blog

This week’s news includes a guilty plea from the murderer of a Yale graduate student, a widespread effort by pharma to help Japan, a new drug for a fatal lung disease, gene therapy hope for Parkinson’s patients, stem cell promise for enlarged hearts, and an unexpected home range for a South American wild cat.

Lab worker pleads guilty to Yale murder

Raymond Clark, a former Yale laboratory worker, pled guilty last Thursday (March 17) to murdering graduate student Annie Le in September 2009. Le, a PhD student in the Yale School of Medicine, was strangled and hidden inside a wall in a Yale research lab, just days before she was to marry.

Clark, who cleaned mouse cages in the same building, was arrested shortly after the murder and originally pled not guilty last January. But on Thursday, Clark pleaded guilty to one count of murder and one count of attempted sexual assault. Prosecutors said he agreed to a plea deal of 44 years in prison, Bloomberg reports. Sentencing is scheduled for May 20.

Japan pharma helps out recovery

Despite falling stocks and disrupted distribution systems, Japanese pharmaceutical companies are contributing to the recovery effort from the earthquake and subsequent tsunami and nuclear plant trouble in Japan, offering money, drugs and medical supplies to hospitals and other organizations, FiercePharma reports. Takeda Pharmaceuticals, the largest pharma company in Japan, has pledged US$3.6 million to the Japanese Red Cross Society, as well as offered donations of products, PharmaExec reports. Eisai, based in Tokyo, is donating about US$2.4 million and will establish a crisis centre in the Tohoku region. Other examples abound.

Non-Japanese pharma companies are also pitching in: Merck, Abbott, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Amgen and GlaxoSmithKline have all contributed more than $1 million each to relief efforts, Mark Grayson, a spokesman for PhRMA, a pharmaceutical advocacy organization, told PharmaExec. Nukepills.com, an Internet-based supplier of radiation emergency preparedness products, had donated 50,000 potassium iodide tablets, a radiation-blocking drug, to persons affected by Japan’s nuclear reactor crisis.

New drug for fatal lung disease

A drug used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients appears to have another life saving use. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week (March 16), researchers at the University of Florida demonstrate that the drug, rapamycin, reverses the progression of LAM, a fatal lung disease in women. It is the first effective therapy for the disease, Mark Brantly, one of the authors said in a press release. Stay tuned for an in-depth look at other existing therapies that can be repurposed for new uses, featured in our upcoming April issue.

Gene therapy for Parkinson’s?

A new gene therapy treatment for Parkinson’s disease has shown promise in a Phase II clinical trial published last week in Lancet Neurology. The treatment, given to 22 patients and compared with 23 control patients given a sham surgery, delivers a gene called GAD to brain cells via a viral vector  injected directly into the brain. GAD produces an enzyme important the production of GABA, a neurotransmitter with reduced levels in Parkinson’s patients. Patients who received the therapy experienced a 23 percent improvement in their motor scores, compared to a 13 percent improvement for patients who received the fake surgery.

Michael G. Kaplitt at Weill Cornell Medical College who designed the trial told the Wall Street Journal that researchers are working with the Food and Drug Administration to launch a Phase III trial for the therapy.

Stem cells help damaged hearts

For the first time, researchers have shown that stem cells can help shrink hearts dangerously swollen after heart attacks. Published last week in Circulation Research, researchers at the University of Miami took stem cells from a patient’s own bone marrow and injected them into the patient’s heart. Eight patients were studied in the Phase I trial, and heart size diminished by an average of 15 to 20 percent, roughly three times what’s achievable with current therapies, according to HealthDay.

Rare cat extends range

The threatened South American wild cat, once believed to exclusively occupy the Andes Mountains for which it is named, has a larger range than previously recognized, according to a new Wildlife Conservation Society study. Prompted by a lone photograph of two Andean cats in the foothills of central Argentina, researchers scoured 12,000 square miles in Argentina and discovered the Andean cat frequents much lower elevations than the peaks of the Andes, extending into surrounding areas and in the Patagonia steppe.

Related stories:

The Genes of Parkinson’s Disease
[1st February 2011]

The Profits of Nonprofit
[1st January 2011]

Science crime: A recent history
[16th February 2010]