Health Care REIT to Attend the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Global Real Estate Conference

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TOLEDO, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Health Care REIT, Inc. (HCN) announced today that the company will participate in the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Global Real Estate Conference at the Westin Times Square in New York, New York. Corporate materials will be available on the Investor Relations section of Health Care REITs website (www.hcreit.com) on Tuesday, September 10, 2013.

George L. Chapman, Chairman and CEO of Health Care REIT, will participate on a panel at the conference. The panel is scheduled for Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at 1:20 p.m. Eastern Time. The panel discussion will be webcast and may be accessed at http://www.veracast.com/webcasts/baml/realestate2013/id57106137219.cfm. The webcast will be available one hour after the conclusion of the live event and will expire December 10, 2013.

About Health Care REIT, Inc.

Health Care REIT, Inc., an S&P 500 company with headquarters in Toledo, Ohio, is a real estate investment trust that invests across the full spectrum of seniors housing and health care real estate. The company also provides an extensive array of property management and development services. As of June 30, 2013, the companys broadly diversified portfolio consisted of 1,183 properties in 46 states, the United Kingdom, and Canada. More information is available on the companys website at http://www.hcreit.com.

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Health Care REIT to Attend the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Global Real Estate Conference

Health Care REIT Seals Emeritus Deal

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Health Care REIT Inc. (HCN) closed the triple net lease deal with Emeritus Senior Living (ESC) for a portfolio of 38 senior housing communities. The move comes as part of the companys efforts to strengthen its long standing ties with Emeritus and consequently strengthen its portfolio. Properties leased under triple-net leases require the tenants to pay all property-related expenses in addition to rent.

Notably, the properties were previously owned by Health Care REIT in an 80%/20% joint venture (:JV) with Merrill Gardens. Upon completion of the lease deal, Health Care REIT acquired Merrill Gardens 20% interest in the JV for $173 million, which includes pro rata mortgage debt of $74 million.

Health Care REIT made a public disclosure of the deal in June this year. The leased portfolio, consisting about 4,400 units, provides both assisted and independent living as well as memory care services to customers. The assets are positioned across 8 states, and primarily in Washington and California.

As per the agreement terms disclosed earlier, the triple net lease deal carries an initial term of 15 years, with an additional 15-year extension option. With management projecting the deal to be moderately accretive to earnings in the first year, we remain encouraged and view it as a strategic one.

In fact, the deal with Emeritus one of the largest assisted living and memory care services providers in the U.S. reflects Health Care REITs concerted efforts towards increasing its top line through strengthening its ties and providing flexibility to its business model.

Last month, Health Care REIT reported second-quarter 2013 normalized FFO (funds from operations) of 93 cents per share, a cent ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate and up 4 cents year over year. The improved results were primarily attributable to better-than-expected revenue growth. Alongside, the company registered decent same-store net operating income.

Health Care REIT currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). REITs that are performing better include CubeSmart (CUBE) and Highwoods Properties Inc. (HIW), both of which carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Note: FFO, a widely accepted and reported measure of the performance of REITs, is derived by adding depreciation, amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

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Health Care REIT Seals Emeritus Deal

Health care is about to get even more complicated

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Health care is about to get even more complicated

By Marty Carpenter, ksl.com Contributor

September 5th, 2013 @ 8:06pm

SALT LAKE CITY Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to discuss the upcoming changes to health care with several experts as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) rolls into full effect. Through those discussions the one thing I have learned is that if you think health care is about to get simpler, you're in for a bit of a shock.

"I don't think health care was ever simple," says Terry Buckner, president and CEO of The Buckner Company, a health insurance broker. "Any time you have a transaction that involves an employee, their employer, their medical provider and a health insurance carrier, it's a complex transaction. Now you add on top of that the IRS to regulate it and some mandates by the federal government as to what your insurance should look like-- it certainly becomes complex."

- Terry Buckner, president and CEO, The Buckner Company

Many of Buckner's clients are still unclear about how the ACA will affect their business or if it has to affect their business at all.

"It absolutely impacts every business," says Buckner. He says large employers have mandates they now have to navigate while small businesses have varying requirements about when they have to provide coverage.

Buckner says navigating health care today without some help is as crazy as a large business trying to do its own taxes. "Right nowmore than everthe expertise is huge."

The wave of change

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Health care is about to get even more complicated

$1.5 Million Gift To Penn Medicine Establishes Associate Professorship In Cancer Gene Therapy

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PHILADELPHIA A $1.5 million gift to the University of Pennsylvania has established the Barbara and Edward Netter Associate Professorship in Cancer Gene Therapy at the Abramson Cancer Center.Bruce Levine, PhD, a faculty member in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine and the director of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility, has been appointed to this new associate professorship.

Barbara Netter and her late husband, Penn alumnus Edward Netter (C53), have supported Penn since the early 1980s. Their contributions created the Netter Center for Community Partnerships on campus, and they have been longtime champions for research to advance gene therapy, having founded the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy in 2001 following the loss of their daughter-in-law to breast cancer. The foundation has provided funding to numerous Penn Medicine scientists, including the team Levine is part of, led by Carl June, MD, that has conducted trials demonstrating the first successful and sustained demonstration of the use of gene transfer therapy to turn the bodys own immune cells into weapons aimed at cancerous tumors. This new personal gift from Mrs. Netter will further this breakthrough research.

Dr. Levine is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania (C84), where he earned a bachelors degree in biology. He began his scientific career at the Wistar Institute during summers in high school and as an undergraduate at Penn, and in the division of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia examining immune responses following Varicella vaccination. Dr. Levine received his PhD in Immunology and Infectious Diseases from the Johns Hopkins University in 1992, and served as a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Carl June at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, MD, and later as an Investigator at NMRI and a Research Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences. He joined returned to Philadelphia to join the Penn Medicine faculty in 1999. The Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, which Dr. Levine directs, is charged with developing, manufacturing, and testing novel cell, gene, and biologic therapies being investigated in clinical trials at Penn, the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, and collaborating institutions.

This appointment and professorship establishment will be celebrated by Penn Medicine in January 2014.

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Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.3 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 16 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $398 million awarded in the 2012 fiscal year.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Penn Presbyterian Medical Center; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Penn Medicine also includes additional patient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region.

Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2012, Penn Medicine provided $827 million to benefit our community.

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$1.5 Million Gift To Penn Medicine Establishes Associate Professorship In Cancer Gene Therapy

Heart gene therapy trial begins

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5 September 2013 Last updated at 13:15 ET

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Carol Gedda: 'It could improve the heart muscle. I'm really pleased to be part of it.'

It is 18 months since Carol Gedda suffered a massive heart attack. It left her with just 20% of her heart functioning.

"I have a lot of trouble with stairs, and sometimes I can even run out of breath in a conversation", says Mrs Gedda, who is 65.

She is one of at least 750,000 people in the UK with heart failure. It occurs when the heart is damaged and becomes unable to pump blood adequately.

There are treatments for the condition but nothing so far that can reverse the damage.

Mrs Gedda, from Essex, is among 200 patients being enrolled on a gene therapy trial to test whether introducing genetic material into damaged heart cells can improve their function.

Researchers at Imperial College London found that levels of the protein SERCA2a are lower in patients with heart failure.

Royal Brompton Hospital in London, where Mrs Gedda is being treated, is one of only two British centres taking part in the international study, The Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Glasgow is also involved.

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Heart gene therapy trial begins

A Man and His Virus: Gene Therapy Emerges From Disgrace to Be the Next Big Thing, Again

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In 1980, though, he opened up the journal Science and suddenly understood how doctors might someday cure Lesch-Nyhan, along with thousands of other genetic disorders that had once seemed incurable. Two Stanford biologists, Richard Mulligan and Paul Berg, had figured out a way to transplant genes into cells, effectively rewriting their DNA. The phrase gene therapy had been floating around medical circles for decades, but Wilson realized that its time had come. As soon as he finished his degrees, he and his wife moved to Boston so he could learn about gene transplantation from Mulligan, now at MIT. After nearly three years under Mulligans tutelage, he headed back to Michigan to set up his own lab.

The first disease that Wilson targeted was called familial hypercholesterolemia, in which the patient lacks the gene that produces receptors for grabbing bad cholesterol, or LDL, from the blood, which the liver normally filters out. Vessels become so badly clogged that many sufferers have heart attacks in their forties and fifties, and sometimes even before age 30.

Wilson figured out how to make a vector to attack the conditiona virus with a working version of the gene loaded on it. He first tested it on a type of rabbit genetically prone to high levels of LDL, and the gene therapy lowered those levels considerably. For a human trial in 1992, he and his colleagues chose a 28-year-old woman from Canada. Surgeons removed part of her liver, and then Wilson and his colleagues infected its cells with the virus, which delivered a working version of the defective gene. Finally, Wilson and his colleagues injected those cells back into the womans liver, where they took hold and grew. The womans LDL levels dropped by 23 percent.

The result, published in 1994, was a milestone in the young field. Gene Experiment to Reverse Inherited Disease is Working, The New York Times reported, noting that Wilsons paper was the first to report any therapeutic benefits of human gene therapy. Thanks to this study and others, the FDA gave the green light to more clinical trials every year, jumping from zero in 1989 to 91 in 1999. Universities set up gene therapy programs to stake a claim in the new field.

One of those was the Institute for Human Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. At age 38, Wilson became the institutes head, overseeing a staff that soon grew to more than 200. They launched new clinical trials, including a sequel to Wilsons study on familial hypercholesterolemia and on another genetic disorder in the liver: OTCD. Wilson now wanted to take the surgery out of gene therapy, so he and his colleagues searched the scientific literature for a virus that could seek out liver cells in the body.

They settled on a virus known as an adenovirus. Adenoviruses are best known for causing the common cold, but other scientists had found that they were very good at delivering genes into cells. Everything seemed to be moving forward nicelyuntil Jesse Gelsinger checked into Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

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A Man and His Virus: Gene Therapy Emerges From Disgrace to Be the Next Big Thing, Again

Research and Markets: Gene Therapy in Oncology Drug Pipeline Update 2013

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DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/l9rw32/gene_therapy_in) has announced the addition of the "Gene Therapy in Oncology Drug Pipeline Update 2013" report to their offering.

There are today 120 companies plus partners developing 108 gene therapy drugs in 263 developmental projects in cancer. In addition, there are 4 suspended drugs and the accumulated number of ceased drugs over the last years amount to another 96 drugs. Gene Therapy In Oncology Drug Pipeline Update lists all drugs and gives you a progress analysis on each one of them. Identified drugs are linked to 102 different targets. All included targets have been cross-referenced for the presence of mutations associated with human cancer. To date 92 out of the 92 studied drug targets so far have been recorded with somatic mutations. The software application lets you narrow in on these mutations and links out to the mutational analysis for each of the drug targets for detailed information. All drugs targets are further categorized on in the software application by 44 classifications of molecular function and with pathway referrals to BioCarta, KEGG, NCI-Nature and NetPath.

Reasons To Buy

- Show investors/board/management that you are right on top of drug development progress in your therapeutic area.

- Find competitors, collaborations partners, M&A candidates etc.

- Jump start competitive drug intelligence operations

- Excellent starting point for world wide benchmarking

- Compare portfolio and therapy focus with your peers

- Speed up pro-active in-/out licensing strategy work

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Research and Markets: Gene Therapy in Oncology Drug Pipeline Update 2013