Next frontier is to treat superbugs like street thugs

WASHINGTON - Think of germs as gangsters. One thug lurking on a corner you might outrun, but a dozen swaggering down the street? Yikes.

Bacteria make their own gangs, clustering quietly in the body until there's a large enough group to begin an attack. This is the next frontier in fighting drug-resistant superbugs.

The idea: Don't just try to kill bacteria. The bugs will always find a way to thwart the next antibiotic.

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MSNBC.com

The health care system in America is, as we often hear, in crisis.

Costs are rising; decisions are made by insurance companies rather than medical doctors.

We all have our complaints. But here is a year-end reminder that, despite all its faults and problems, medicine in the advanced countries produces daily, life-changing miracles.

Fixing the large problem of medical care is a matter of complicated, multi-page, somewhat abstract proposals put out by senators and presidential candidates, but getting cared for is a matter of individual patients and individual doctors, and the experience can be highly satisfactory.

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IHT.com

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- WuXi Pharmatech Inc., a decade-old drug research company in the industrial outskirts of Shanghai, will employ more chemists next year than Pfizer Inc., the world's largest producer of medicines.

That's because Pfizer and rivals such as AstraZeneca Plc and Merck & Co. are turning to WuXi to help them find the next $1 billion treatment.

For the biggest pharmaceutical companies, being first with a new medicine is crucial as generic copies of their most popular brands erode sales. The shift to research labs in China is reducing expenses as U.S. and European drugmakers cut thousands of jobs. Meanwhile, WuXi is flourishing, doubling in market value in its first four months as a public company.

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Bloomberg.com

No evidence that bird flu passed between relatives, WHO says

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MSNBC.com

Two top analysts share their thoughts on the 2008 prospects for drug and biotech stocks.

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Forbes.com

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Colleen Cheng and Angel Chen, Chinese marketing executives in their 30s, should be the ideal customers for U.S. and European drugmakers. So far, they are a tough sell.

Glued to their cell phones at an expensive Beijing restaurant, the working moms would fit in at any cafe in New York or London with their fluent English and stylish clothing. They spend hundreds of dollars monthly on herbs, acupuncture and supplements. What they don't buy are Western pharmaceuticals, like Johnson & Johnson's cold medicine Sudafed and Sanofi- Aventis SA's sleeping pill Ambien.

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Bloomberg.com

There is a new nuclear arms race under way — in hospitals.

Medical centers are rushing to turn nuclear particle accelerators, formerly used only for exotic physics research, into the latest weapons against cancer.

Some experts say the push reflects the best and worst of the nation’s market-based health care system, which tends to pursue the latest, most expensive treatments — without much evidence of improved health — even as soaring costs add to the nation’s economic burden.

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Nytimes.com

For a perfectly healthy woman, Dianne Kerley has had quite a few medical tests in recent years: M.R.I. and PET scans of her brain, two spinal taps and hours of memory and thinking tests.

Ms. Kerley, 52, has spent much of her life in the shadow of an illness that gradually destroys memory, personality and the ability to think, speak and live independently. Her mother, grandmother and a maternal great-aunt all developed Alzheimer’s disease. Her mother, 78, is in a nursing home in the advanced stages of dementia, helpless and barely responsive.

“She’s in her own private purgatory,” Ms. Kerley said.

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Nytimes.com

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NYTimes.com

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Dec 20 2007, 12:21 PM EST
Human Genome Sciences Will Pay up to $310M for Aegera's Anticancer Agent
HGS could also gain related IAP antagonists, and Aegera retains Japanese rights to already licensed preclinical candidate. Full Story

Dec 20 2007, 12:23 PM EST
Over 50 New Breast Cancer Biomarkers Discovered
A study reported in PLoS ONE found that a single differentially methylated locus showed a clinical sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 96% for infiltrating ductal breast carcinoma. Full Story

Dec 19 2007, 11:54 AM EST
deCODE to Coestablish the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Diseases with $13.5M Award
Funding from the SBRI will go toward determining structures of proteins related to emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases. Full Story

Dec 19 2007, 11:51 AM EST
Cancer Therapeutics and an Australian Medical Institute Join Forces to Develop Anticancer Drugs against Unique Target
Collaboration will focus on designing a small molecule to inhibit a protein, discovered by QIMR, that is linked to cancer survival. Full Story

Dec 18 2007, 12:01 PM EST
Pfizer to Acquire CovX to Bolster Biologics Pipeline
Firm thus gains three clinical compounds and a technology that extends the half-life of peptide treatments. Full Story

Dec 18 2007, 12:04 PM EST
Affymetrix to Purchase USB for $75M
USB's expertise in reagents will aid company's efforts to provide new genetic analysis tests. Full Story

Dec 18 2007, 12:06 PM EST
Lilly Coughs Up $87M Upfront for BioMS Medical's MS Candidate
BioMS could earn up to $410 million in milestone fees plus royalties on MBP8298, which is in mid- and late-stage trials. Full Story

Dec 17 2007, 11:17 AM EST
Oxford Genome Sciences Allies with Amgen on Cancer Therapeutics
Companies will generate fully human antibodies against OGeS-identified druggable targets using Amgen's XenoMouse platform. Full Story

Dec 14 2007, 12:08 PM EST
Alba Inks $325M Deal with Shire to Develop Its Lead Candidate for GI Disorders
Alba will receive $25 million upfront and the rest in milestone fees. Full Story

GenEngNews.com