The National Association of Chain Drug Store (NACDS) implemented its Rapid Response Program, following a recent editorial on drug importation. NACDS President and CEO Steven C. Anderson, IOM, CAE penned a response to the editor to the Delaware County Daily Times (Delaware County, Pa.
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Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered a potential new drug delivery system. The finding is a biological mechanism for delivery of nanoparticles into tissue. The results are published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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An innovative approach to brain research developed by a scientist at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston has been selected for funding by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiative designed to support high-impact, medical investigations. Valentin Dragoi, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the UT Medical School at Houston, has been awarded a four-year, $1.
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Scientists have discovered a way of allowing healthy cells to take charge of cancerous cells and stop them developing into tumours in what could provide a new approach to treating early-stage cancers. University of Manchester researchers found that a special type of the chemicals known as ‘kinase inhibitors’ opened up communication channels on the surface of cells that enabled healthy cells to ‘talk’ to the cancer cells.
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Charleen T. Chu, MD, PhD, associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh and David M. Sabatini, MD, PhD, associate professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology received the 2009 Julie Martin Mid-Career Awards in Aging Research. Sponsored by The Ellison Medical Foundation, the grants provide funding of $550,000 to mid-career scientists whose research has great potential in advancing understanding of basic aging and its impact on age-related diseases.
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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press has just released a new biography, Francis Crick: Hunter of Life’s Secrets. It is the first full-length intellectual biography of Francis Crick, a greatly admired and influential scientist who co-discovered the structure of DNA and then followed up this discovery with important contributions that shaped the foundations of molecular biology. He later worked in the field of neuroscience, studying vision and the biological basis of consciousness.
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UK scientists have discovered a new route to a potential cure for breast cancer, one that focuses on how the cancer manipulates genetic pathways to spread through the body, rather than on how tumors develop in the first place. They are already working on a new drug to switch off the cancer’s effect on the pathways and say it could be ready in a couple of years, but experts suggest this could be rather optimistic.
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Got high cholesterol? You might want to consider a bone density test. A new UCLA study sheds light on the link between high cholesterol and osteoporosis and identifies a new way that the body’s immune cells play a role in bone loss. Published Aug. 20 in the journal Clinical Immunology, the research could lead to new immune-based approaches for treating osteoporosis.
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Medically, crying is known to be a symptom of physical pain or stress. But now a Tel Aviv University evolutionary biologist looks to empirical evidence showing that tears have emotional benefits and can make interpersonal relationships stronger. New analysis by Dr. Oren Hasson of TAU’s Department of Zoology shows that tears still signal physiological distress, but they also function as an evolution-based mechanism to bring people closer together.
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Protalix BioTherapeutics, Inc. (NYSE-Amex:PLX), announced that it has received Fast Track Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for prGCD, the Company’s proprietary plant-cell expressed recombinant form of glucocerebrosidase (GCD) for the treatment of Gaucher disease.
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