Home health care workers sue employers for back pay

Posted on by

In a class action lawsuit, filed in the D.C. Superior Court, the workers claim they were not paid the hourly wage they were entitled to and were denied overtime and sick days in violation of the law.

It's the second in a series of lawsuits against home care agencies.

The lawsuit alleges that Capitol View, Human Touch, T&N Nursing Care and VMT Home Health violated local labor laws over a period of three years.

"For years, these home care agencies flouted the District of Columbia's basic wage and hour protections for workers," said Greg McGillivary, the D.C. attorney representing the home care workers.

Related: Why Grandma's aide earns so little

Home health care workers are notoriously underpaid and labor activists have been pushing to increase their wages.

It is also one of the nation's fastest growing professions, and demand is expected to skyrocket as America's population ages.

The home care workers argue that the agencies violated a 2006 D.C. law, which requires companies with federal contracts to pay a "living wage" of at least $13.60 per hour, pay overtime and give employees paid time off when they're sick.

The companies were reimbursed by Medicaid, but paid workers around $10 an hour, refused to pay overtime and denied workers the sick time they were entitled to under the law, according to the lawsuit.

"The actual laws around living wage for home care workers are strong, but the law is not being enforced in a way that is holding these agencies accountable," said Lisa Brown, a union leader representing home care workers, in a statement.

Continue reading here:

Home health care workers sue employers for back pay

D.C. home health-care workers file class-action suit alleging wage theft

Posted on by

D.C. home health-care workers filed a class action lawsuit against four agencies Wednesday, alleging that they were cheated out of wages and denied overtime and sick pay.The suit againstfour local agencies Capitol View Home Health Agency, Human Touch, T&N Nursing and VMT Home Health comes a week before home health-care workers and other low-wage workers across the country are expected to rally for a $15 wage on April 15 as part of the Fight for 15 movement.

The suit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, argues theagencies violated labor laws over a span of three years, paying workers below D.C.s living wage, which was $13.60 in 2014. Employees of D.C. government contractors are required to earnthis living wage a wage thats considerably higher than the citys minimum wage of $9.50 per hour.

This is the second lawsuitof its kind. In December, D.C.s health-care workers filed suit against three other home-care agencies, similarly alleging that workers werent paid for all of their time and were not provided sick days.

T&N Nursing and VMT Home Health both were part of a federal investigation thatdiscoveredthat D.C. operators of home-care agencies and personal assistants were operating a Medicaid scheme, stealing tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. Because of the revelations, these twoagencies were cut off from Medicaid funding and its during this time that many home health-care workers say they werent paid.

I cant pay rent and support my family when my employer is stealing my already-meager wages,plaintiff Stephanie Johnson, an employee of VMT Home Health, saidin a press release. For too long weve been taken advantage of by these agencies, and its time that we receive the pay that weve worked hard for.

Capitol Home Health Agency declined to comment. The other agencies did not return requests for comment.

Claims lodged by home health care workers are growing acrossthe country. Thedemand forhome health-care workersis fast growing as baby boomers grow older. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the country will need an additional 1 million such workers by 2022. According to a recent reportfrom the National Employment Law Project, the nations 2million home health-care workers had an average annual salary of $18,598 in 2013, compared to the nationalaverage of $46,440 for salaried workers that year.

With help from theService Employees International Union 1199, D.C.s home health care workers are in the process of trying to organize. U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez spoke to hundreds of the citys workers at a town hall style rally last month, urging them to fight for higher wages.

There are an estimated6,000 home health care workers working in D.C. and advocates say they could be owed up to $150 million indamages.

Perry Stein covers the happenings in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Read more here:

D.C. home health-care workers file class-action suit alleging wage theft

It Takes Two To Tango: Combine Diagnostics And Drugs For Precision Medicine

Posted on by

Personalization is the New Name of the Game

Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, is a concept of combining a drug with a test that is modified to a persons genetic disposition. The test has the ability to predict disease risk, diagnose disease and monitor therapeutic response. Given the huge problem of drug failure rates, the concept of companion diagnostics in the realm of precision medicine has gained huge momentum since 2010. Precision medicine involves the selection of diagnostic tests (companion diagnostics) that have the potential to identify changes in each patients cells. The use of that knowledge may help prevent and treat diseases through the development of treatment strategies to target these specific molecular alterations. Ultimately, the goal of precision medicine is to improve patient outcomes.

Figure 1 shows the failure rates for drugs in several disease categories today. Personalized medicine can help save billions of dollars for the healthcare economy globally.

How Big is the Opportunity?

By 2020, the companion diagnostics market will experience a growth of 20.4 percent globally. In 2014, the market for test sales and test services alone was $2.4 billion and is expected to reach $6.9 billion globally.

Figure 2 shows the percentage distribution of partnerships by type of therapeutic area from 2011 to 2013. Companion diagnostics for oncology is obviously leading the way, but there are several other therapeutic areas, including neurology and cardiovascular, that have started to develop drug/diagnostics combo treatments. The challenges in adopting personalized medicine are boundless. The first and foremost challenge affecting the precision medicine landscape is coordinating the timelines. Aligning the development of a drug and diagnostic design program requires a lot of careful planning. This also closely ties into the fact that the current regulations must be modified to support this idea. Current regulations and the three-tier approval process significantly drives up the cost of delivering drugs to market ($800 million $2 billion per molecule) with times-to-market of seven to 10 years. This does not lend itself to driving the agility that is imperative for personalized medicine to become mainstream. A radical redesign of the drug approval process is imperative for personalized medicine to flourish.

Read the original here:

It Takes Two To Tango: Combine Diagnostics And Drugs For Precision Medicine

Bristol-Myers Signs An Exclusive Pact In Gene Therapy For Treating Cardiovascular Disorders

Posted on by

Perpetuating the surge of interest in gene therapy technology from major pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Novartis Inc. (NVS), biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) announced a partnership agreement with gene therapy research and development company uniQure NV (QURE) which gives them exclusive rights over uniQures gene therapy technology development for up to 10 genetic targets, for treating cardiovascular diseases, among others. Marking the first foray of Bristol-Myers into gene therapy, the deal gives the company the sole right to develop uniQures gene therapy drugs to treat diseases such as heart failure, which is one of the most common health problems in the world today. Cardiovascular disease is expected to affect about 40 million people around the world by 2030.

Bristol-Myers Squibb has an excellent and long-standing track record of success in discovering and developing treatments for cardiovascular diseases and in embracing advancing technologies for the treatment of human diseases, Carl Decicco, Ph.D., head of Discovery, R&D, Bristol-Myers Squibb said in a statement issued by the company. Collaborating with uniQure, a clear leader in the field with an innovative and validated gene therapy platform, further strengthens our capability to bring forward transformational new therapeutics for difficult-to-treat diseases.

Joern Aldag, Chief Executive Officer of uniQure had this to say: Bristol-Myers Squibbs strength in the cardiovascular area and its commitment to gene therapy will allow them to leverage the full breadth and capacity of our platform for cardiovascular diseases. This collaboration will accelerate the application of gene therapy for large patient populations suffering from heart diseases and will complement the further development of uniQures internal pipeline in two focus areas: liver diseases, including hemophilia, and CNS, including lysosomal storage diseases.

Lets find out what terms have been decided upon with respect to the deal, and well as what impact such an announcement had on the stock movement of both the partnering companies.

Terms of the deal

Bristol-Myers Squibb will make an upfront payment of $50 million to close the deal around the end of the second quarter of 2015. This will set in motion near-term payments totaling nearly $100 million, including $15 million on finalizing three collaboration targets, apart from synthesizing S100A1, a calcium-binding protein described as master regulator of heart function by the pharma major. These targets must be closed within three months from closing the deal. Bristol-Myers will acquire an initial 49% stake in uniQure at $33.84 per share or a minimum $32 million in total. Before the year end, Bristol-Myers will acquire an additional 5% stake at a 10% premium, plus two warrants to add up to 10% equity interest at a premium. This will be based on the targets added to the partnership.

UniQure will be tasked with manufacturing the gene therapy drugs under the supply contract portion of the agreement. In turn, it will be paid $254 million for the synthesis of S100A1 and $217 million for each additional gene therapy product developed under the agreement. UniQure is also set to receive royalty based single to double-digit payouts on sales and net sales-based milestone payments.

Shares on upswing

During premarket trading on this Monday, both UniQure and Bristol-Myers shares climbed and showed positive activity. Shares of UniQure performed the best by surging a whopping 47% to close at $33.61. Its stock climbed steadily, peaking at 54%, over the year through Thursday. Bristol-Myers saw a comparatively smaller rise in premarket trade of 0.25%, but closed at a drop of 0.36% at $63. After hours trading on Monday saw a further dip of 0.17 to $62.89.

Future development

Original post:

Bristol-Myers Signs An Exclusive Pact In Gene Therapy For Treating Cardiovascular Disorders

Researchers develop harmless artificial virus for gene therapy

Posted on by

11 hours ago

Researchers of the Nanobiology Unit from the UAB Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine, led by Antonio Villaverde, managed to create artificial viruses, protein complexes with the ability of self-assembling and forming nanoparticles which are capable of surrounding DNA fragments, penetrating the cells and reaching the nucleus in a very efficient manner, where they then release the therapeutic DNA fragments. The achievement represents an alternative with no biological risk to the use of viruses in gene therapy.

Gene therapy, which is the insertion of genes into the genome with therapeutic aims, needs elements which can transfer these genes to the nucleus of the cells. One of the possibilities when transferring these genes is the use of a virus, although this is not exempt of risks. That is why scientists strive to find an alternative. With this as their objective, emerging nanomedicines aim to imitate viral activities in the form of adjustable nanoparticles which can release nucleic acids and other drugs into the target cell.

Among the great diversity of materials tested by researchers, proteins are biocompatible, biodegradable and offer a large variety of functions which can be adjusted and used in genetic engineering. Nevertheless, it is very complicated to control the way in which protein blocks are organised, in order to form more complex structures which could be used to transport DNA in an efficient manner, as happens with viruses.

Professor Antonio Villaverde's group has discovered the combination necessary to make these proteins act as an artificial virus and self-assemble themselves to form regular protein nanoparticles capable of penetrating target cells and reaching the nucleus in a very efficient manner. In chemical terms, the key lies in a combination of cation-peptide and hexahistidine placed respectively at the amino and C-terminus ends of the modular proteins.

Researchers from the UAB have demonstrated that, when in the presence of DNA, these artificial viruses surround it and carry out structural readjustments so that the DNA is protected against external agents in a similar fashion to how natural viruses protect DNA inside a protein shell. Even the forms adopted by the resulting structures seem to imitate virus forms.

"It is important to highlight that this ability to self-assemble does not depend on the structural protein chosen and does not seem limited to one particular type of protein. This provides the opportunity to select proteins which could avoid any type of immune response after being administered, which is of great advantage in terms of therapeutic uses", Villaverde points out.

"These artificial viruses are promising alternatives to natural protein nanoparticles, including viruses, given that their limitations, such as a rigid architecture and a lack in biosecurity, can be less adequate when used in nanomedicine", states Esther Vzquez, co-author of the study and responsible for the Clinical Nanobiotechnology research line within the Nanobiotechnology Unit of the UAB Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (IBB).

What occurs in chemotherapy as a cancer treatment can also be compared to the problems in gene therapy. Conventional treatments have an extremely high toxicity which limits their applicability. For this reason, UAB researchers, in collaboration with Professor Ramon Mangues from Sant Pau Hospital and Professor Ramon Eritja from CSIC, are now adapting these artificial viruses to be able to transport anti-cancer drugs directly to tumour cells. In this way, they will be capable of releasing large therapeutic doses in a very localised manner.

Explore further: New protein booster may lead to better DNA vaccines and gene therapy

See the article here:

Researchers develop harmless artificial virus for gene therapy

Jeff Bezos' Space Company Begins Test Flights This Year

Posted on by

Blue Origin, the commercial space company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced yesterday that it had completed acceptance testing of its BE-3 rocket engine.

The BE-3 is capable of 110,000 pounds of thrust and his powered by liquid hydrogen. Its first use will be as the propulsion system for the companys proposed New Shepard space capsule, which will carry passengers and scientific payloads on suborbital flights into space. As the company moves into its eventual goal of orbital spaceflights, the engine will be used for upper-stage rockets.

The BE3 has now been fired for more than 30,000 seconds over the course of 450 tests, Jeff Bezos said in a statement. We test, learn, refine and then test again to push our engines. The Blue Origin team did an outstanding job exploring the corners of what the BE3 can do and soon well put it to the ultimate test of flight.

Blue Origins BE-3 rocket engine being tested. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Company President Rob Meyerson told reporters yesterday that Blue Origin was going to begin unmanned test flights of the New Shepard capsule later this year, although no date was specified. And unlike other commercial space companies like XCOR Aerospace or Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin has yet to sell any tickets or announce pricing for the cost of a flight on New Shepard.

In addition to the BE-3, Blue Origin is also developing a larger rocket engine, the BE-4, which will be capable of 550,000 pounds of thrust and fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas. Last September, the company announced a partnership with the Boeing Boeing-Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance to develop the engine for use in ULAs next generation of launch vehicles.

Follow me onTwitterorFacebook. Read my Forbes bloghere.

Read more:

Jeff Bezos' Space Company Begins Test Flights This Year