The News Review:

- Clinical research is available locally
- Quotient buys Scottish clinical unit from Charles River
- Wrong Way in the War on Cancer
- Workshop Develops Research Roadmap For Focused Ultrasound …
- Diabetes Glucose Control & …
- These trying times send more to medical studies
- Researchers induce formation of new blood vessels using stem cells …

Clinical research is available locally
Bismarck Tribune
Alexius Medical Center participate in clinical trials. Two areas that see the most participation are cardiology and rheumatology. “A lot of physicians want to be on the cutting edge” St. Alexius clinical research director Elaine Kucera said. Research can cover new drugs using old drugs for new purposes and medical devices. Research is either business sponsored or academic sponsored. Many times a sponsor will approach the hospital about a project although it sometimes comes to the attention of the clinical research department through a doctor at the doctor or patient’s request.

Quotient buys Scottish clinical unit from Charles River
Pharmafocus
The facility in Edinburgh Scotland will be combined with UK company Pharmaceutical Profiles – another recent acquisition by Quotient into a new strategic business unit called Quotient Clinical. Quotient has a history of expanding by acquisition completing six deals since it was formed in early 2007. The latest acquisition brings a clinical unit specialising in first-in-human (FIH) and Phase I studies that was formerly operated by Inveresk Clinical Research and purchased by Charles River in 2004. Charles River bought Inveresk as part of a push to add clinical testing to its traditional focus on preclinical services but this was a short-lived endeavour. The company sold its late-stage (phase II to IV) clinical services business to Kendle in 2006 and the divestment of the Edinburgh unit marks its exit from the clinical research sector. The US CR said earlier this month that it booked an operating loss from the Scottish facility in the first quarter of 2009. The Edinburgh unit is "an industry leader" in FIH studies said Quotient and importantly has been certified by the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to carry out studies on both small-molecule and biologic drugs.

Wrong Way in the War on Cancer
AlterNet
The National Cancer Institute has pulled together its own team for an in-house review. But an obsessive focus on flaws in the government-funded clinical trial system may be missing the core problem. Government-funded trials are a minuscule portion of the overall clinical research enterprise. Most clinical research today is sponsored by industry and those trials are focused largely on getting new drugs through the U. Food and Drug Administration approval process. While firms do test their approved drugs for new indications it’s usually in limited populations which may be large enough to generate a medical journal article but rarely reach the size needed to win FDA approval for that new use.

Workshop Develops Research Roadmap For Focused Ultrasound …
Medical News Today (press release)
the Foundation’s Brain Program Director “As a result of the funding that the foundation has received so far we are in a position to support many of the the R&D initiatives identified as high priority by consensus of the participants. We are already looking ahead to attract further funding as we anticipate an increase in the number of technical preclinical and clinical research projects stimulated by the workshop. ” Source: Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation.

Diabetes Glucose Control & …
Men's News Daily
  Carefully controlling blood glucose levels as well as treating the high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels that typically accompany diabetes are the foundations of modern diabetes management.   Despite the billions of dollars that have so far been invested in diabetes research there remains a great deal of debate among diabetes experts as to how tightly patients must control their blood sugar levels in order to maximally reduce the potential complications of diabetes (including death).   The data from previously published clinical research studies have actually been somewhat contradictory in this regard and some of these studies have suggested that excessively stringent blood sugar control can actually increase the risk of complications (including death) presumably due to episodes of very low blood sugar (hypoglycemia).  A new study just published in the prestigious journal The Lancet uses a process known as meta-analysis to evaluate five of the largest published prospective randomized diabetes clinical research studies encompassing a total of 33040 patients.   A meta-analysis is a complex statistical process that helps to equalize the variable research conditions that exist between different (but similar) clinical research trials in an effort to accurately combine the findings of multiple research studies and to increase the statistical power and accuracy of these studies.   Meta-analysis is often used to combine the results of different and rather small research studies such that one can draw conclusions as if all of the study patients were originally included in a single large and uniform clinical research study.   (It should be noted that meta-analyses are not considered to be as statistically powerful and as free from potential bias as are very large prospective randomized clinical research studies.

These trying times send more to medical studies
Boston Herald
The number of healthy people signing up for the Research Study Volunteer Program (or RSVP for Health) a database of medical trials at Massachusetts General and Brigham & Women’s hospitals jumped 6. 9 percent in the first five months of the year compared to the same period a year ago. “If that continues we’re going to be up over 16. 5 percent by the end of the year” said Kay Ryan clinical research operations director for Partners HealthCare which administers the RSVP program.

Researchers induce formation of new blood vessels using stem cells …
Insciences rganisation
They are working to understand the mechanism behind the homing behavior observed in the stem cells. “We have found that the key is a class of molecules called chemokines” Nolta explained who along with her colleagues is preparing to publish additional work showing how stem cells are able to find their way to areas of low oxygen in the body. “We know that if we eliminate specific molecules the stem cells lose their homing abilities” she said. UC Davis is playing a leading role in stem cell research with more than 125 scientists and physicians currently working on a variety of stem cell investigations at campus locations in both Davis and Sacramento.
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