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HIV/AIDS Advocates React To Obama's Proposed Global Health Initiative
Some HIV/AIDS advocates have voiced disappointment with the level of HIV/AIDS funding in President Obama"s proposed $63 billion, six-year global health initiative, VOA News reports. According to VOA News, the advocates say that Obama has not met pledges he made as a presidential candidate, while other say that the "picture is more complicated." According to the Global AIDS Alliance, Obama previously pledged to dedicate $50 billion over five years to HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, but has instead proposed $51 billion over six years. GAA Executive Director Paul Zeitz said this proposal translates into significantly less annual funding for PEPFAR (Kilner, VOA News, 5/19). Zeitz said, "President Obama has a moral obligation to demonstrate global leadership on behalf of the poorest and most marginalized people of the world, especially in Africa," adding, "But by turning his back on those needs, the president is betraying the trust of tens of millions of people" (Pflanz, Daily Telegraph, 5/18). Advocates estimate that the funding shortfall could result in about one million people going without HIV/AIDS treatment and about 2.9 million women going without treatment to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission. James Kamau, coordinator for the Kenya Treatment Action Movement, said that one effect of Obama"s proposal is that other donor countries could take similar actions, leading to additional cuts. "In Kenya here we say when the lead sheep limps then it does not get the others to the pastures," Kamau said, adding, "Now if [Obama] cuts back funding on the Global Fund, then the rest of the people will follow suit" (VOA News, 5/19). Some have welcomed Obama"s proposal, saying that it has expanded the focus of global health initiatives to include other health issues that can be treated at a low cost but have not received as much attention, VOA News reports. Obama"s proposal includes $12 billion for these additional areas of focus, including more emphasis on maternal health and health infrastructure, according to VOA News.According to VOA News, Obama"s proposal might be more than Congress is willing to allocate during the economic crisis. The current budget resolution under consideration by Congress would allocate $51 billion for foreign aid in FY 2010, almost $3 billion less than what Obama requested (VOA News, 5/18). African Government Spending on Health

Patient Upside Murky In Drug-Price Cases
"The prices of hundreds of brand-name drugs are about to be cut 4%, and millions of Americans may soon receive a check in the mail as compensation for having overpaid for their prescriptions," but "the extent to which the average consumer will benefit isn"t yet clear," the Wall Street Journal reports. "The price cuts and expected payments are the result of federal class-action settlements involving two drug-price publishers and a major drug wholesaler that were accused of inflating drug prices."
News of the day
Gene Network Sciences Announces Broad Cancer Collaboration With UCSF And Initial Results
Gene Network Sciences, Inc. (GNS) announced that it has entered into a research collaboration with the University of California San Francisco Cancer Center (UCSF) aimed at accelerating cancer research and drug development across several therapeutic areas. This collaboration will combine the clinical and research oncology expertise of UCSF with the computational expertise and supercomputer-driven REFS(TM) platform of GNS. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Oncology

New Method For Breast Cancer Biomarker Discovery Developed By VBI Researchers

Three researchers from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech have developed and evaluated a new one-step bioanalytical approach that allows them to profile in detail complex cellular extracts of proteins. The method has allowed the scientists to look at how the levels of proteins change in breast cancer cells when they are treated with hormones or cancer drugs like tamoxifen. VBI Assistant Professor Iuliana Lazar, along with VBI Professor Ina Hoeschele and VBI Postdoctoral Associate Jenny Armenta, developed the method*, which uses proteomic technologies for fast biomarker fingerprinting in complex cellular extracts. The goal of biomarker discovery and screening is to identify changes in the levels of key proteins in the cell in response to the onset or development of a disease. The scientific community has invested extensive efforts into the development of methods that would allow for the sensitive screening of large panels of biomarkers, instead of just one at a time. This type of research promises to advance the capabilities of such techniques for early cancer detection, which could significantly reduce the mortality rate from diseases like cancer. At the heart of the new method are three innovative developments - A data acquisition strategy that permits analysis of different cell states and replicates; an advanced way to filter or process the data; and a novel statistical method that allows the experimental data to be checked and their relevance confirmed. The team used the method for proteomic profiling of MCF-7 breast cancer cells cultured in estradiol, a steroid hormone, and tamoxifen, a non-steroidal drug commonly prescribed in hormonal breast cancer therapy. The work resulted in the identification of 16 differentially expressed proteins, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the method for biomarker discovery and also allowed for the establishment of a link between the proteins and certain cancer-related biological processes, such as cell proliferation, cell death, tumor development, and metastasis. According to Lazar, "Assessing the changes in protein expression levels of these cells will help us better understand the complex biochemical signaling pathways involved in the development of cancer. We hope this will also shed some light on the ways that drugs like tamoxifen work to inhibit cell proliferation and to induce response to stress at the molecular level. This knowledge will help to advance our understanding of how breast cancer cells develop resistance to tamoxifen. In the long term, this should provide opportunities for the development of more effective diagnosis and treatments for cancer patients." While the current research focuses more on the effectiveness of the method developed, the team plans to pursue more work using complementary techniques on biological replicates to confirm the differential expression of the proteins. Notes: * Jenny M. Armenta, Ina Hoeschele, and Iulia M. Lazar (2009) Differential Protein Expression Analysis Using Stable Isotope Labeling and PQD Linear Ion Trap MS Technology. Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, March 4, 2009, Epub ahead of print, doi:10.1016/j.jasms.2009.02.029 This work was supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant (BES-0448840) and financial support from VBI. Susan Bland Virginia Tech


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