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Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a blood test that is a step toward giving people a diagnosis two to six years in advance of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The test identifies changes in a handful of proteins in blood plasma that cells use to convey messages to one another. The study, published in the online edition of Nature Medicine, reports on a connection between shifts in the cells' dialog and the changes in the brain accompanying Alzheimer's. The researchers found that the blood test could indicate who had Alzheimer's with 90 percent agreement with clinical diagnoses, and could predict the onset of Alzheimer's two to six years before symptoms appeared.

 

Brain cancer patients with the poorest prognosis—those with a type of deadly tumor known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM)—may survive longer with a drug that chokes off a tumor’s blood supply. Researchers at Duke University report a combination of bevacizumab (Avastin) and a standard chemotherapy agent may increase the amount of time GBM patients can survive without tumor growth, and may significantly increase their overall survival. Avastin is a product of South San Francisco-based Genentech. Patients whose tumors return after initial treatment are typically given about three to six months to live. But the 35-patient pilot study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found that a combination of bevacizumab and irinotecan, a standard chemotherapeutic agent, had promising results: almost half of the patients saw no tumor progression after six months, and almost 80 percent were still alive six months after diagnosis. About 8,000 to 10,000 new cases of GBM are diagnosed each year in the United States. Less than 30 percent of patients diagnosed with primary glioblastoma multiforme are alive one year after diagnosis, and after 10 years, only 2.3 percent are still alive.

 

Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have identified a molecular pathway that plays a critical role in the growth of blood vessels. The finding, published online in Nature Genetics, not only offers an important insight into the development of the vascular system during embryonic development but suggests a potential target for inhibiting the blood vessels that fuel cancers, diabetic eye complications, and atherosclerosis, the researchers said. The study was conducted in the zebrafish but is expected to offer important insights into blood vessel formation in humans.

 

Patients with heart disease who undergo coronary angioplasty have an equivalent risk of death and heart attack as patients who undergo coronary bypass surgery, according to Stanford University School of Medicine researchers. The analysis is the largest comparison of bypass surgery and angioplasty, two of the most common major medical procedures performed in North America. In bypass surgery, surgeons take a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body to create a detour around the blocked part of the coronary artery. Angioplasty involves the use of a tiny balloon to open a blocked artery. A stent is often inserted to hold open the artery after the procedure. The researchers also found that the survival rates for bypass surgery and angioplasty were similar for patients with diabetes, refuting previous reports that angioplasty was associated with a significantly higher risk of death among diabetic patients. The study appears in the online issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

 

Researchers from University of California at San Diego and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology are pioneering a more accurate approach for predicting the risk of breast cancer metastasis in individual patients. Distant metastases are the main cause of death among breast cancer patients, but physicians have a hard time predicting if a patient’s breast cancer is likely to spread. In work published online in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, the researchers report that they took advantage of new protein interaction databases and identified networks of genes from breast cancer patients—rather than individual genes—that can be used to predict whether a breast cancer tumor is likely to spread. Their results offer new mechanistic insights into breast cancer metastasis and are more accurate and reproducible than two sets of individual marker genes currently used to help predict the likelihood that a patient’s breast cancer will spread.

 

Affymax said that it dosed the first patient in the late-stage clinical program of its lead investigational therapy, Hematide, for the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney failure. Hematide is an erythropoiesis stimulating agent. Unlike other so-called epo agents on the market, it is not a recombinant protein, but instead a synthetic peptide that needs to be delivered just once a month. The product is being developed for treatment of anemia in patients with chronic renal failure and cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. The Palo Alto, California-based company expects to be able to apply to regulators to market the drug in 2010 if all goes as planned.

 

San Francisco-based Posit Science said it completed enrollment in a clinical trial of an innovative computerized training program designed to enhance memory. The study has now enrolled more than five hundred adults aged 65 or older seeking to improve their cognitive health. Based on the fundamental principles of brain plasticity, the Brain Fitness Program is designed to address the root causes of age-related cognitive decline. It uses adaptive exercises that target auditory and language systems to drive generalized improvements in cognition. The exercises are designed to improve the speed and accuracy of information processing in the brain, and engage the brain's neuromodulatory systems, including attention and reward, that contribute to learning and memory.

According to a report commissioned by the National Institute on Aging, the U.S. population of adults over 65 will double in size within the next 25 years. By 2030, almost 1 in 5 Americans—approximately 72 million people—will be 65 years or older.

 

Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences said that Health Canada has approved Atripla for the treatment of HIV infection in adults. Atripla is the first once-daily single tablet regimen for HIV approved in Canada for use as a stand-alone therapy or in combination with other antiretrovirals. The tablet combines BMS’s Sustiva and Gilead’s Truvada, itself a combination of the company’s Viread and Emtriva. Atripla was developed through a joint venture partnership between Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and Foster City, California-based Gilead Sciences. The product was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July 2006 and has since become the most-prescribed treatment regimen for patients starting HIV therapy in the United States. In Canada, approximately 60,000 people are living with HIV, and about 2,500 new HIV diagnoses are reported each year.