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University Of Central Lancashire To Deliver Nurtured Heart Workshop, UK
Residential childcare and fostering agency, Perpetual Care, and the University of Central Lancashire"s School of Nursing & Caring Sciences are jointly developing an introductory workshop on the ground-breaking Nurtured Heart Approach, which seeks to improve social and educational outcomes for many children and young people. Experts from UCLan and Perpetual are currently designing an awareness workshop, which will provide an overview of the approach, examine existing US research findings and explore its potential role in UK residential childcare and fostering, particularly in the light of revised NICE guidelines relating to children with ADHD. The first session is scheduled at UCLan"s Preston campus in late June this year and should be of interest to registered social workers, local authority placement officers and other social care and health professionals concerned with the well-being of challenging young people.

First Mosquitoes Test Positive For West Nile Virus In Southern Illinois
Dr. Damon T. Arnold, state public health director, announced a mosquito batch collected in St. Clair County has been confirmed as the first positive West Nile virus test results in southern Illinois this year.
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Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Initiates ApoB SNALP Phase 1 Clinical Trial
Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation (TSX:TKM) announced that it has initiated a Phase 1 human clinical trial for ApoB SNALP. ApoB SNALP, Tekmira"s lead RNAi therapeutic product candidate, is being developed as a treatment for patients with elevated low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, or "bad" cholesterol, who are not well served by current therapy. ApoB SNALP is designed to reduce the production of apolipoprotein B (ApoB), a protein produced in the liver that plays a central role in cholesterol metabolism.
Public Health

Drug Combination Improves Outcome For Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

A new, international study found that the combination of two drugs delays disease progression for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results from the Phase III "ATLAS" trial were presented today by Dr. Vincent Miller of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. The goal of the study was to determine whether adding erlotinib (Tarceva®), a targeted agent, to maintenance therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin®), an agent commonly used as a component of treatment for advanced NSCLC would delay disease progression. Maintenance therapy involves using one or more agents of a chemotherapy regimen, but not the entire regimen, to delay disease progression and possibly improve survival after patients have previously received stronger standard chemotherapy, which can have significant side effects. "This is the first study to show the addition of erlotinib to maintenance therapy prolongs progression-free survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer," said Dr. Miller, a thoracic oncologist at MSKCC and one of the study"s lead authors. "Knowing which patients will get the greatest benefit from this combination, based on the identification of biomarkers, will be an important next step in this research," Dr. Miller added. In total, 768 patients were randomized to receive bevacizumab plus erlotinib or bevacizumab plus placebo after initial cytotoxic chemotherapy with bevacizumab. There was a 29 percent reduction in the risk of progression for those patients treated with erlotinib, and the median progression-free survival (the time it took for the cancer to get worse) was 4.8 months for the combination versus 3.7 months for the bevacizumab-placebo group. Because a statistically significant improvement in efficacy was found in the erlotinib group, the trial was stopped early. The combination was also found to be safe and well tolerated. Bevacizumab and erlotinib are classified as targeted therapies - agents that block tumor growth by interfering with specific molecules critical to the survival of cancer cells. Individually, both drugs have shown promise in previous studies in the treatment of NSCLC. According to the National Cancer Institute, in 2008 the estimated number of new lung cancer cases (non-small cell and small cell combined) was 215,000 and the number of deaths was 161,840. Non-small cell lung cancer is the most common among all lung cancers and is usually associated with a history of tobacco use. Courtney DeNicola Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center


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