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Period Ending August 10, 2007
FOOD CHOICES: KIDS SWAYED BY BRAND PREFERENCES
Asked to sample two identical foods from the fast-food giant McDonald's, children preferred the taste of the version branded with the restaurant's familiar "Golden Arches" to one extracted from unmarked paper packaging, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. The study shows that even young children are swayed by brand preferences. The researcher said the results are likely to fuel more debate over a growing movement to restrict marketing to kids under 8 years old. The study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, reports that the kids don't just ask for food from McDonald's but actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald's tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget.
DRUG-INDUCED LIVER INJURY: ENTELOS AND FDA COLLABORATE ON COMPUTER MODEL
Entelos said it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to develop a computer model of drug-induced liver injury. The Foster City, California-based life science company, which is focused on building predictive computer models and "virtual patients" for drug discovery and development, has designed the platform and the FDA will provide input from an expert scientific panel and a number of pharmaceutical companies. The goal is to use the platform to guide the development of clinical biomarkers and preclinical assays to identify patient types and drug combinations that increase the risk of developing liver injury. Drug-induced liver injury is the most frequent cause of acute liver failure in the United States, and the single greatest cause of regulatory action, including failure to approve, withdrawal from the market, restrictions on use, and warnings to physicians.
ANTIBIOTICS: BAYER AND NEKTAR IN $175 MILLION DEAL ON INHALED AMIKACIN
Bayer HealthCare and Nektar Therapeutics said they entered into an agreement to develop and commercialize an inhaled version of the antibiotic amikacin using San Carlos, California-based Nektar's proprietary pulmonary technology. Amikacin is under development for adjunctive treatment of Gram-negative pneumonias that often lead to significant complications and death. The companies said that there is a large, unmet medical need for a new approach to fight Gram-negative pneumonias, particularly in ventilated patients infected with difficult to treat, resistant organisms. As part of this agreement, Nektar will receive milestone payments of up to $175 million associated with the successful development and commercialization of the product, which is now in a mid-stage clinical trial. This includes an upfront payment of $50 million.
DRUG DEVELOPMENT: ABRAXIS ACQUIRES TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE BUCK INSTITUTE
Abraxis BioScience said it entered into an agreement with the Novato, California-based Buck Institute for Age Research that provides the Los Angeles-based biopharmaceutical with the exclusive worldwide intellectual property rights for technologies designed to generate novel therapeutics and identify new drug discovery targets. The company did not disclose financial terms of the agreement. Included in the licensed technologies are a novel immunotherapeutic/anti-cancer compound and highly sensitive cell-based assay systems for the discovery of additional immune-modulating drugs. The licensing agreement also includes a proprietary discovery platform designed to discover new chemical entities that remediate the signaling activities of the tumor suppressor gene p53 in p53-dysfunctional cancer cells. Loss of p53 activity is associated with one-half of all human tumors, often rendering these cancer cells resistant to conventional therapies.
ANTHRAX AND PLAGUE: NAVY TEAMS WITH ICHOR TO DEVELOP VACCINE
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has awarded Ichor Medical Systems a two-year contract valued at more than $2.3 million to assist the Naval Medical Research Center in the development of a DNA vaccine for anthrax and plague. The San Diego-based company technology is used to increase the effectiveness of DNA drug and vaccine delivery. The new contract builds on Ichor's ongoing collaboration with the Department of Defense, exploring the potential of electroporation-based delivery to increase the effectiveness of a number of biodefense-related DNA vaccine candidates. Electroporation uses electrical current to allow DNA to be delivered through cell membranes. In March, the company announced that it had been awarded a $900,000 contract by DoD to assist the U.S. Army in the development of a DNA vaccine for equine encephalitis.
SHORT STATURE: TERCICA WINS EUROPEAN APPROVAL FOR INCRELEX
Tercica said that the European Commission has granted marketing authorization for Increlex, a treatment for growth failure in children and adolescents who fail to produce adequate amounts of insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF-1. The Orphan Drug designation that Increlex received for the authorized indication will provide ten years of marketing exclusivity in the European Union. As a result of this marketing authorization, the Brisbane, California-based company will receive a milestone payment of about $20 million from Ipsen, its marketing partner for Increlex in the European Union.
ROSACEA: RESEARCHERS FIND CAUSE FOR COMMON SKIN DISEASE
Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have found a combination of two abnormal factors results in rosacea. The common inflammatory skin disease causes facial redness and affects nearly 14 million Americans. Though its long been known what triggers or worsens the condition —such as spicy foods, heat, alcohol —its cause was unknown. In an article in the online edition of Nature Medicine, the researchers report that over production of two interactive inflammatory proteins results in excessive levels of a third protein that causes rosacea symptoms. Patients with rosacea also had greatly elevated levels of enzymes called stratum corneum tryptic enzymes. These enzymes turned the precursor into the disease-causing peptide. Antibiotics tend to alleviate the symptoms of rosacea in patients because some of them work to inhibit these enzymes. The findings may modify the therapeutic approach to treating rosacea, since bacteria aren't the right target, the researchers said.
NEUROLOGY: NERVE CELL MODULATOR OFFERS POTENTIAL FOR MOOD DISORDER, EPILEPSY TREATMENTS
A molecular switch that modulates nerve cell activity offers the potential for new mood disorder and epilepsy treatments, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine. The researchers looked at the role of the natural substance cholecystokinin or CCK in modulating communication between cells in the brain. CCK, originally isolated from the digestive tract, is one of the most abundant small proteins, or peptides, in the brain, and it is linked to psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia. The study, which appears as an advanced online publication in Nature Neuroscience, reports CCK enhances the synthesis and release of natural marijuana-like substances known as endocannabinoid from a particular class of nerve cells known to modulate neuronal excitability in brain circuits critical for cognition and mood. CCK also increases electrical activity in a different class of nerve cells that play critical roles in learning and memory. The researchers said the discovery offers the potential for new drug therapies because the link between CCK and cannabinoids can now be further investigated to determine how its modulation by either pharmacological or genetic means alters excitability involved in the part of the brain associated with memory and learning as well as cognitive disorders, epilepsy, and mental illness.
HEALING: GARBLED INSTRUCTIONS TO STEM CELLS IN AGING MUSCLES DELAYS HEALING
As people age, the lines of communication to the stem cells in peoples' muscles deteriorate and, without the full instructions, it takes longer for injured muscles to heal, according to researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers said they have uncovered the conduit that conveys the instructions to muscle stem cells and that knowledge could open the door to new therapies for injuries in a host of different tissues. The key to the process is Wnt, a protein traditionally thought to help promote maintenance and proliferation of stem cells in many tissues. But in this instance, Wnt appears to block proper communication. The researchers, who published their work in Science, said many drugs can block Wnt signaling and said this could lead to a therapeutic that enhanced the healing of aged tissue by reducing the effect of Wnt signaling on the resident stem cells.
PREEMIES: NITRIC OXIDE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE TO TREAT LUNG DISEASE
A nationwide study led by researchers at UCSF provides evidence that inhaled nitric oxide is safe and effective for the prevention of the most common type of long-term lung disease of very premature infants. Chronic lung disease is a major source of morbidity in these infants and neonatologists have been trying to figure out how to prevent it for years. The benefit of inhaled nitric oxide for infants born close to term who suffer from the lung disease known as pulmonary hypertension has been known for some time, but the effect in preemies had not been clearly determined. Nitric oxide is a gaseous compound normally produced by the body, however, premature infants produce insufficient amounts. Recent clinical studies done elsewhere have found positive effects of inhaled nitric oxide in very premature infants, while some animal research has suggested that inhaled nitric oxide in preemies might interfere with the production of pulmonary surfactant, a substance critical to normal lung development and functioning. The study, reported in the journal Pediatrics, found no adverse affects of inhaled nitric oxide on surfactant production or function.
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