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Higa Medical Systems to Market Cardiovascular System in Japan.

German Healthcare Company Sets Up Base in India.

Australian Food Company Enters Indian Market.

First Transgenic Farm to be Set Up in China.

Largest Medicine Chain Opens in Tianjin.

Monsanto Thailand Increases Efforts to Ease Concerns on GM Products.

An Overview — Molecular Diagnostics.

Interview with Mr Michael Tillmann, Managing Director, Roche Diagnostics, Asia Pacific.

Interview with Dr Paul Smit, Senior Vice President, Philips Medical Systems.

Developing a Complete Molecular Diagnostic Solution: Multiplex Analysis, High Performance, High Throughput and Automation.

Interview with QIAGEN World Leader in Molecular Diagnostics Solutions.

World Heart Day – At the Heart of Health

That Gut Feeling: How A Healthy Digestive System Has Everything To Do With It

Cellular Biomedicine Group (CBMG) and GE Healthcare Life Sciences China Announce Strategic Partnership to Establish Joint Technology Laboratory to Develop Control Processes for the Manufacture of CAR-T and Stem Cell Therapies.

Zuellig Pharma to Invest over $50 Million in Singapore-Based Innovation Centre.

Holmusk: Using Data to Improve Clinical Outcomes for Cardiovascular Disease in Singapore.

Singapore Eye Bank Sets Another Record in Local Cornea Donations in 2016.

Plasticell and King’s College London to Collaborate in Trials of Blood Platelet Substitute.

Merck Partners with University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to Fight Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Mundipharma Wins Approval for Antineoplastic Agent mundesine® as Treatment for Relapsed/Refractory Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma in Japan.

Asian Myeloma Network (AMN) Brings Clinical Trials to Cancer Patients in Asia and Provides Early Access to Effective Drugs.

APBN Interview with Professor Chng Wee Joo.

This paper determines the risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), and nutrition level in infants aged 0–6 months using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs). The aim of this study is to facilitates the medical experts to early detects these diseases with accuracy, so that overall death ratio can be reduced. Firstly, we have introduced the concepts of FCMs and briefly refer to the applications of these methods in medical. After that, two intelligent decision support systems for cardiovascular and malnutrition are developed using FCMs. The proposed cardiovascular risk assessment system takes six inputs: chest pain, cholesterol, heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, and old peak and determines CVDs risk. The second decision support system of malnutrition diagnosis takes twelve inputs: breastfeeding, daily income, maternal education, colostrum intake, energy intake, protein intake, vitamin A intake, iron intake, family size, height, weight, head circumference, and skin fold thickness and diagnoses the nutrition level in infants. We have explained the working of both decision support systems using case studies.

Despite the great achievements of the evidence-based modern medicine and pharmacology, traditional Greco-Arab and Islamic Medicine-based herbal remedies are currently becoming more popular in Arab and Islamic world. Historical circumstances and the belief that these remedies are prepared according to the principles of Greco-Arab and Islamic Medicine, which was developed during the Golden Age of Arab-Islamic civilization. This medical system has influenced the fates and fortunes of countless human beings all over the world and it formed the roots from which modern Western Medicine and pharmacology arose. There is no doubt that the earlier Greco-Roman scholarly medical literature was the stem from which much Arab-Islamic Medicine grew, just as, several centuries later, Arab-Islamic Medicine was the core of late middle ages and early European medical system.

To compete with the growing pharmaceutical market, there is an urgency to utilize scientifically validated herbal products. Therefore, policy-makers in the Arab and Islamic world are forced to establish standardization and regulatory measures that regulate the quality, availability, and preservation of these products. Public demand has also grown for evidence on the safety and efficacy of herbal products as well as for national regulations for traditional healers and caregivers. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview on Traditional Arab-Islamic Herbal Medicine including the historical background, medical innovations introduced by Arab physicians, methods of therapies, and a state of the art and prospect description of Traditional Arab Herbal Medicine.

Zinc status, inflammation, and genetic determinants are prominent mechanisms in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis (AT) and its compliances (cardiovascular diseases). In this review, we report the possible impact of zinc on AT development as well as the role played by a significant genetic determinant involved in inflammation, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6). Genetic polymorphism of IL-6 may affect a different inflammatory response as well as zinc turnover, predisposing to AT. Indeed, zinc deficiency is suggested as a risk factor for AT with advancing aging. The increment of dysfunctional proteins involved in zinc homeostasis, i.e. metallothioneins (MT), caused by persistent inflammation and oxidative stress may further contribute to zinc deficiency and consequently to the development of AT. A zinc supplementation may be useful to achieve healthy aging and, as such, to prevent AT, but it is necessary to consider the individual genetic background (especially when referred to IL-6 and MT polymorphisms) for the success of zinc intervention. Therefore, a zinc genomic approach may offer a reasonable hope for understanding the impact of zinc on molecular processes that maintain health and prevent the development of AT.

The link between cardiovascular diseases and neurological disorders has been widely observed in the aging population. Disease prevention and treatment rely on understanding the potential genetic nexus of multiple diseases in these categories. In this study, we were interested in detecting pleiotropy, or the phenomenon in which a genetic variant influences more than one phenotype. Marker-phenotype association approaches can be grouped into univariate, bivariate, and multivariate categories based on the number of phenotypes considered at one time. Here we applied one statistical method per category followed by an eQTL colocalization analysis to identify potential pleiotropic variants that contribute to the link between cardiovascular and neurological diseases. We performed our analyses on ~530,000 common SNPs coupled with 65 electronic health record (EHR)-based phenotypes in 43,870 unrelated European adults from the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) network. There were 31 variants identified by all three methods that showed significant associations across late onset cardiac- and neurologic- diseases. We further investigated functional implications of gene expression on the detected “lead SNPs” via colocalization analysis, providing a deeper understanding of the discovered associations. In summary, we present the framework and landscape for detecting potential pleiotropy using univariate, bivariate, multivariate, and colocalization methods. Further exploration of these potentially pleiotropic genetic variants will work toward understanding disease causing mechanisms across cardiovascular and neurological diseases and may assist in considering disease prevention as well as drug repositioning in future research.

Osteoarthritis (OA) significantly compromises the life quality of affected individuals and imposes a substantial economic burden on our society. Unfortunately the pathogenesis of the disease is till poorly understood and no effective medications have been developed. OA is a complex disease that involves both genetic and environmental influences. To elucidate the complex interlinked structure of metabolic processes associated with OA, we developed a differential correlation network approach to detecting the interconnection of metabolite pairs whose relationships are significantly altered due to the diseased process. Through topological analysis of such a differential network, we identified key metabolites that played an important role in governing the connectivity and information flow of the network. Identification of these key metabolites suggests the association of their underlying cellular processes with OA and may help elucidate the pathogenesis of the disease and the development of novel targeted therapies.