What do chickens have to do with Halloween? Well, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the likelihood of contracting a harmful bacterium, such as salmonella, increases when dressing a chicken in a Halloween costume. This makes sense because any contact with a live animal, especially a bird, presents the chance for transmission of viruses from animal to human.
However, this claim caused quite the stir yesterday when news outlets incorrectly reported on the CDC’s advisory, with many interpreting the news reports as a guidance to not dress chickens in costume at all. (Que the collective screams from Halloween-loving chicken owners across the U.S.)
The CDC later clarified the news reports, saying that they are not warning people against dressing up chickens in Halloween costumes, they just want you to take precautionary measures whenever handling fowl – whether to dress it in a miniature-sized sheriff costume or not.
But, this is a biotech blog, you say. Where does biotechnology come into play in all of this? Well, the CDC’s warning about handling chickens stems from the fact that many birds do carry viruses and bacterium that can put human health at risk. Most notably, birds like chickens can carry the bird flu, otherwise known as H1N1.
Through genetic modification, however, researchers at The Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge have created a chicken that does not transmit the virus to other chickens. Essentially, these GM chickens would be the dead end for a virus that can quickly spread in poultry flocks.
Moreover, through this modification, the risk of transmitting the bird flu to humans becomes greatly reduced.
Until these chickens are commercialized, however, chicken owners should definitely follow the advice of the CDC when handling their flocks. Luckily, dressing chickens up as Santa isn’t a thing. Or is it?
Acadia Pharmaceuticals on Monday announced the imminent department of Todd Young, its executive vice president and chief financial officer, after roughly two years with the biopharma company.
Acadia said Young is leaving to join another healthcare company, which wasn’t identified in the statement. Prior to joining Acadia, Young was… Read more »
San Antonio – Researchers, advocates, and residents in San Antonio have been seeking out ways to handle the growing problem of diabetes in San Antonio and the surrounding Bexar County, which saw the rate of adults with the condition increase to 14.2 percent in 2014 from 11.4 percent two years earlier. Both are higher than the state and national averages.
Everything from experimental drugs to medical devices are being developed in town, including at startups like Syner-III and EO2 Concepts and at more established businesses, such as wound-care company Acelity. Advocacy group BioMed SA identified diabetes research as one of a… Read more »
[Source: Research & Innovation] A ceramic honeycomb air filter developed by a research team from Corning SAS, France, has won the EU Horizon Prize on Materials for Clean Air. The European Commission announced the winner of the €3 million award, funded under the EU’s research and innovation programme, today.
Last week, the seventh annual Patient and Health Advocacy Summit brought hundreds of patient advocates, industry experts and policymakers together to engage on important issues facing the patient community.
The summit concluded with a session on patient-focused drug development (PFDD) with distinguished panelists representing diverse perspectives: Paul Hastings, President and CEO of Nkarta Therapeutics; Laurie Burke, MPH, Founder of LORA Group; Cartier Esham, PhD, EVP of Emerging Companies Section and SVP of Science and Regulatory at BIO; Annie Kennedy, SVP of Legislation and Public Policy at Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy; and Pujita Vaidya, MPH, Acting Director of Decision Support and Analysis Team at the Office of Program and Strategic Analysis of the Food and Drug Administration.
In the new PFDD era, patients are helping regulators and developers understand diseases more holistically, so we can expect the drug development process to increasingly focus on aspects that patients value in their treatment. This new level of involvement provides exciting opportunities for patient and health advocates to have a voice throughout the regulatory development of new treatments.
In recent years, FDA has incorporated PFDD into its processes thanks to regulatory milestones such as the Prescription Drug User Fee Agreement V, the 21st Century Cures Act and the evolution of criteria for FDA’s clinical outcomes assessments (COA). These developments have allowed FDA to incorporate patient perspectives into its regulatory approval process by integrating patient input, designing studies with the patient in mind, integrating patient-reported outcomes and better communicating information to patients and providers.
PFDD has led the FDA to progressively use patient data to better understand the disease or condition, conceptualize the clinical benefit and modify the outcomes measure. Most prominently, this includes real-world evidence (RWE) and real-world data (RWD), both of which harness patient data that supports healthcare decision-making, namely coverage decisions, clinical practice use, and innovative clinical trial designs.
As Dr. Esham described, PFDD has brought about a monumental shift in drug development because, perhaps we didn’t know what mattered most to patients before PFDD came to fruition. When we listen to the patients, we learn things that can help inform the drug development process. This feedback loop benefits from involving everyone in the ecosystem, from drug developers to payers to patients. The next step is to build on these efforts by working together in the patient community to help define what it really means for the patient to have a positive experience.
The panel illustrated many opportunities where the patient community can have an impact on drug development. Patient groups can meet directly with developers to provide information on their disease or condition. At FDA, patients can now participate in COA development; inform understanding of a disease or condition; participate in development of best practice standards; and participate in generation of RWE and RWD to support new uses of approved drugs. There are also open agency forums where the patient experience can be shared. As Kennedy put it, “FDA has put us smack dab in the middle of [its] work.”
As the two-day summit came to a close, Dr. Julie Gerberding, EVP for Communications, Global Policy and Population Health & Chief Patient Officer at Merck & Co., provided closing remarks to the crowd of patient and health advocates. Her message was one of empowerment and togetherness. She implored those present to mobilize their most potent asset: a collection of voices that acts as a powerful source of energy.
Gerberding tasked the community to come together with an articulate message so that advocates can capitalize on opportunities to make the patient experience more prominent throughout the drug development process. Hopefully the summit empowered attendees with the tools and knowledge to do just that.
The immune systems of a large majority of people could already be primed to attack and possibly even disable a key component of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing therapeutics (which are quickly moving towards their first human tests), suggests new research published today.
[Source: Research & Innovation] A total of 246 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 24 countries have been selected for funding in the latest round of the SME Instrument. Between them, the companies will receive a total amount of €12.2 million from the EU’s research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020, to get their innovations faster on the market.
{“id”:”70499177″,”user_id”:”2954″,”type”:”blog_post”,”title”:”Twitter reacts to Rams logo being painted over USC’s on Coliseum field”,”description”:”@UniWatch Won’t be a very pleasant sight when watching the Packers and Rams around the 50 yard line this afternoon. pic.twitter<\/b>.com\/Y8X8xA9dCT.”,”link”:”https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https:\/\/theramswire.usatoday.com\/2018\/10\/28\/nfl-rams-packers-coliseum-usc-field-logo\/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjFjNzNhNDBhYWQzZTAyYjY6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNHbQUzum4qqz2hTK-_vkHL1M49JNA”,”img_url”:””,”created_at”:”2018-10-29 00:07:11″,”updated_at”:”2018-10-29 00:07:11″,”post_type”:”0″,”schedule_date_time”:null,”is_spinner”:”0″,”campaign_id”:”0″,”embed”:null,”rss_feed_id”:”27022″,”api_request_log”:null,”youtube_settings”:null,”dailymotion_settings”:null,”video_path”:null,”s3_video_path”:null,”trigger_post_type”:”0″,”striped_title”:”Twitter reacts to Rams logo being painted over USC’s on Coliseum field”}->description
