So a few weeks ago there was the whole swinde flu story where we were getting updates hour by hour of the srpead of the flu. Two things happened that bumped it off the newspapers and TV. First not many people died, and secondly there was no new news about the Swine Flu.

This changed this week but only in the background. There are two new stories. First the World Health Organization announced that the spread of Swine Flu has forced the call of this to be a world wide pandemic. This is big news because many countries will now begin to mobilize their central health organizations to start and combat and tighten restirctions to stop the spread of the flu.

Also, there is as you may imagine a race by all of the pharmaceutical companies to come up with a flu vaccine to be tested and of course make that company big bucks as the vaccine gets rolled out around the world. Novartis is apparently first and is ready to test swine flu vaccine. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant has a swine flu vaccine ready for trial as governments step up precautions following the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic.

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Tags: Novartis, pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical giant, Swine Flu, World Health Organization

What is Glivec? It seems that w3e always hear cancer storeis and that there are not very many good news stories, not that I usually see anyway. Leukemia is a type of blood cancer that is often fatal and I had not ever heard of any drug therapies that were remarkable until I saw a news result today out of England that said that many people taking the drug Glivec are having amazing results. Here is some info on this Drug from Medical News Today.

Most patients who develop chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) can now expect to live more than 20 years from diagnosis if they are treated with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) Glivec (imatinib) according to haematologists involved in the IRIS (International Randomized Interferon versus STI571) study. Before availability of current treatments, median survival from diagnosis was 3.5 years.

Around 95 per cent of patients diagnosed with CML have the Philadelphia chromosome positive (Ph+) form that responds well to Glivec, said Professor John Goldman, professor of haematology at Imperial College, London. The chromosome is the result of translocation between the long arms of chromosomes 9 and 22. Part of the breakpoint cluster region (Bcr) gene from chromosome 22 fuses with part of the abelson leukaemia virus (Abl) gene on chromosome 9 producing the abnormal tyrosine kinase protein Bcr-Abl. It is this protein that causes the proliferation of white blood cells resulting in CML.

Four-year data from IRIS were presented at this year’s American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting. More than 90 per cent of patients with Ph+ CML in the chronic phase, randomised initially to Glivec 400mg daily in the year 2000, were still alive and free of progression to advanced disease at 54 months, Professor Goldman said.

The study confirmed that patients who achieved a major molecular response within one year, ie, a more than 1000-fold reduction in residual leukaemia, fared best. Patients achieving a three-log reduction in Bcr-Abl transcript levels within oneyear were all free of progression to advanced disease at year four.
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Tags: advanced disease, American Society of Hematology, cancer, Chairman, diabetes, drug therapies, France, Francois Guilhot, Glivec What, Glivec-resistant, Hagop Kantarjian, Imperial College, John Goldman, leukaemia, Leukemia, London, Novartis, Philadelphia, professor, professor of haematology, professor of oncology, Texas, United Kingdom, University of Poitiers