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START Trial Will Show Whether Therapeutic Vaccine Stimuvax Has Potential To Extend Lung Cancer Survival Beyond Five Years
Of all cancers, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) represents one of the greatest unmet needs for an effective and life-prolonging treatment. The condition, which accounts for 85 per cent of all lung cancers - roughly 1.4 million worldwide each year - is rarely diagnosed at its earliest and most potentially curable stage when it is amenable to surgical resection. Most patients are diagnosed when the tumour has already advanced to stage III, where it has invaded the chest tissues or mediastinal lymph nodes and is inoperable, or to stage IV where it has spread to other organ sites. Around 30 per cent are diagnosed at stage III and 40 per cent at stage IV. Both stages carry a poor prognosis. From stage III, and following chemo and radiotherapy treatment, median survival has been at best only between 13 and 18 months.

FDA: New Public Health Regulation To Improve Egg Safety And Reduce Salmonella Illnesses
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a regulation expected to prevent each year 79,000 cases of foodborne illness and 30 deaths caused by consumption of eggs contaminated with the bacterium Salmonella enteritidis.
News of the day
Drop In Access To Abortion Would Reward Antiabortion-Rights Violence, Opinion Piece Says
After the murder last month of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, "there is a very real danger" that the availability of abortion later in pregnancy "will end in this country -- not after public deliberation, legislative debate and majority vote, but because antiabortion absolutists on the fringe have intimidated and blacklisted doctors and successfully threatened violence against them," Jim Buie, author of the blog The Buie Knife, writes in a Newsweek.com opinion piece. Buie writes that his parents in the early 1950s chose to institutionalize his three-year-old-brother, who was born with severe Down syndrome, after their attempts to care for him left them with "severe emotional distress" and unable "to meet the needs of their healthy children."Buie continues that he "cannot say that the option of a late-term abortion would have been the right one for my parents." However, "some of the arguments advanced by pro-life forces disturb me," he says, especially a "tendency to romanticize, sentimentalize and idealize life with a cute, forever-young Down-syndrome "angel child."" Buie adds, "It"s an argument I find off-putting, especially when it"s espoused by people who have never been through the wringer trying to care for a child whose disability level is on the most severe end of the scale." He continues, "At the same time, it is very disturbing that until recently, the majority of Down-syndrome fetuses were aborted without expectant mothers receiving proper information or support."Because of Tiller"s murder, it is "possible there won"t be any doctors in the country willing to perform" abortion later in pregnancy, "even if prenatal tests indicate severe retardation," according to Buie, who adds that this would mean that "domestic terrorism could win." He concludes, "It would mean that parents like my own would no longer have a choice, and would instead be forced to endure the same harsh realities that were present in the 1950s" (Buie, Newsweek.com, 6/17).
Cardiovascular

Medtronic's Corevalve Shows Subclavian Access Success In Patients Contraindicated For Femoral Approach

Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT) announced new data presented today on the safety and effectiveness of Medtronic"s CoreValve system via a novel, subclavian approach. The data reported procedural success of 100 percent; 24- hour survival of 100 percent; and 30-day survival of 89 percent. The available 30-day analysis also demonstrated clinical improvement in heart failure symptoms with 76 percent of the patients gaining at least a oneņ€stage NYHA class and oneņ€third improving by at least two stages. Medtronic"s marketņ€leading CoreValve system was designed to allow the implant of a replacement heart valve in patients with aortic stenosis who are at high or prohibitive surgical risk. The system enables a catheterņ€based implant via a peripheral blood vessel, traditionally the femoral artery. A significant subset of patients, however, have compromised peripheral arteries, which prevents the use of the femoral approach. Uniquely, the delivery system of the CoreValve device is small enough to allow an alternative approach via the subclavian artery beneath the collar bone. "The combination of unique valve design and controlled deliverability have contributed to the tremendous success of the Medtronic CoreValve system using the femoral approach," said John Liddicoat M.D., vice president and general manager of the CardioVascular Structural Heart division at Medtronic. "These new data suggest that a subclavian artery approach could address yet another underņ€served patient population. We are committed to gather the necessary clinical experience and evidence to support the routine use of a subclavian approach in those for whom a femoral approach is not possible." The data presented today at the PCR interventional cardiology meeting in Barcelona reported on data from 74 patients for whom subclavian access was used within the CoreValve Extended Evaluation Registry, an observational study which closed in January 2009. The average age of the patients was 81.4. Moreover, the average Logistic EuroSCORE (a measure which predicts risk of procedural mortality based upon patient status) was notably high at 28.4%. Medtronic


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