The News Review:

- A ‘drug drought’ for pregnant women
- New Combination Therapy Safe Promising For Melanoma Patients
- Burmans to revisit clinical test services
- People With Joint Pain Can Really Forecast Thunderstorms
- Seize the Day award honors Cudahy

A ‘drug drought’ for pregnant women
USA Today – Jun 3, 2008
He spent 2½ weeks in neonatal intensive care. Candy says she wishes doctors were working on a cure for pre-eclampsia. Although 4 million American women give birth each year almost no one is developing medications for complications of pregnancy including conditions that threaten the lives of mothers and children says Nicholas Fisk an obstetrician-gynecologist and director of the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research in Australia. There are so few effective drugs for pregnancy-related conditions Fisk says that in many cases doctors can save their patients only by delivering babies early. Researchers also rarely test drugs for common conditions such as depression on pregnant women says Fisk whose review of drugs under development was published in January in PloS a free online medical journal. No new classes of drugs have been approved for conditions of pregnancy such as pre-term labor or a liver condition called cholestasis in the past two decades Fisk says. The absence leaves obstetricians to use decades-old medications making obstetrics “a specialty stuck in a time warp.

New Combination Therapy Safe Promising For Melanoma Patients
Science Daily – Science Daily (press release) – Jun 3, 2008
leader of the program and professor and vice chairman for clinical research in the Department of Medicine University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "With this study we learned that adding tremelimumab to traditional treatment is not only safe but an effective way to induce an anti-tumor response which is very exciting. "For this study 16 patients diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma all of whom received and had not benefited from at least one round of previous therapy were given the combination treatment. The overall response rate was 19 percent and the study has since moved into the second stage where it will enroll 21 additional patients. Melanoma is a rare form of skin cancer but it causes the majority of skin cancer-related deaths.

Burmans to revisit clinical test services
Economic Times – Jun 3, 2008
They will foray into clinical services segment through ncQuest aprivately-held company. To begin with ncQuest plans to conductmolecular diagnostics for global research companies. Molecular diagnostics areessentially clinical tests outsourced by global discovery pharma majors andclinical research companies to carry forward a molecule under development intothe next stage of clinical trial. ncQuest plans to offer theclinical test services in all major thereupatic areas besides its expertisearea of oncology. Sources say the company also has long-term plans to conductclinical trials. The Burmans have been mulling the new business areafor sometime. Dabur Pharma had already transfered its molecular diagnosticbusiness to ncQuest before the buyout by Fresenius Kabi.

People With Joint Pain Can Really Forecast Thunderstorms
Science Daily – Science Daily (press release) – Jun 3, 2008
Parvizi who is also director of clinical research at the Rothman Institute at Jefferson and associate professor of rthopaedic Surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia explains that even though individuals can experience pain fluctuations with the slightest change in barometric pressure most patients report significant increases in pain before and during severe changes in weather like summer downpours and thunderstorms. “The phenomenon of people being able to forecast precipitation especially rain due to the level of their joint pain is real” says Dr. “It is not in the patient’s head. There is science to back it up.

Seize the Day award honors Cudahy
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (subscription… – Jun 3, 2008
He always said ‘we’re so far ahead we’ll show them and they’ll be working on that and we’ll be working on the next thing. ‘ Employees loved it. It gave them an attitude of confidence” said Randy Spaulding CE of Spaulding Clinical Research in West Bend. Spaulding was an engineering manager at Marquette Medical. Born in Milwaukee much of Cudahy’s energy these days is focused on building a more vibrant high-growth economy in the state. “If we don’t build entrepreneurship in Wisconsin we’re going to pay the price. ne of the problems we have around here is we keep shrinking.