Introducing a new service: writing solutions for when you only need a little help...

We are very proud to introduce a new service to the biomed, tech and business community in Northeast Ohio.

We're unveiling the service concept today at the Midwest Business & Technology Expo being held today and tomorrow at the Cleveland Convention Center. The service offers fast, professional solutions for those annoying, irritating, puzzling writing glitches you run into when you're writing that great marketing piece, grant application, white paper, executive presentation, speech or other critical communication.

Top-quality solutions in little, affordable bytes... What a concept. It's called:


Check it out. And stop wracking your brain over those small but important writing challenges!

Northeast Ohio neurology people get together

Attended a lively event last night in which biomed researchers and device manufacturers got together to show off their specialties in neurology. Cleveland Medical Device owner Bob Schmidt hosted the NEOBio event at his company's facilities in the midtown area of Cleveland--a formerly rundown area that's being renovated with the help of federal Empowerment Zone funds and the commitment of many business owners.

We heard fascinating stories about what's being done--what's actually out there being used to make human lives easier for those who suffer injuries and disease--and what they're studying to create for the future. Most inspiring. I'll be featuring a few of the companies/researchers I met starting later this week.

It's great to see people out there just doing it. Met a woman who's been around the Cleveland science scene a long time--and she remembered when Bob Schmidt and others were starving trying to get going. Good to know that determination and good ideas together do survive.

Hope acknowledged as a useful tool

"The benefits of maintaining hope" is one of the topics to be presented by a neurosurgeon at a daylong conference for brain tumor patients and caregivers to be held October 23 at Cedars-Sinai, an academic medical center that both treats patients and conducts research. Another topic, mixed in with all the drugs and radiation and other harsher treatments to be discussed, is alternative medicine.

It's encouraging to see these hints that western medical minds are growing ever more open to the mind/body connection. It won't be long until it's so mainstream that you'll have these approaches as options at every doctor visit and every hospital stay...

But that's still a long way off.

Medical device people: make defibrillators smaller and weatherproof

More people survive heart attacks in Seattle, WA and Edmonton, Canada: "the survival rate for cardiac arrest is three times as high in Edmonton as in Ottawa: 9 per cent versus 2.7 per cent, even though response times by emergency workers such as firefighters and paramedics are virtually identical in the two cities." The difference is how many people in the street know how to administer CPR--and are willing to do it.

I didn't realize that survival rates for cardiac arrest were so poor (only 2.5 to about 12 percent in the Canadian provinces where the study was done). Surprisingly, the latest U.S. stats from the American Heart Association (2001) look different. They indicate that 1 out of every 5 deaths in the U.S. is from coronary heart disease (that's the clogged arteries variety of heart problem), but that 42% of those who have an attack die, and that another 13-plus million people are living with angina (chest pain due to coronary heart disease).

The Globe article says most people who have a heart attack are alone--meaning they won't survive--but that applying CPR raises by 4 times the chance of surviving, and then using a defibrillator raises survival rates by 3 times. (Idle thought: I wonder if so few people survive heart attacks in Canada because it's just not as densely populated--so more people are alone when it happens?)

I can see where if the device people could make defibrillators smaller and package them to be impervious to weather (well, and theft), they could be installed in every public building and on the street, kind of like fireplugs. The citizens could be trained in the use of these things and--even if they weren't willing to apply CPR (in this day of HIV fears and so on, many people wouldn't dream of touching a stranger's lips for any reason)--they could use the defibrillator.

Of course, if the victim lives, then the victim has to decide is he or she wants to go through all the risky business of surgery--where long-term survival rates are still somewhat low. What would a few extra years be worth to you? Could be miraculous in a case where you realized there were things you still wanted to do and then you did them.

More than networking...

Northeast Ohio is one of many areas jockeying for position in the bioscience war. And it has some pretty sophisticated players doing some very interesting things.

Coming up soon is a new networking event that looks unique. The non-profit group NEOBio is holding its first Special Interest Group for the Neurological Area (Neurology, Neurosurgery, Neuroscience, and Sleep) and they're "prototyping the format" for other SIGs. Here's how they're working it:

5:00-5:30 PM Registration and Networking
5:30-6:00 PM Welcome and 30 second introductions of each of the participants
6:00-6:45 PM Researchers bring posters to tape to the wall. Company and capital participants will view research posters.
6:45-7:30 PM Companies bring posters to tape to the wall. Researchers and capital participants will view company posters.
7:30-8:00 PM Networking

Instead of a boring trade show where people stand around and hope you eventually drift by their booth, here we've got a dynamic constantly moving event where everyone is fully engaged in taking in new information throughout the evening. This format shows tremendous respect for the participants' accomplishments as well as for their time and energy.

Great way to get players in the same specialty to know one another. It'll be interesting to see how it works and if any tweaking takes place.

Interstate cooperative ventures - marketing is key

Even as tens of states jump into the fray to win the lion's share of bioscience revenues, it looks like they might actually be working together in a few ways. A North Carolina company came up with the idea of converting old school buses into traveling science labs to educate kids. Now Ohio's bioscience organizations are hankering to be one of the first customers (after Connecticut's Bioscience Center and Boston University). The mastermind says "spending a few hours aboard a mobile lab, no matter how high-tech, is hardly enough to start building the kind of work force that bioscience companies need." But the organization claims the biobus," as it's called, makes a great marketing tool.

Seems to be that it's particularly hard for scientists to admit that marketing is as important to their success as it to any other business. The "pure science" attitude was instilled in them during their studies and it's hard to drop it now--when as owners of companies they simply can't pretend it doesn't matter.

And it'll be interesting to see whether, even when they admit how important marketing is, they can muster up any respect for the folks who market for a living...

Altor Bioscience's SBIR--a protein that does WHAT?

Altor's Phase I grant was used to develop fusion proteins made up of a T-cell antigen receptor (TCR) linked to interleukin-2 (IL-2), an approved anti-cancer cytokine. Altor's approach uses the TCR to guide IL-2 to the tumor site where the cytokine can stimulate the immune system to attack the cancerous cells. Altor has found that the STAR/IL-2 fusion exhibits improved pharmacokinetics and potent anti-tumor activity when compared with IL-2 in several different experimental metastases and primary tumor models. The Phase II grant will make it possible for Altor to complete its preclinical evaluations and finalize manufacturing processes for production of the STAR/IL-2 fusion protein for human clinical testing."

Let's non-scientists look a little closer at what they're working on with that money.

- T-cells control immune system reactions.
- Antigens are substances that cause your immune system to react--and then they interact, or combine, with the substance your system produces.
- Cytokines are proteins (like interleukin 2) that cells release which then affect how cells act--or interact.
- Fusion protein is an organic compound that's formed within a cell when the genetic information from two genes is combined and expressed (i.e., translated).

So, okay, I think this means the T-cell links with one kind of protein to form a another protein that tells the immune system to attack a tumor.

Whew. Sounds like it's worth the million dollars from National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health. As our science grows ever more sophisticated, our ability to duplicate substances and direct actions in the body will only expand. This is one way we will all begin to see what many quantum physicists have begun to think--the impossibility of explaining how things happen at the subatomic level is leading many of them to conclude...there really is a God.

Neurology studies could lead to custom driving licenses

Recent tests showed people with mild Alzheimer's made more errors on a driving test that required them to follow a route in a new area. Researchers concluded: "The mental demands of following verbal instructions and navigating a new route can compete with drivers' cognitive resources and potentially impair their driving abilities."

Combine this discovery with the increasing sophistication of identification technologies (for example, northeast Ohio company Cardinal Commerce partners globally with credit card companies to verify identities of cardholders when the card is not present), and you could imagine a future in which you might take your driver's tests every year, and if you showed signs of impairment, be assigned a license that would only allow you to drive in certain areas, certain times of the day, etc.

The corresponding technology in the car would make it refuse to start if it was night (if you were only licensed to drive in the day), or say, warn you that you had driven outside your range... "You must turn back into your range. Otherwise, your engine will shut down in 5 minutes." Then if you didn't turn around, maybe you'd punch a wireless connection in the dashboard to notify some preprogrammed numbers (your kids or friends) of your location.

Or alternatively, maybe you'd have certain signs or lights flashing in the back of your car based on your driving limitations...

Oh, it sounds pretty horrible. But then, progress sometimes does look that way.

New receptor looks hopeful for fixing Lupus brain deterioration

Once again we look at a situation that in some ways, we have created ourselves by inventing and applying treatments that keep patients alive long past previously "normal" expected survival times. This time it's lupus victims (the disease afflicts mostly women, often starting in their child-bearing years) who, scientists are finding, are increasingly suffering brain damage and dementia as they grow older --but not "linked to expected causes, such as stroke or inflammation." Recent work is focusing on how the newly discovered receptor crosses the blood brain barrier to have access to healthy neurons in the brain.

Aside from the physical suffering patients must live with, the costs to society of this disease are considerable. According to one source, lupus accounts for more than 100,000 hospital admissions in the U.S. each year, averaging 10 days and about $20,000 per visit. Kidney dialysis costs more than $40,000 per year in the U.S. Hip replacement surgery, which many lupus patients must have because of the side effects of high-dose corticosteroid therapy, costs about $30,000 per hip operation. Published research says lupus patients lose between 30 and 100 workdays per year. For more information on new lupus treatments, check out Medline.

San Francisco mayor uses marketing to vie for bioscience money

The S.F. Mayor is calling a special conference to discuss stem cell research, and he's timing it to coincide with the pre-election hoopla that will include Proposition 71. "Proposition 71 on the upcoming November ballot is the biggest attempt by a U.S. state to create a
massive medical research effort," according to this article in The Examiner. The proposition is asking for $3 billion in human embryonic stem cell research grants and wants to create a state medical research institute, the "California Institute for Regenerative Medicine" with a 29-person governing body of "independent citizens."

The conference is an effort to put San Francisco in the front lines of the battle for the California bioscience honeypot of $7.8 billion in revenues. The San Francisco Bay Area, says the article, is "where biotechnology was born, venture capitalist money is abundant and The City's scientific research campus, Mission Bay, lies waiting for new tenants." The city is even giving new companies payroll tax breaks and easing permit and regulatory red tape.

This battle for favorite son, so to speak, is getting fiercer every week. City governments are getting ever more creative about how to come out ahead. Let's look at what a bioscience company normally wants:

- easy access to resources (physical and human)
- large pools of suitably educated workers from which to hire, and re-hire, solid employees
- other companies for employees that don't work out to go to for new learning
- other like-minded companies to network and potentially partner with
- affordable housing for employees of all levels
- superior quality of life for owners, executives and workers

So if all these things are equal (which seldom happens, of course), then it's about who gets the most creative with incentives (who uses better marketing techniques). Based on all the wisdom of social networking, my guess is that for most business owners, the quality of life will rise to the top as the biggest decision factor (though clearly if everything else is right and owners are persuaded to move somewhere, the quality of life in that location could well improve dramatically just from that influx).

But the key is, if city marketing tricks are powerful enough, the decision could be swayed. This is how marketing makes the world go round.

A way around the moral issues of extra IVF embryos

In Italy, where the Catholic Church holds much sway, researchers have found a way to circumvent the moral objections to storing and/or disposing of extra embryos from IVF procedures. They are freezing eggs--before fertilization--and then thawing and fertilizing them on call. So far 13 healthy kids have been born this way.

"Betterhumans > Frozen Eggs Hatch Healthy Children" reads the headline. Still experimental and used mainly for women whose eggs are under threat from some extreme situation (like chemotherapy), the procedure needs to be improved to yield more reliable results. But think of the possibilities. Women who know they want to delay motherhood may be able to freeze their eggs while they are young and most fertile and then become pregnant on their own schedule. I can totally see this in the future. It sure fits the way the world is headed in so many other respects--human beings controlling processes formerly thought to be completely up to the vagaries of nature.

Teeth not white enough? Get strips--or if you've got the money, pay the dentist to do it.

Don't like the shape of your body? Get implants. Or liposuction.

Not convenient to get pregnant? Visit the doctor, have your eggs extracted and frozen and have a baby whenever you want.

Possible abuse? Certainly. Every scientific advancement has the capability of being abused. Atomic energy was this great advance--look how many people were bombed to oblivion. But the truth is, once the ability to do these things exists, people will do them. And thus raise more of those questions that have never had to be asked before.

But think back to organ donations--the idea used to raise hackles. Now it's almost de rigeur--people check off a box on their drivers' licenses, for heavens sake. Heck, think back to when the world was supposed to be flat--and people were executed for saying otherwise.

Progress in bioscience is inevitable; our spirits and mores are sometimes slower to follow.

What's a 510(k)? Synthetic enzyme for IVF files for one

A 510(k) is a formal attempt to convince the FDA that the device you want to market (you have to file 90 days before you start marketing) is as safe and effective something equivalent that's already out there.

Halozyme Therapeutics Files 510(k) Application for Cumulase for In Vitro Fertilization Cumulase is a synthetic version of the cow and sheep enzymes taken from slaughtered animals that are used as an essential part of the the process of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for in vitro fertilization.

IVF grows more and more common around the world. Right now they're saying this product has a a market 500,000 potential purchases per year worldwide. As treatment gets more effective and less difficult--and less expensive--the marketing will only grow.

Better sterilization or better disposable instruments?

A man died recently in Australia of what was thought to be possible "sporadic CJD, an illness that kills about 20 people in Australia each year." The disease is different from variant CJD (also known as 'mad cow disease'), but neither variety has a treatment or cure. Death usually occurs within six months of symptoms.

So this brain disease, apparently caused by a rogue protein and able to lie dormant for decades, is causing an uproar. It's not that someone didn't follow proper sterilization protocol, but they say if they had known he might have this disease they would have been even more cautious.

The problem is there is no perfect method of sterilization. Bits of tissue, bone or blood, or even water drops, can remain on an instrument that goes into a sterilizer and therefore mask that area enough to prevent sterilization. And of course not all "germs" die in the steaming process.

Add to this the variety of materials now being used for instruments (inlcuding plastics and fiber optics) and you compound the problem. Some companies are making reusable handles that have disposable inserts of various types (as in surgical scissors that uses a variety of disposable jaws).

The debate will always rage. The issues are cost, human safety and environmental friendliness. In non-medical terms, should we soil the environment with disposable diapers or threaten the water supply with the extreme amounts of detergent and bleach needed to clean cloth ones? How about putting garbage in landfills versus using the garbage disposal?

How do you judge which is the lesser of two evils? The number of people placed in danger? The ages of the people put at risk? Do we draw a line and say we shouldn't go beyond this? These are questions human beings face everyday...some--like medical professionals--more than others.

As I said earlier about the debate on stem cell research, in vitro fertilization and pre-implantation diagnosis, the wisdom of the many must provide answers when the questions are ones that have never had to be asked before. Thank God we have the Internet with which to conduct our debates--makes it much more likely that we'll hear all our voices.

Partnerships abound - money is poured into the future

It was really hard to choose which item to write about today. So many interesting items; so little time. But this one is truly noteworthy from the standpoint of national organizations fostering cooperation between research institutions. This is taking the spirit of sharing and cooperation one step beyond its normal high level in the scientific world.

A partnership between several major players in the bioscience world has been funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals of Cleveland will anchor the consortium, which also will include participation by Emory University, Yale University and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. The University of Pennsylvania and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston will form the other two consortiums."

All these high-powered players will be putting their brain power together to study heart and kidney transplant patients to see if blood or urine tests can predict whether a patient will reject a transplant and hopefully adjust medications to improve outcomes.

This is a huge focus on the future--heart transplants are becoming more common, but the numbers are not huge. Statistics on U.S. transplants:

• There were 2,154 heart transplants performed in the United States in 2002 and 2,199 in 2001.
• Each year thousands more Americans would benefit from a heart transplant if more donated hearts were available.
• In the United States, about 77 percent of heart transplant patients are male; 74 percent are white; 50 percent are ages 50-64 and 19 percent are ages 35-49.
• In 2002 the one-year survival rate was 86 percent; the three-year survival rate was about 77 percent; and the five-year survival rate was 71 percent.

And here are statistics on kidney transplants:
• 9,078 kidney transplants from cadavers in the USA 2001
• 3,048 kidney transplants from living related donor in the USA 2001
• 9,078 kidney transplants from living unrelated donor in the USA 2001
• 56,598 people waiting for kidney donor in the USA 2001
• 2,444 people waiting for kidney and pancreas donor in the USA 2001

It's possible that the impact of the baby boomers is at work here. As that huge wave of folks hits the 50s, the burning desire to prolong life by replacing faulty parts gets a lot of energy.

Northeast Ohio investment climate not ideal for bioscience

A high-risk, high-return drug testing company chose to locate in Northeast Ohio because the principals liked the easy-going Midwest flavor of the region. But they're finding that along with the slower pace, the investment attitude is extremely conservative and somewhat stuck in the past.

Read this interview with Arnon Chait, CEO of Analiza, Inc. on BioScienceMediator.com

Cardiologists admit that testing is inadequate - holistic healing still far off in U.S.

Leave it to a U.S. president to get medical professionals focusing on the fact that their tests are inadequate. Bill Clinton's close call with death from coronary heart disease has brought powerful focus on whether current testing is doing the job.

Shockingly, the American College of Cardiology issued a report in August that showed nearly 90% of heart attack victims would have tested as only low- to moderate-risk if tested the day before the attack. That means common testing methods pretty much suck.

I know a woman who suffered for years from severe respiratory illnesses (even to being hospitalized) and was repeatedly treated as if she had asthma (though they were not able to diagnose that condition), until one day a combination of circumstances led a physician to look further--only to find the woman had been suffering from valvular heart disease for nearly 10 years. The heart disease caused almost every single respiratory symptom during that time, yet despite pulmonary specialists' inability to come up with a diagnosis, not one medical professional suspected the heart. This is where holistic thinking could have made a difference: if you can't find an answer in your own specialty, think about what other related systems might hold the solution.

The thing is researchers have discovered several new, much more effective tests for heart disease--but doctors don't know about them.

Let's face it: doctors are like anyone else doing a job. They're comfortable with what they know. Change is hard for most people. What would make a cadre of doctors want to continually shake up their lives by watching out for--and keeping up with--what researchers are doing?

That kind of thing would require a whole different approach to regulating the medical profession...not a welcome thought I'm sure to those who invested so much blood, sweat and tears in becoming medical professionals so that they would be the experts, not the perpetual students that this new approach might require.

It's tough asking people to change. If you paid with your soul to get where you are, it's probably even harder to do it. But eventually we'll find a way that accommodates the constant learning and doesn't turn hard-working, dedicated professionals away from medicine.

Ethical questions grow louder - what about abandoned IVF embryos?

The debate has been academic for many years. Now, with the soaring rate of in vitro fertilization (100,000 in the US alone), the number of unused embryos is growing--and the space to store them is shrinking. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine earlier this year set a policy saying that it was okay to dispose of embryos after 5 years if all attempts to contact the couple who produced them have failed.

As science advances, humankind is facing ethical questions that never could have been imagined centures, even decades ago. Where do people find guidance? Strict Catholics will follow what the pope says. But many will recall the time when the pope changed the Catholic church's mind about condemning people to hell for eating meat on Fridays. Generations feared potential eternal damnation of some family member who disobeyed that edict; my own father abandoned the church for many years because of it. His opinion: they had made fools of people.

Even now people "shop" for a priest who will condone what they want to do (such as practice birth control). Some call it situational ethics; others say it's changing with the times. Either way, these are new and important questions that require the joint wisdom of medical, philosophical, religious and scientific minds.

The fast-growing Bahai religion posits that the will of the majority--consensus--constitutes truth. Until the majority changes its mind. This is the path we are taking to these questions--and it can only be a good one.

As the world turns--assisted reproduction may lead to requirements for parenthood

In India assisted reproduction is catching on quickly. People who fifteen years ago refused to have any part of it are now agreeing to use donor eggs, or have the male's sperm taken directly from the testes for the technique of Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) (a then-unavailable method of injecting sperm directly into an egg).

The article in the Times of India talks about the fact that surrogacy, for instance, is not an irrevocable adoption procedure--the mother who bears the child is still legally its mother and can refuse to give up the child. It also suggests that the day is nearing when the first step to parenthood may be a trip to a lawyer.

How many times have you wondered whether becoming a parent ought to be a privilege that is tested for and licensed--like driving a car or practicing accounting? Someone--in these cases the state and the governing body--decide what basic level of knowledge someone must have in order to be qualified to perform this task or do this work. And they have the power to tell you, no, you can't drive a car on public streets because you don't understand the laws or you're not capable of making a turn without cutting off the curb (and possibly the resident pedestrian).

Who would be the governing body in the case of parenthood? Who is so perfect at it that they could stand in judgment of another? Aren't we all entitled to reproduce if we want to? Good questions. But the guy who writes the accounting test probably doesn't practice perfect accounting either. And heaven knows there's a huge range of quality in drivers--including the ones who write the tests.

But there IS some basic information that every parent ought to know. Like a lawyer, who goes to school for an extra four years NOT, as my ex-husband used to say, to learn everything there is to know. No one could do that. But to learn where to find the answers if you don't have them. To study precedent and see what wise minds of the past have done.

If we carry this analogy along far enough, we have to include the idea that some people would be told no. Does that mean we would mandate sterilization? That's already been proven to be untenable by most societies. In 1979 the Chinese people were simply told "you may not have more than one child." Of course, some of the measures they used to enforce this edict were questionable.
In any case, the rise of the use of assisted reproduction is bringing this question of fitness for parenthood to the forefront. I mean, my daughter works as an adoption counselor for the Chicago Canine Rescue. She refuses people who want dogs all the time because they just don’t understand what’s required…

Grand Rapids, MI seeking bioscience growth

Another city quietly joins the ranks of those vying for favor as sites for bioscience companies to locate. A coalition of the city economic development department and several companies is starting by building a huge parking garage--nice forethought for building additional research facilities. "Parking has been in short supply on Michigan Hill recently. Grand Valley State University opened a Health Sciences building last year and Spectrum Health is opening a $100 million heart center this fall. Michigan State University also is eyeing the neighborhood as a possible site for some or all of its College of Human Medicine."

The hope is that building the largest parking facility in the city (2000 spaces) will make the area more inviting.

With all the money that's being poured into supporting the growth of the bioscience industry, we can hope that tremendous progress will be made in every area and people will benefit from the faster, more intense pace at which discoveries can be made. But it seems all the hoopla isn't yet translating into support for startup companies. Guess there will have to be a trickle-down effect once everybody finishes jockeying for favor with the bigger, more successful companies.

Pharmacist crusades against ignored drug interactions in elderly

Interesting article in the recent AARP magazine. There's a pharmacist who years ago took a stand against where the healthcare industry has been trying to pigeonhole pharmacists--that is, as nothing but the order filler. He set up his practice with a carpeted waiting room and a consultation area. Why?

Because he believes that the pharmacist's job is to watch out for the patient in ways that many doctors today do not--namely, to be responsible for studying drug interactions and making sure that when they prescribe a drug, it isn't going to cause a patient problems.

With annual drug costs for the average elderly person in a nursing home hanging at the $18,000 level, this is a serious business concern, too. But he's worried--and has plenty of evidence for feeling that way--that many elderly people are being made extra miserable by the truckloads of drugs they've being fed every day without regard to how they make the person feel.

Tremendous opportunity for bioscience companies working on this issue.

More info for people needing help: The American Society of Consultant Phamacists and SeniorCarePharmacist.com

Blogger not publishing

You may be wondering where the daily posts are. Well, I promise, we posted them, but Blogger, the blogging software that we use to publish this blog, has been intermittently simpy refusing to publish--sometimes at all (have lost several posts this week), and sometimes until some time a day or two or three later when whatever is wrong gets temporarily fixed.

This has been going on all week, and though I've sent numerous requests for help to Blogger, no one seems to be at home there.

So if you get this note, the "fix" will be on. But don't be surprised if then you don't see anything new again for a couple of days. Until they get this random glitch fixed, we are at their mercy...

And the most amazing part is, this program is Google's--the absolute giant of online expertise.

Hey, Blogger/Google! Where are you!?

Evidence builds - mind power over health

Despite recent evidence that drug-coated stents (wire mesh tubes that hold arteries open) definitely reduce re-clogging after heart procedures, a Dutch research project has found statistically significant evidence that the mindset of the patient can have a powerful effect on whether the person will remain healthy for long.

"To look into the possibility that non-traditional risk factors may play a role, [the research] group rated patients on the Type D Personality Scale six months after they underwent angioplasty and stenting.

Type D is the name assigned to a personality that harbors lots of negative emotions but doesn't express them openly. As more investigators look into these kinds of connections, the power of the mind over one's physical health is becoming ever clearer. And the joining of the eastern and the western philosophies about medicine grows ever closer. Here's a cool website that describes the work that a specially created Health/Emotions Research Institute (part of the University of Wisconsin) is doing to study the connection between positive emotions and brain activity.

We will sneak quietly into this new understanding. No one will make a great noise about it. But that's okay. At least then we'll finally be accessing ALL the available options for healing.

Cystic fibrosis research gets boon from stem cell work - U.S. moral opposition vs. real results

Here's the first solid breakthrough in stem cell research that federally funded U.S. investigators will not be able to take advantage of. The Scotsman online newspaper reports that U.K. scientists have isolated embryonic stem cells that contain the genetic defect that causes cystic fibrosis--one of the worst inherited-disease killers. "CF clogs the lungs and other organs in the body with thick, sticky mucus, triggering repeated infections which ultimately lead to death." The thought is that researchers will now be able to work much more directly on finding a cure for CF.

China has already sworn to step up its work in stem cell research because the U.S. is hesitating. The U.K. just recently announced a 1-year experimental trial period of allowing this research--which may be why this particular development is just being reported (since they produced the cells originally a year ago and have since been reproducing them to the tune of millions).

No doubt there is good reason to go slowly in this area; the potential for misuse is horrifyingly real. But maybe the U.S. doesn't have to be first in everything anyway. But we will certainly be beneficiaries of the things that are learned with this research. So does it make it okay to benefit from the work, even if we didn't do it ourselves? Where does this put us on the moral scale (which is the whole objection that's being put forth against doing this work)?

In the world of logic, if a and b, then c, etc., etc., it seems clear that if you take advantage of what is learned from something you objected to philosophically, you've just condoned the behavior. So is the U.S. going to ban the eventual curing of people with CF because the cure was discovered through the use of embryonic stem cells? Highly doubtful. So is this all just a game of semantics after all?

New central database will help fight deadly microorganisms

The NIH has funded the development of a database that will give "infectious disease researchers a single Web-based entry point to all relevant organism-related data necessary for their advanced research. The genomes (genetic maps) of hundreds and eventually thousands of microorganisms will be available for integrated analysis."

The University of Chicago and Argonne Laboratories are collaborating to create this tremendous resource for developing more effective vaccines and methods of diagnosing and treating infections--old ones and as-yet-unheard-of ones. Initially, work will focus on bacteria that cause diarrhea and other gastrointestinal illnesses (several types), listeriasis (infection that affects newborns and elderly with weakened immune systems), cholera, staph and strep infections like meningitis and pneumonia, and strep infections like toxic shock, scarlet fever and others.

It would be fascinating to know how they chose which diseases to start combatting first. As for diarrhea, estimates are that diarrhea and its complications kill from 1.5 to 5.1 million children around the world under the age of five, and is a huge risk factor for those over 70.

That's a good reason to start right there.

Surprise -- educating patients AND doctors improves outcomes

Kids in this study have had significantly fewer attacks of asthma and needed 1/3 less rescue medication (the steroid inhalers that can themselves do some harm long term). It's nothing exciting--just helping patients and medical people understand the disease better and having "regularly planned scheduled visits with specially trained nurses to help families learn how to anticipate asthma symptoms and to develop skills to better self-manage them." Key is that doctors also receive education.

What a novel idea for medical treatment--doctors not being mysterious about an illness and acting as if they have all the answers. It's a great idea for asthma, because stress is a common trigger for this killer disease. So if people can be taught other methods of managing stress, chances are good that at least those episodes can be kept to a minimum.

Bioscience in Europe claiming policies restrict thier ability to grow

A law in the European community that requires companies to sell new stock to existing customers is hampering the move from R&D to product development for many bioscience companies, according to Scotsman.com News. "Bioscience companies should be able to issue up to 20% of new shares in any three-year period without pre-emption rights applying."

Fresh money and fresh ideas. Makes sense that you'd need those to move ahead. Does U.S. law contain any such restrictive provisions? Will look into that. Forging into product development is hard enough already...

Migraine specialist attracting good research group

A doctor who himself suffered from frequent, debilitating migraine headaches from childhood on, has an office in California that's a popular place to visit for other migraine sufferers--because he's curing them, and he's conducting research--pretty much never done before--at the same time.Ventura County Star: Ojai His program is linked with the molecular neurology program at Huntington Medical Research Institutes in Pasadena where scientists are studying migraine as well as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia.

Biofeedback, stress control, relaxation are among the treatments considered most successful. I have a friend who suffered migraines several times a week for decades. As soon as he changed careers--and got out of his in-laws' business--he stopped having them. Amazing that we unconsciously create so much of our own suffering.

But knowing that chemicals and other substances in our bodies are responsible for both good effects and bad ones, it's easier to believe that we have the power to infuence our health with our thoughts. Lots of books but here's one specifically on that: Visualization for Change

Calling all medical device people--find less invasive ways to clear arterial plaque

The hearts of cardiac patients who've had stenting or angioplasty don't actually become more efficient at pumping, according to this Reuters article. But the left side of the heart does begin to reduce its size. That's a good thing because the thickening and enlarging that happens as the heart muscle tries to compensate for clogged arteries can be harmful in itself, according to Swiss researchers writing in the International Journal of Cardiology.

This sounds like one of the few actual improvements heart patients can expect after these types of surgeries. Based on what we're seeing so far, these surgeries often don't solve the problem for the long term (see earlier post about other factors that affect expected life span post-operation).

Seems the medical device and drug developer folks have a big assignment here. Just as they came up with a clot-dissolving drug that spares some people who are in the throes of a heart attack, maybe they can develop a less invasive way to clean out blood vessels.

Too bad that, because this is the human body, they can't just up the active-ingredient-content like extra-strength drain cleaners do...

Baby boomer wave may be the salvation of the environment

It's Monday already in Pakistan. The Daily News, a Pakistan online daily news journal, reports that continuing exposure to noise raises heart attack risk by 140 percent. Air pollution raises the number of hospitalizations for susceptible people (especially those who've had previous heart attacks).

When we baby boomers were young and resilient, the medical community didn't focus on this sort of thing. Now that the huge crop of post-war babies is reaching the sensitive 50-plus age range (and probably a lot of the medical professionals fit in this category), research is beginning to laser in on the environmental factors that cause greater risks to those becoming more vulnerable to damage and disease.

I'm glad to hear this. With the baby boomer flood of people comes the power of mass consumer spending. If it takes a business focus--where will this mass of folks want to spend their money--to finally make the human race pay attention to what it's doing to the environment, we all--especially our children and grandchildren--will be the beneficiaries.

Medical device makers - Heads Up! You've heard of the stair climbing machine...

First evidence is in now that stepping down is a better exercise that stepping up. "Concentric muscle work is defined as the active shortening of muscles, e.g. by stepping upwards, whereas eccentric muscle work is defined as active resistance to stretching, e.g. by stepping downwards." Attendees at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2004 heard the interesting news that eccentric muscle work is better.

Formerly sedentary patients were divided into two groups--one hiked downhill and the other hiked uphill. The result was that glucose tolerance improved significantly more in those who hiked downhill--and I bet it works better to reduce that heavy middle we were just talking about.

This is a pretty exciting discovery, if you ask me. Device makers need to get busy now designing a step-down machine. The increasingly huge number of diabetics in the world will be mighty glad to hear this.

And think of it: Finally those ski-resorts have something to do with their properties all year!! Patients take the lift up and walk down. Heart patients will love this, too.

They call it the "dark side" of the body

I was just mentioning in an earlier post how I've been noticing that the same substance that helps our bodies is often the culprit in damaging them, too. Lo and behold, here's an article about this very phenomenon--and what drug developers can take from the ideas.

Compounds called "lipoxin analogs, are now being eyed as candidates for drug development, having shown great promise in quelling disease-associated inflammation in animal studies of dermatitis, asthma, kidney disease and now gum disease and cystic fibrosis.":

Pretty impressive array of conditions this one item may be able to help. Strange, that this phenomenon seems to reflect one of the most ancient beliefs about the human spirit: that the bad in us is only an aberrant version of the good. Now what I'm going to be looking for is a theory that will compare the physiological healing substances with the psychological healing methods we've discovered. Should be an interesting contrast--and may hold some very special and powerful secrets.

Ethics in genetic research takes center stage in Cleveland, Ohio

This is really an encouraging development. So much hoopla and fighting and backstabbing going on about stem cell and in vitro and on and on, it's a relief at last to see that the powers that be are putting some money where the arguments are.

Cleveland's Case School of Medicine will be "one of four national centers of excellence created with NIH funding in the United States to study bioethical issues." The National Institutes of Health do not hand out money lightly so this is a real honor to CWRU and to the other participants of the coalition (including the Cleveland Clinic).

If the northeast Ohio region were looking for any further proof of its viability as a center for energizing biomedical progress, this high honor from the highest powers in the United States medical world should be all it--and potential investors--need.

Babies who gain weight rapidly after birth may be more susceptible to respiratory disease

Low birth weight has always been considered a potential risk for babies. Southampton researchers identify significant link between susceptibility to respiratory disease and weight gain in early infancy "Somewhat surprisingly, the findings did not appear to reflect either whether the baby was breast or bottle-fed, or the known harmful effects of smoking during and after pregnancy."

They don't know the reasons for this yet, but the statistics are significant, and researchers are positing that these babies are making up for lost developmental time in utero.