[Source: Research & Innovation] 
Novel testing and maintenance methods for oil and gas pipelines developed by EU-funded researchers are helping to ensure the reliability and safety of the extensive pipeline networks that are critical to Europe’s energy security.
Writing for the National Review, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute authors a stark warning about the dangers associated with importing drugs from Canada. As Pipes explains:
“[P]atients risk their lives every time they fill prescriptions through online pharmacies that claim to be based in Canada. The risk is even greater now that counterfeiters are lacing many pills with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin. Last July, law enforcement in Alberta seized 130,000 counterfeit pills that contained fentanyl.”
This warning comes in the wake of a recent decision by a U.S. district court in Montana who imposed a $34 million fine on Canada Drugs – an online pharmacy charged with selling counterfeit medications to Americans who were simply unaware of the potential trouble ahead.
Policymakers in Washington are working hard to ensure individuals and families have access to affordable medicines, but allowing these treatments to be imported from abroad is an ill-advised solution that poses significant safety risks.
“Lawmakers in nine states have recently considered bills that would permit American patients or pharmacies to import huge quantities of drugs from Canada. Congressional Democrats, led by Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), are also pushing hard for importation. … If they succeed, the influx of counterfeit drugs could precipitate a public-health catastrophe. Widespread importation would also stifle research and development of legitimate new drugs.”
As BIO has pointed out before, while the Canadian government works to ensure the safety and authenticity of medicines entering their market that are intended for use by patients in Canada, they do not apply those standards for medicines intended for export only.
“Passing legislation to encourage drug importation would expose more Americans to harmful counterfeits,” Pipes continues. “Such laws would also discourage pharmaceutical research and development.”
Read the full op-ed here.
Infinity Pharmaceuticals logo Infinity Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INFI) major shareholder Value Fund L. P. Biotechnology bought 1,510,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, April 10th. The shares were bought at an average cost of $1.97 per share, for a total transaction …
San Diego’s Histogen, a regenerative medicine company with technology for using nascent skin cells to produce “cosmeceutical” products, says the FDA has given a green light to its application for an initial safety study of its hair stimulation product in women.
In the United States, Histogen says hair loss affects over 40 million men and 21 million women. According to the company, less than 7 percent of them seek treatment, “largely due to the ineffectiveness of currently available options,” and a general reluctance to undergo hair transplant surgery.
Histogen is trying to provide a new option with a product known as… Read more »
UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS
The FDA has approved a Portola Pharmaceuticals drug that reverses the effect of blood thinners in cases of life-threatening bleeding. The decision comes two years after the regulator rejected the drug due to manufacturing concerns.
The agency still has some concerns about the drug, andexanet alfa (Andexxa). The drug’s label must carry a boxed warning about its cardiovascular risks. In its announcement of the approval late Thursday, South San Francisco, CA-based Portola (NASDAQ: PTLA) said continued approval for the injectable drug may be contingent on post-marketing study results.
But investors welcomed the news, boosting shares of Portola 19 percent to… Read more »
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[Source: http://ec.europa.eu/health/ageing/innovation/index_en.htm] Identifier: REC-AG-2018Pillar: REC Programme 2014-2020Opening Date: Deadline: Tue, 19 Jun 2018 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)Modification Date: Fri, 4 May 2018Latest information: A questions and answers document has been added under Topic conditions and documents, additional documents.
Consumers are clamoring for honest, accurate information about their food. And GMOs in food products have become a hot topic in the past few years. Many people are now wanting to know if there are GMOs in their food, and want accurate information from food companies about this issue.
But accurate information cuts both ways. In a new op ed in the Houston Chronicle on behalf of GMO Answers, Registered Dietitian Neva Cochran notes that Amazon, which has recently bought Whole Foods, needs to be more honest and clear in their marketing of their foods.
She writes:
Consumers are so bombarded with food and nutrition hype on the internet that they are confused about the safety, healthfulness and nutritional contributions of many foods and ingredients. With a plethora of absence claims on food labels and shelf tags – gluten-free, non-GMO, sugar-free, no added hormones, no artificial ingredients, antibiotic-free – fear-based marketing seems to have become the preferred way to sell a product.
She lists many of the common misleading claims found on products in U.S. grocery stores, including chicken labelled with no added hormones (No chicken sold in the U.S. is allowed to have added hormones) or gluten-free labels on products that no one would ever think to contain gluten (Assuming people actually know what gluten is).
Finally, she addresses the hot trend of slapping the phrase “non-GMO” on items, or what we call spreading misinformation about GMOs:
Finally, there are non-GMO claims, which imply that foods produced through GMO agriculture are not safe or healthful. The fact is GMO foods are perfectly safe to eat. The 2016 National Academy of Sciences report, “Genetically Modified Crops,” examined over 1,000 research and other publications and concluded there was no substantiated evidence of a difference in risks to human health between commercially available GMO and conventional crops.
There are only 10 approved GMO crops currently in the United States: field and sweet corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beets, papaya, squash, potatoes and apples But you will find non-GMO labels on items ranging from salt, vodka and orange juice to cat litter.
In the end, people just want to know if their food is healthy, safe, and nutritious for them and their families to eat. Misleading marketing labels do nothing to help consumers make those decisions, and companies should stop doing it.
Check out Neva’s op ed in the Houston Chronicle, and then head to GMO Answers for more information about GMOs.
This week, Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center authored an op-ed about the cost of prescription medicines within state Medicaid programs. The opinion piece fails to mention several key points that patients and policymakers deserve to know. In response, BIO Communications submitted the following comments:
There are few important points Dr. Bach either glosses over or fails to mention entirely.
First, drugmakers are required by law to provide significant rebates to state Medicaid programs to help provide access to innovative medicines. These rebates reduce the list prices for innovative drugs by at least 23.1 percent. Then there is the “best price” rule, which requires drugmakers to provide Medicaid the lowest price offered to any other entity in the marketplace. Medicaid is entitled to whichever concession – the 23.1% rebate or “best price” – leads to the best possible deal for taxpayers.
States may then demand supplemental rebates in addition to these federal requirements, all of which help provide low-income patients access to innovative medicines at a lower cost to taxpayers. To leave the impression that Medicaid might pay the full price for a prescription medicine is grossly misleading.
Second, ICER has a habit of relying on hypothetical assumptions derived from a non-transparent system to promote their preconceived notions about the value of innovative biopharmaceutical medicines. No one knows for certain what assumptions ICER bases its reviews on, because much of its work remains shrouded in secrecy.
Also, more often than not, ICER’s views stand in stark contrast to those of physicians and patients who understand the true value of biomedical innovation. That was the case during last week’s hearing in New York, which this column also fails to mention. Instead of holding up ICER’s black-box approach as the gospel, we should all view its work with a great deal of skepticism.
Invenra, a biotech startup that develops therapeutic antibodies for pharma companies, is joining forces with a Bay Area company to discover and develop new treatments for cancer.
Madison, WI-based Invenra’s announcement late Wednesday that it will partner with South San Francisco, CA-based Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL) said that the companies will develop as many as seven distinct projects. The companies, however, did not offer any details on which targets those projects will aim for in cancer.
Under the agreement, Exelixis will pay Invenra $2 million upfront, plus an additional $2 million at the outset of each new discovery project, the company… Read more »
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[Source: Research & Innovation] 
How can new technologies be used most effectively in crisis response? How can responders be better coordinated, damage mitigated and lives saved? An EU-funded project has sought to answer those questions and many more through far-reaching research into networked crisis management.
