Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Scientists One Step Closer To Cancer Vaccine
- Analysis: Doctors give less charity care.
- Pharmacypractice: Data protection.
- New Research Shows Pin1 Enzyme Is Key In Preventing Onset Of Alzheimer…
- eGov monitor - A Policy Dialogue Platform |

Scientists One Step Closer To Cancer Vaccine
Medical News Today - Mar 24, 2006
Although the results are so far based on animal experiments, they point to new methods of treating metastases. The results are presented in the online edition of the prestigious scientific journal Nature Medicine, and represent the collaborative efforts of researchers at KI and Leiden University Medical Centre in Holland. The study analysed an immunological cell, a T cell, which recognises other cells with defects common to metastasing ones. These defects (which are found in MHC class 1 molecules) allow the tumour cell to evade the “conventional” T cell-mediated immune defence. The researchers have identified a short peptide molecule that the T cell in the study recognises. Using this peptide, the researchers can vaccinate and protect against the spread of tumours from different tissues, including melanoma, colon cancer, lymphoma, and fibrosarcoma.

Analysis: Doctors give less charity care.
Free with registration - UPI Health Business - AccessMyLibrary.com - Mar 24, 2006
–> COPYRIGHT 2006 United Press International Byline: OLGA PIERCE WASHINGTON, March 24 (UPI) — The number of doctors providing charity care has decreased by 8 percent over the last decade, a symptom of the increasing financial pressure they face trying to stay in business as reimbursements for their services continue to shrink. This steady decline in pro bono medicine could bode poorly for the nation’s uninsured, said a study released Thursday. Only 68 percent of physicians provided charity care from 2004 to 2005, down from 76 percent for the period 1996-1997, according the report, released by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a policy research group in Washington. “This could be a big problem because it means fewer opportunities for the 46 million uninsured,” said Peter.

Pharmacypractice: Data protection.
Free with registration - Chemist & Druggist - AccessMyLibrary.com - Mar 25, 2006
One of the first services of the new Scottish pharmacy contract is the Minor Ailments Service, and both the Scottish Executive Health Department and Scottish pharmacy pay negotiators - the Scottish Pharmaceutical General Council - have made it clear that pharmacists will not be allowed to provide the service, or get paid for it, unless they use eHealth. Alongside this, work on the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) started in 1998, and is now being delivered in England by the Department of Health agency NHS Connecting for Health. Over the next 10 years, the programme, which is flagged up as bringing “better information for health, where and when it’s needed” will connect over 30,000 GPs in England to almost 300 hospitals and give patients access to their personal health and care information. Recently, the National Welsh Assembly also announced its plans to roll out the IM&T elements of the new Welsh pharmacy contract. NPfIT has three main strands of activity, which aim to benefit the NHS itself, patients and clinicians. These are: * The electronic NHS Care Records Service to improve the sharing of patients’ records across the NHS with their consent.

New Research Shows Pin1 Enzyme Is Key In Preventing Onset Of Alzheimer…
Medical News Today - Mar 24, 2006
These new findings, shown in an animal study, provide further evidence that Pin1 (prolyl isomerase) is essential to protect individuals from age-related neurodegeneration and for the first time establish a direct link between amyloid plaques and tau tangles, the two abnormal structures that are considered the pathological hallmarks of this devastating disease. Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School, the study appears in the March 2006 issue of the journal Nature. “A century ago, in 1906, the German doctor Alois Alzheimer first observed an abundance of these plaques and tangles in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients,” explains the study’s senior author, Kun Ping Lu, MD, PhD, an investigator in the Division of Cancer Cell Biology at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Throughout the years, intensive studies have been done to find out the causes of these two major lesions, but the exact relationship between the two has remained controversial and elusive,” he adds. “Coupled with recent independent studies showing that genetic changes in the human Pin1 gene are associated with reduced Pin1 protein levels as well as an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, these new results suggest that lack of sufficient Pin1 enzyme may be a key culprit in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Lu, together with Tony Hunter from the Salk Institute, first identified the Pin1 enzyme in 1995… These new findings, shown in an animal study, provide further evidence that Pin1 (prolyl isomerase) is essential to protect individuals from age-related neurodegeneration and for the first time establish a direct link between amyloid plaques and tau tangles, the two abnormal structures that are considered the pathological hallmarks of this devastating disease. Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School, the study appears in the March 2006 issue of the journal Nature. “A century ago, in 1906, the German doctor Alois Alzheimer first observed an abundance of these plaques and tangles in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients,” explains the study’s senior author, Kun Ping Lu, MD, PhD, an investigator in the Division of Cancer Cell Biology at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Throughout the years, intensive studies have been done to find out the causes of these two major lesions, but the exact relationship between the two has remained controversial and elusive,” he adds. “Coupled with recent independent studies showing that genetic changes in the human Pin1 gene are associated with reduced Pin1 protein levels as well as an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, these new results suggest that lack of sufficient Pin1 enzyme may be a key culprit in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Lu, together with Tony Hunter from the Salk Institute, first identified the Pin1 enzyme in 1995. Eight years later, in 2003, Lu and his colleagues demonstrated that Pin1 promoted dephosphorylation of tau, thereby “detangling” the protein which had become knotted and overburdened with excess phosphate molecules.

eGov monitor - A Policy Dialogue Platform |
eGov monitor - Mar 24, 2006
The report, “Towards 2020 Science”, is the first to comprehensively analyze the potential of computer science to transform the way science is conducted to the year 2020 and beyond. “Towards 2020 Science” calls upon the science and computer science communities as well as policy-makers and education leaders to support this revolutionary shift. Collectively known as the 2020 Science Group, the report’s contributors find that new software tools developed in computer science will have the potential to profoundly transform science, particularly the life sciences, over the next decade and beyond. These advances can accelerate the ability of scientists to address some of the greatest challenges facing the world, such as climate change and global epidemics… The Human Genome Project offers an early glimpse of the swift pace of discovery that can result from the further codification of data. Yesterday in London, international experts from the 2020 Science Group led a panel discussion to start what the group hopes will be an ongoing and productive public discussion on the issues they have raised. The report has also inspired the leading scientific journal Nature to dedicate a number of articles in its next issue to the future of computing in science. “Computer science and the natural sciences have much to gain from each other,” said Dr. Philip Campbell, editor in chief of Nature. “The 23 March edition of Nature examines some of these key concepts and issues. ” The group’s efforts began during a three-day workshop hosted by Microsoft Research Cambridge in July 2005 to consider the evolving role of computing in science.