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The Washington Post
Three weeks ago, 130 scientists, entrepreneurs and policy leaders held an invitation-only, closed-door meeting at Harvard University to discuss an ambitious plan to create synthetic human genomes. Now, after a flurry of criticism over the secrecy of the effort, the participants have published their idea, declaring that they're launching a project to radically reduce the cost of synthesizing genomes — a potentially revolutionary development in biotechnology that could enable technicians to grow human organs for transplantation.
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Forbes
Myriad Genetics is at the closely watched annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology presenting results from three studies of its myRisk Hereditary Cancer Test. The product is designed to identify patients who may face an elevated risk of eight different cancers based on mutations in 25 genes.
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The New York Times
Just a few years ago, Crispr was a cipher — something that sounded to most ears like a device for keeping lettuce fresh. Today, Crispr-Cas9 is widely known as a powerful way to edit genes. Scientists are deploying it in promising experiments, and a number of companies are already using it to develop drugs to treat conditions ranging from cancer to sickle-cell anemia.
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HealthDay News
Three-quarters of young or middle-aged Americans with terminal cancer receive aggressive treatment during the last month of their lives, even though such care may provide nothing but misery, a new study estimates.
An analysis of insurance records found that cancer patients often undergo chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgery in their final 30 days.
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HealthDay News via WebMD
The United States pays the highest prices in the world for generic and brand-name cancer drugs, a new study has found.
However, as the world's wealthiest nation, the United States is better able to pay for those pricey drugs than poorer countries with somewhat lower medication prices, added study lead author Dr. Daniel Goldstein.
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Health Information Designs
Spending on specialty pharmaceuticals climbed 18 percent in 2015, compared to an increase of less than 1 percent for standard prescription medications. Despite their effectiveness, specialty medications are under constant scrutiny—reflecting the growing concern of balancing clinical innovation with responsible spending.
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| | BIOTECH/DIAGNOSTICS/PERSONALIZED MEDICINE |
Forbes
When your doctor selects a medicine to treat you for any given condition, the goal is to look at the drug’s mechanism of action and safety profile, while giving consideration for other types of medications you might be currently taking.
Yet even as we learn that there are newly recognized genes that may confer the ability to better respond to a certain medication, it’s clear that a shift toward using a personalized approach may lead to better outcomes in patients requiring pharmacologic therapy, including certain types of cancer.
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Healthcare IT News
Vice President Joe Biden unveiled the precision medicine database, speaking at its operations center at the University of Chicago.
The project, named Genomic Data Commons, is a National Cancer Institute initiative and is central to the National Cancer Moonshot and Precision Medicine Initiative. Funding of $70 million will be allocated from NCI for cancer genomics projects under PMI.
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| | EMERGING MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES |
News-Medical.net
Robots carry out their tasks more safely if they are controlled by another technology. This makes them much more suitable for use in the care sector, as revealed by a study conducted at the Robotics and Mechatronics department at the University of Twente.
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The Washington Post
Stanford researchers studying the effect of stem cells injected directly into the brains of stroke patients said that they were "stunned" by the extent to which the experimental treatment restored motor function in some of the patients. While the research involved only 18 patients and was designed primarily to look at the safety of such a procedure and not its effectiveness, it is creating significant buzz in the neuroscience community because the results appear to contradict a core belief about brain damage — that it is permanent and irreversible.
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Genoptix, a Novartis company, is a leading CAP-accredited and CLIA-certified specialized laboratory focused on delivering diagnostic services to hematology/oncology patients and the physicians who treat them.
800.755.1605 / www.genoptix.com MORE
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CNN
Here is some background information about stem cells.
Scientists believe that stem cell research can be used to treat medical conditions including Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
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| | ACCOUNTABLE CARE ORGANIZATIONS |
FierceHealthcare
The accountable care organization model faces a pivotal moment, and its success or failure depends on what the federal government does next, argues a new white paper from the National Association of ACOs.
The whitepaper, "ACOs at the Crossroads: Cost, Risk and MACRA," states that current options for average ACOs that want to take on further risk are far too drastic, because they require participating physicians to put their entire Medicare income on the line in just the first year of the lowest risk track.
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HealthPayer Intelligence
Accountable care organizations are provider and payer arrangements established to improve care coordination between primary care physicians, hospitals, specialists, and public or private health payers.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, for instance, has created the Medicare Shared Savings Program in which accountable care organizations must meet quality performance benchmarks and reduce Medicare spending by a certain percentage point in order to qualify for sharing in these cost savings.
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HealthITAnalytics
Accountable care organizations need to develop a robust population health management infrastructure to achieve savings and improve the quality of care.
Healthcare providers who wish to succeed as accountable care organizations have to address a lengthy checklist of tasks, strategies, and technologies long before they can hope to accrue shared savings from Medicare or a private payer.
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| | FDA: NEW TREATMENTS AND TECHNOLOGY |
Reuters
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said companies could only charge patients for the cost of manufacturing experimental treatments used under compassionate grounds, and it cannot force government or private health insurers to pay for these drugs.
"Compassionate use" of experimental drugs allows physicians to prescribe unapproved treatments for patients who have no other satisfactory alternatives in the market.
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Modern Healthcare
The Food and Drug Administration finalized its streamlined application process designed to help put experimental drugs into the hands of terminally ill patients.
But both supporters and opponents of the FDA's “compassionate use” program agree that it's not the federal agency, but drugmakers that need to change their processes to improve access.
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The New York Times
In 1998, President Bill Clinton suggested a partial solution to help millions of Americans without health insurance: The country should let those 55 and older without employer coverage buy into the government Medicare system.
A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton brought the idea back. It’s a proposal she’s talked about before: It was part of her 2000 Senate campaign platform and an option she mentioned for health insurance expansion when she ran for president in 2008.
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The Washington Post
More than three decades ago, emergency rooms could kick you out if doctors didn’t think you could pay. You might be suffering from a stroke, a gunshot wound or a broken spine, but if your insurance wasn’t good enough, many hospitals could slam the door in your face. This hot-potatoing of patients caused gruesome and unnecessary deaths before the practice was outlawed in 1986.
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Merrimack Announces Inclusion of ONIVYDE(R) (irinotecan liposome injection) as a Category 1 Treatment Option in the 2016 NCCN Guidelines for Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma. Please click here to view the entire press release.
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| We wanted you to be aware that the FDA has approved a new indication for IBRANCE (palbociclib) 125mg capsules. Click here to read the press release. |
Check out JMCM’s new website at www.jmcmpub.org
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| Seattle Genetics Announces FDA Regular Approval of ADCETRIS® for Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma Patients at High Risk of Relapse or Progression. Click here to view more information. |
| Sandoz, a Novartis company, announced today that Zarxio(TM) (filgrastim-sndz) is now available in the United States. Zarxio is the first biosimilar approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the first to launch in the US. Please click here for more information.
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