and student education in over 20 countries. In 2012, over half a million students will learn anatomy using Primal software. A&P Online recently won the British Medical Associations annual prize for the best digital resource.

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Concorde Career Colleges Goes Digital with Online Human Anatomy Learning Tools Now in Use at 15 Schools