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VIA Pharmaceuticals Announces Complete Enrollment In FDG-PET Phase 2 Study Of VIA-2291 In Cardiovascular Patients
VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIAP), a biotechnology company focused on the development of compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic disease, announced that it has completed enrollment in a Phase 2 clinical trial of its lead drug, VIA-2291 in patients who have experienced an acute coronary syndrome event such as a heart attack or unstable angina. The randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled study examines the impact of VIA-2291 on plaque inflammation as measured by Positron Emission Tomography with fluorodeoxyglucose tracer (FDG-PET), as well as other standard biomarkers of inflammation, over 24 weeks following such an acute event. A total of 52 patients have been enrolled in the study, which is expected to report data in the second half of 2009.
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New Workshops Launched For Gay Men With HIV, UK
On June 17 from 6.30pm to 8.30pm, Terrence Higgins Trust is launching a new Positive Self Management Programme for gay men living with HIV. The free workshops in Ladbroke Grove, London will run at the same time every subsequent Tuesday for seven weeks.
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Opposition To Abortion Rights Declining Among Black Voters, Opinion Pieces States
"In recent years, conservative political strategists have painted African Americans as being more opposed to abortion than the white population," but experts believe that there actually "is a declining black support for conservative social policies like abortion," Tracie Powell, a former congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association, writes in a CQ Politics opinion piece. According to Powell, a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey found that 49% of black U.S. residents -- who generally are considered more religious than the entire U.S. population -- are in favor of keeping abortion legal in most or all cases.Powell continues that experts vary in their explanations of the declining opposition to abortion rights among blacks. She writes that Christopher Metzler, an associate dean at Georgetown University, said that economic concerns, such as the high unemployment rate for black workers, have become more important than abortion for the group. According to Powell, Metzler said that black U.S. residents also have started questioning the antiabortion-rights agenda because they received little support from conservatives in return.Powell writes that some experts believe the feelings of black U.S. residents regarding abortion might go "deeper than current economic and social realities." Powell adds that Salamishah Tillet, founder of the organization A Long Walk Home, said that reproductive injustice for black women dates to times of slavery, when they had no reproductive rights. According to Tillet, black women face reproductive injustice in modern times through underfunding of family planning programs, lack of access to contraception and legislation like the Hyde Amendment, which restricts access to abortion for low-income women, who are disproportionately black and Hispanic.Powell writes, "I doubt most Americans, including those who are black, consider abortion a civil rights issue, and I"m not arguing that it should be." However, "I do know that while black Americans remain one of the most religious demographics in the country, this isn"t the 1960s and African Americans no longer march lock-step behind the church," she writes (Powell, CQ Politics, 6/10).
Public Health

Novel Findings Presented By Pitt Melanoma Researchers At ASCO

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) have identified eight genes that help predict a melanoma patient"s response to treatment. The new findings are being presented at the 45th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), May 29 to June 2, in Orlando, Fla. "Approximately 70,000 people will be diagnosed with metastatic melanoma this year," said principal investigator Hussein Tawbi, M.D., M.Sc., assistant professor of medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and with UPCI"s Melanoma Program. "This form of cancer is aggressive and often resistant to chemotherapy. In fact, only 7 to 10 percent of patients are likely to respond to the current standard of care. We wanted to see if there was a way to predict which patients would respond to treatment and which ones would not." Dr. Tawbi and his colleagues examined the tumor tissues of 21 patients with metastatic melanoma, some of whom responded to chemotherapy and some who did not. Once the cases were divided, the researchers used a mathematical tool called Neural Network Analysis to survey over 25,000 genes and the regulators that turn the genes on and off to see if they could identify ones that could distinguish responders from nonresponders. "Cancer cells contain massive amounts of information that, if analyzed appropriately, may inform us how to kill them," said Dr. Tawbi. "They contain thousands of genes, and every gene has a switch that turns it on or off. Neural Network Analysis, which utilizes pattern recognition algorithms, helped us identify a signature of eight genes and their switches that predict a patient"s likelihood of responding to treatment for metastatic melanoma." The results of this study are being validated in a larger sample of 80 patients. Genetic testing could someday allow doctors to identify which patients will respond to standard chemotherapy and which patients won"t, leading to improved treatments for both groups. "The genes that we isolated in this study could be potential targets for new therapies down the road," explained Dr. Tawbi. "We need to find options for the large number of patients with metastatic disease who won"t respond to existing treatments. This work takes us one step closer to doing so." The study was funded by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Courtney McCrimmon University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences


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