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Bristol-Myers says leukemia drug better once-daily

Last Updated: 2006-12-11 10:13:55 -0400 (Reuters Health)

BOSTON (Reuters) - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said on Monday that results of a late-stage trial showed patients did just as well on a lower-than-standard dose of its leukemia drug Sprycel and had fewer side effects.

Data from the study, presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, showed that patients receiving Sprycel 100 milligrams achieved a similar benefit at six months with fewer side effects than those taking the dose approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of 70 milligrams twice a day. The study was conducted in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML, who were resistant to or intolerant of Novartis AG's leukemia drug Gleevec. The study tested four different dosing schedules and showed that patients achieved comparable benefit in all four treatment arms. However, patients taking 100 milligrams once a day showed a lower rate of serious toxic reactions and other side effects such as anemia. Sprycel was approved in June to treat patients with the most common form of CML who are resistant to previous therapy, typically Gleevec.

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Tories link dysfunctional UK families to underclass

Last Updated: 2006-12-11 10:44:23 -0400 (Reuters Health)

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Broken families beset with alcohol or drug abuse and strangled by debt are making it hard for children to achieve educationally and break out of the cycle of a growing underclass, a Conservative Party report said.

"Too often people are finding as kids that their lives are already chartered ahead of them, because of the broken nature, the dysfunctionality of their home life," said former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith. He said the report, drafted by a policy group, showed family breakdowns were related to crime and that government action was needed. "The government and the taxpayer pick up a huge bill for the cost of failure," Duncan Smith told BBC radio. He said the prison population had spiralled in the last 15 years and the statistics pointed in only one direction. Typical prisoners were young men, three-quarters suffered a drug or alcohol problem and 60 percent came from broken homes. Worryingly, most had the educational level of a 10 or 11-year old. He also said research showed that co-habiting couples were more likely to split up than married couples, with the attendant adverse impact on the future of any children. Work was needed to establish why so many parents failed to recognise that "stability for their kids, two parents, is necessary if they want to give their kids a life chance."

Another E.coli outbreak rattles California farmers

Last Updated: 2006-12-11 9:24:53 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Nichola Groom and Jim Christie

SAN FRANCISCO/OXNARD, California (Reuters) - California's farming industry is girding for another potential black eye after a second outbreak this year of a potentially deadly E. coli strain linked to its crops.

Green onions served in Taco Bell restaurants are suspected as the source of dozens of illnesses in the Eastern United States and the fast-food chain has called for an industry review of the produce supply chain stretching to California.The onions came from the seaside region around Oxnard in Southern California. The small city on the edge of the greater Los Angeles area is surrounded by acres and acres of strawberry farms and fields growing onions, lettuce and other crops.Farming is a major business in the area, as it is in much of California, the No. 1 U.S. agricultural producing and exporting state, where vegetables make up nearly a quarter of the $31.8 billion in 2005 farm revenue generated by the state."Everyone is real concerned about this," said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau, the state's largest agricultural trade group.The latest E. coli outbreak followed a similar scare in supermarkets in September that was eventually tied to spinach grown in California's Salinas Valley.The spinach scare a few months ago had sent growers scrambling to do better. They were already developing food safety guidelines when the latest illnesses hit the headlines last week.Oxnard's Boskovich Farms supplied the onions to Ready Pac Foods, a food processor for Yum Brands Inc. unit Taco Bell. Responding to food poisoning cases in recent weeks traced to its restaurants, Taco Bell tested the onions, found three samples were "presumptive positive" for E. coli O157:H7, and is no longer serving green onions at its 5,800 U.S. restaurants.A Boskovich spokeswoman confirmed the onions were grown in the vicinity of Ventura County's largest city. "That is correct -- grown in Oxnard," Lindsay Martinez told Reuters.While the findings are not conclusive -- Taco Bell is conducting more tests -- and Ready Pac's daily safety tests of produce it handles for Taco Bell did not show contamination, California farmers are concerned."If they had three positive samples, chances are it's the real thing," said Dean Cliver, a food safety expert at the University of California, Davis."I find that very persuasive," Cliver said, noting the E. coli strain is found only in "exceptional circumstances."Yet reaction in Oxnard to the latest outbreak was muted. It is a one-off event, contractor Kelly Shroyer said. "You hear about it, but I don't think it's getting any worse."WEAK LINKS IN FOOD CHAINThe possibility that California produce may be the source of a second E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in four months has triggered a fresh round of inspections at farms, packaging plants and distribution centers in the state -- seeking to isolate how the strain may be entering the food supply-chain."Nobody is trying to duck and cover," said Tim Chelling, spokesman for the Western Growers Association.E. coli O157:H7 is a pathogen present in livestock that has emerged as the leading cause of hemorrhagic colitis in humans. Its symptoms of bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps may progress into hemolytic uremic syndrome, a form of kidney failure that can lead to serious kidney damage, or death.The state's spinach growers have seen demand contract sharply since September after about 200 people became sick and three died after eating spinach tainted by the strain. Investigators believe wild pigs may have transmitted the strain from a cattle pasture to fields where the spinach was grown.California health officials discount a connection between the two outbreaks and, citing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, say it is too early to assign blame for the Taco Bell outbreak to green onions grown in their state."FDA is obtaining samples of all non-meat items served in the restaurants that could carry the pathogen," the agency said in a statement. Taco Bell's tests indicated the "possible presence" of E. coli O157:H7 but are not conclusive, it added.Green onions were linked to a 2003 hepatitis outbreak in Pennsylvania. Those onions came from Mexico, which supplies the bulk of the product to the U.S. market in winter months.Boskovich Farms said in a statement it is working with Taco Bell and Ready Pac, adding that it has yet to be contacted by the FDA or other agencies about the outbreak.(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco)

"Inkjet" printer helps organize stem cells

Last Updated: 2006-12-11 9:22:53 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An "inkjet"-style printer for stem cells may help scientists put the precious master cells to good use, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

A team of bioengineers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh joined forces with stem cell biologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to create the system, which they eventually hope will help them make stem cells grow into complex tissues.Stem cells are like the raw clay of the body, undifferentiated into specific tissue types such as brain cells, skin cells or liver cells.Doctors hope they hold the key to a whole range of regenerative therapies, but they are tricky to find and to work with, and it is not always easy to get them to mature into the desired cells.Tissue is complex, made up of a variety of different types of cells, and they must be layered together in the right pattern to work properly.Julie Jadlowiec Phillippi of Carnegie Mellon and her colleagues worked with mouse stem cells, so-called adult stem cells, meaning they are partly down the route of development.These particular stem cells were muscle-derived stem cells, destined to become a variety of bone and muscle cells, she told a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Diego.To get stem cells to differentiate, or develop into desired cell types, scientists use proteins called growth factors and other nurturing proteins. Each cell type requires a different protein recipe to nudge it down the right path.The Pittsburgh team came up with a system to make the cells develop into a useful pattern that resembles the complex pattern of cells seen in real bone."It's a glass slide 1 inch by 1 inch, (2.54 cm by 2.54 cm)," Jadlowiec Phillippi said in a telephone interview.They laid down a layer of nurturing proteins as a base, and then used a robotic inkjet-style machine to squirt tiny quantities of various proteins down on top, in a specific pattern."It is like laying ink on paper," she said. "It's a blueprint for cells to live and grow and differentiate with."Then the stem cells are placed on top of this pattern to grow. "Depending on which pattern they are on top of, they become one lineage or another," Jadlowiec Phillippi said.The mouse cells began to grow into bone-type cells, she told the meeting. Those not grown on the protein pattern matured on their own into muscle-type cells, she said."Now we are looking at making cartilage and fat cells," she said.The technique is a long way from being used on real human patients, she cautioned. "We don't fully understand what patterns we need to heal and injury with," she said.Teams at Pittsburgh have also used muscle-derived stem cells to repair diseased tissue in animals with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, heart failure and bone defects.

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