Independent comparison analyses have found that cannabidiol (CBD) synthetically produced by Insys Therapeutics, Inc. is chemically identical to plant-derived CBD. Analyses were conducted independently by Insys and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.Continue reading
Author Archive: AZBio
Cancer Treatment Centers of America® at Western Launches Clinical Trial Combining Immunotherapy and Monoclonal Antibody Therapy
Trial Targets Patients With Advanced Metastatic Breast, Gastric, Esophageal, Head and Neck, and Colorectal CancerContinue reading
Arizona Commerce Authority Announces Semifinalists in the Fall 2014 Arizona Innovation Challenge
The Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA) has announced 25 semifinalists in its Fall 2014 Arizona Innovation Challenge (AIC), a bi-annual business plan competition awarding $3 million annually to talented entrepreneurs.Continue reading
UA Receives $3.6 million HRSA Grant to Improve the Nation’s Public Health System
The Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health will establish the Western Region Public Health Training Center to build a strong collaborative public health network and workforce for development of healthy communities.Continue reading
HealthTell Announces Receipt of an NIH/NCI Grant to Detect the Presence of Brain Cancer
Immune-based brain cancer diagnostic for rapid, accurate disease classification.
Image Source: HealthTell
HealthTell™, an early stage Life Sciences company, today announced it has been awarded a $225,000 SBIR grant (1R43CA183360-01) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to evaluate the performance of the company’s proprietary Immunosignature™ Technology in accurately diagnosing brain cancer. This will include the specific diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and aggressive malignant brain tumor. The project, conducted in collaboration with the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) and Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, is regarded as highly significant as it addresses an unmet need for early, accurate, and non- invasive diagnosis and monitoring of brain cancers.
Currently, the detection of brain cancer requires imaging-based technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), followed by invasive needle or surgical biopsies for accurate diagnosis. Unfortunately, this method is very expensive, and not practical as an approach for brain cancer surveillance. HealthTell’s Immunosignature Technology has demonstrated the ability to measure a person’s immune response to brain cancer in an accurate and simple test. This test requires only a drop of blood from a patient. Once collected, the blood is placed onto proprietary peptide arrays where antibody binding patterns create specific disease signatures. The signatures offer highly accurate information about an individual’s state of health and have been used to detect more than 30 different infectious or chronic diseases.
“Applying the Immunosignature Technology to detect brain cancer has the potential to transform patient treatment and survival prognosis,” said Bill Colston, PhD, CEO of HealthTell. “ Today, the average lifespan of a patient pathologically diagnosed with malignant glioma is approximately one year. A simple test which monitors changes in a patient’s immune activity will provide clinicians with a needed tool which will enable more accurate disease classification, simple monitoring of treatment and possible determination of disease recurrence. The goal of HealthTell is in alignment with the triple aim healthcare initiatives: to improve patient outcomes, experience, and health economics.”
The grant includes the opportunity for HealthTell to demonstrate the Immunosignature technology’s ability to:
- Detect brain cancer and distinguish it from other cancers. This distinction is important as the brain is often not the primary site of a brain tumor, but rather metastatic cancer from other sites such as the lung, breast, colon, or skin (melanoma). The American Brain Tumor Association estimates that up to 170,000 metastatic brain cancers are detected annually and this rate will increase as the population ages.
- Differentiate brain cancer subtypes and identify grades of malignant gliomas, including the fatal GBMs. Subtyping and grading tumors is an important step in treatment. Some tumors, such as GBMs, do not respond well to radiation and can actually have adverse reactions, according to some research, whereas other gliomas respond well to radiation.
“HealthTell’s technology is very powerful and we are demonstrating that it can provide information from a small blood sample,” says Adrienne C. Scheck, PhD, brain tumor researcher at Barrow, and co-investigator on the project. “It is likely to play an important role in the way brain tumors will be diagnosed in the future.”
“Barrow Neurological Institute treats more brain tumor patients than any other place in the US, which will strongly facilitate us moving successfully into clinical validation and commercialization,” said Dr. Kathryn Sykes, PhD, VP of Research at HealthTell, and principal investigator of this grant. “The opportunity to demonstrate the power of HealthTell’s Immunosignature technology platform for application to brain cancer detection and monitoring will further validate its broad application to different diseases.”
About HealthTell
HealthTell is an early stage Life Sciences company that utilizes an Immunosignature™ Technology for accurate and timely detection and monitoring of more than 30 progressive diseases. Based on robust, proprietary technology, the company is developing the first and only diagnostic platform capable of assessing an individual’s immune system response to specific diseases. This disruptive technology enables physicians to detect the presence or absence of a disease in its earliest stage, improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare expenditures. Applicable to a broad range of therapeutic areas, HealthTell is empowering physicians and patients to proactively manage one’s health and make more informed decisions. For more information, please visit: http://www.healthtell.com/.
About Barrow
Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center is an internationally renowned medical center that offers care for people from throughout the world with brain and spine diseases, disorders and injuries. U.S. News & World Reportroutinely lists St. Joseph’s as one of the top 10 best hospitals in the nation for neurological and neurosurgical care.
Job Alert: Microbiology Applications Engineer
ACORN CONSULTING
| Job Title: AA | Microbiology Applications Engineer | Job Status: exempt | Full Time / Exempt |
| General Description: Work based in Tucson, AZ | |||
| To serve as a bridge between product development and sales by developing, supporting and representing the Company’s technology in an industrial environment, through use of knowledge of engineering and programming as well as sophisticated instruments and computers.
To identify customer best fit with Company’s product & assist in development of technical documents and training programs, maintaining customer cGMP compliance. To work independently and as a team player on simultaneous projects with compressed timelines; traveling up to 50% of the time interfacing with customers and attending or exhibiting at conferences and trade shows.
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| Responsibilities: | |||
Product development engineering support for both hardware and software technologies to support real time microbial detection and analysis.
Customer relations
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| Preferred Qualifications: | |||
| BA/BS or MS in biological discipline with at least two years work-related experience. Practical experience in industrial/R&D lab environment with focus toward microbiology. Experience with laboratory instrumentation, technology and tools. Self-motivated with a strong work ethic; independently or as part of a team. Strong written and oral communication skills. Good computer skills; minimum of Word, Excel, Power Point with NI LabView experience preferred. Knowledge of or experience with cGLP or cGMP environment. Competitive salary and benefits commensurate with experience.
To Apply: Send your cover letter and resume to davidbrownwilson@gmail.com. No calls please. |
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TGen-Luxembourg scientific team conducts unprecedented analysis of microbial ecosystem
Research published in Nature Communications has implications for protecting environment, energy recovery and human healthContinue reading
Japan’s New Device Regulatory Framework Explained
AdvaMed Applauds Japan’s New Device Regulatory Framework and offers workshops to explain the new regs.
Insys Therapeutics Receives FDA Orphan Drug Designation for Its Pharmaceutical Cannabidiol as a Potential Treatment for Pediatric Schizophrenia
PHOENIX, AZ, Nov 24, 2014 (Marketwired via COMTEX) — Insys Therapeutics, Inc. INSY, +0.44% a specialty pharmaceutical company that is developing and commercializing innovative drugs and novel drug delivery systems, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation (ODD) to its pharmaceutical cannabidiol (CBD) candidate for the treatment of pediatric schizophrenia. This marks the fifth ODD for the company’s CBD program.Continue reading
ASU’s Project Honey Bee paired up with DCU’s MedEx
The transatlantic flight of Project HoneyBee
Inspired by the honeybee, nature’s best collector and communicator of information, Project HoneyBee seeks to validate wearable sensor data in order to improve patient outcomes.
Photo by: “Apis mellifera flying” by Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Photo by: “Apis mellifera flying” by Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Another transformative collaboration has emerged from the Transatlantic Higher Education Partnership between Arizona State University and Dublin City University – the launch of Project HoneyBee.
In conjunction with its successful MedEx Wellness Program, Dublin City University (DCU) has signed on to launch a Project HoneyBee observational clinical trial. MedEx is a chronic illness rehabilitation program that offers medically designed and supervised exercise classes to patients with diverse chronic illnesses.
As part of the HoneyBee collaboration, medical director, Noel McCaffrey, will incorporate methods from Mayo Clinic physician and ASU professor James Levine’s feasibility study for physical monitoring of diabetes patients into MedEx’s Diabetes Health Steps program.
“We’re excited to test the HoneyBee approach with our MedEx participants. We believe by leveraging technology, we can improve their health outcomes dramatically,” said Christine Loscher, director of health technologies at DCU.
Inspired by the honeybee, nature’s best collector and communicator of information, Project HoneyBee seeks to validate wearable sensor data in order to improve patient outcomes. Since its inception, the initiative has partnered with the health systems in Maricopa County, creating a living laboratory for evaluating the clinical utility of wearable devices to improve health outcomes.
HoneyBee’s eight ongoing observational clinical trials currently test 10 different devices for particular physiological parameters. Each trial has 25 to 50 patients. The overarching goal is to help shift health practitioners’ focus to cost-effective and outcome-effective prevention and early intervention strategies. A critical element of these studies is validating data from low-cost consumer wearable technologies for applications in clinical settings.
Lee Hartwell, HoneyBee’s chief scientist at the ASU Biodesign Institute’s Center for Sustainable Health, said, “We’re very interested in how Project HoneyBee will work in DCU’s context. We hope to learn from and collaborate with each other in our quest for efficient, effective solutions that deliver better health outcomes.”
One of the key differences between HoneyBee observational clinical trials in Arizona versus the trial in Dublin will be the context within which the devices are being tested, as well as the health care providers engaged in the study. In Dublin, third-year lifestyle intervention students will be embedded in the trial; in Arizona, doctoral nurse practitioners serve as research fellows.
“This is a fantastic opportunity to see how the Project HoneyBee model can be replicated in Europe, along with similar efforts underway in Asia,” said Michael Birt, director of HoneyBee.
This latest announcement is another major collaboration between the two universities, and came during the recent DCU visit to ASU. The other major initiatives include establishing the world’s first International School of Biomedical Diagnostics, creating a Biodesign Europe (modeled on ASU’s Biodesign Institute and delivering a combined effort toward 21st-century health care solutions) and the development of a joint program in student entrepreneurship that will inspire a global perspective.