Narrow Results

INDIA – Zinc Treatment for Infections in Children.

JAPAN – Japan Pharma Portfolio Finds Renewed Strength through Record Growth in 2012.

JAPAN – Joint Development of a Novel Lyophilized Dual Chamber Prefillable Syringe System.

JAPAN – A Genetic Alternative to Fertilizer.

SINGAPORE – Made-in-Singapore H5N1 Bird Flu Diagnostic Kit - Detects All Known Strains of H5N1 Virus with a Single Test.

THAILAND – KEEEN, Thai Bioremediation Product, Awarded Gold Medal for "Bioremediation Agent developed to Greenovation Product".

EUROPE – MorphoSys Antibody Reaches Major Milestone in Collaboration with Roche.

EUROPE – New Technique to Predict Heart Attacks.

USA – FEI Launches 'Living Lab' for Structural Biology Research at NIH.

USA – Synthetic Platelets Built to Treat Bleeding.

USA – Software Scans Tongue for Signs of Disease.

USA – US Legislation Will Ensure Tighter Checks on Foreign Drug Factories.

2013 – A Year of Access, Convergence and Technology.

The Chinese Boom – Predictions for 2013.

The IVD Market from an Investor's Perspective.

Changing Paradigms of the Pharma Industry: Global Economy or Tougher Regulatory Standards to Blame?

Neuroscience – The Search Continues.

AUSTRALIA – Well-known antibiotic amoxycillin found to be ineffective cough treatment.

AUSTRALIA – Bring the noise: has technology made us scared of silence?

INDIA – Biocon receives marketing authorization for novel biologic itolizumab for psoriasis.

ISRAEL – Aspireo reports Somatoprim Phase Ib interim data.

JAPAN – Daiichi Sankyo and Amplimmune announce strategic alliance to develop AMP-110 therapy for autoimmune disease.

JAPAN – Eisai signs agreement with Epizyme and Roche Molecular Systems to develop companion diagnostic.

THE PHILIPPINES – Asia-Pacific Analysis: The growth of stem-cell therapy.

THE PHILIPPINES – Is the world ready for scientific diplomacy?

UNITED KINGDOM – ARIAD and the U.K. National Cancer Research Institute to collaborate on SPIRIT 3 clinical study.

UNITED KINGDOM – Vision research collaboration on novel treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration.

UNITED STATES – Reducing medical mistakes: Two recently published studies support the use of DNA testing on biopsy samples to prevent misdiagnoses.

UNITED STATES – CoDa Therapeutics reports positive results from Phase IIb Study of NEXAGON® in chronic venous leg ulcers.

UNITED STATES – Inovio Pharmaceuticals to initiate clinical trial for its hepatitis C therapeutic vaccine later this year.

UNITED STATES – Jolt to brain eases pain without drugs.

UNITED STATES – Can a new vaccine prevent colon cancer?

UNITED STATES – Immunovaccine's DPX-Survivac produces sustained, dose related immune responses in Phase I ovarian cancer study.

DeltaHealth Inspires a New Standard of Cardiovascular Care in China with the Opening of its First Hospital in Shanghai.

International Science Community Welcomes China National GeneBank Opening.

Shanghai Newsummit Biopharma Group and Indiso Sign Collaboration Agreement for Clinician Trials and Commercial Development in China.

Merck Strengthens Display Materials R&D in China.

Shuwen Biotech's Clinical Lab Receives Accreditation from College of American Pathologists.

Booming Chinese DNA Sequencing Market Rife with Opportunities Reports BCC Research.

China Issues Plan on Turning Beijing Into a Tech Innovation Hub.

Study Shows Sound-induced Fear Can Be Treated.

Understanding Diabetes

Prediabetes: The Gap between the Onset of Disease and Initiation of Treatment.

Diabetes: A Dietitian’s Perspective.

Use of Modelling for Better Diabetes Care.

No More Highs and Lows with Toujeo®: A New and Improved Insulin Injection.

The following topics are under this section:

• Australian medical life sciences company expands nutraceutical business to the USA
• First Amgen Scholars Asia Symposium in Singapore held by Amgen Foundation
• Breakthrough study by world leader in meat-free food finds alternative source of protein to milk protein
• Meeting the need for Surgical Site Infection Prevention in the Asia Pacific
• Patient intelligence company raises US$13 million, taking its AI-powered doctor discovery platform global
• New study reveals top health and nutrition priorities for children, according to Mothers across Asia Pacific
• Entity Health launches new supplement targeted as a defence against progression to Type 2 Diabetes
• Xylonix collaborates with BioGemex to develop novel pre-treatment point-of-care diagnostic
• Imagion Biosystems initiates regulatory communications for first-in-human study

The following topics are under this section:

• A general framework for predictive maintenance of manufacturing systems
• A remote-controlled smart platform for organ repair
• COVID-19 and its genetic relationship with other coronaviruses
• East meets West: cancer therapy using acupuncture and electrochemistry
• A triple-function bismuth oxochromate photocatalyst
• AI enables whole-slide imaging for diagnosis of nasal polyps

The following topics are under this section:

• Fastest or Most Precise?
• The Viral Solution
• The Modern-Day Nostradamus: George Yuan Xianzhi
• CORONAVIRUSES: A PRIMER PART 2

For the month of August 2020, APBN explores the wonders of the human brain and how researchers and scientists are leveraging on technological advancements to gain insights to its inner mechanisms. In the Columns section, scientists from ACT Genomics discuss the topic of Precision Oncology and patient selection for PARP inhibitor treatment in BRCA- & HRR-associated cancers. This month APBN interviewed Dr Ling Kai Yi, co-founder and Chief Science/Technology Officer of Singapore-based clean meat company, ShiokMeats to take a closer look at how the team is fighting for sustainability in the seafood industry.

In many medical applications, feature selection is obvious; but in medical domains, selecting features and creating a feature vector may require more effort. The wavelet transform (WT) technique is used to identify the characteristic points of an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal with fairly good accuracy, even in the presence of severe high-frequency and low-frequency noise. Principal component analysis (PCA) is a suitable technique for ECG data analysis, feature extraction, and image processing — an important technique that is not based upon a probability model. The aim of the paper is to derive better diagnostic parameters for reducing the size of ECG data while preserving morphology, which can be done by PCA. In this analysis, PCA is used for decorrelation of ECG signals, noise, and artifacts from various raw ECG data sets. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to describe an elegant algorithm that uses WT alone to identify the characteristic points of an ECG signal; and second, to use a composite WT-based PCA method for redundant data reduction and better feature extraction. PCA scatter plots can be observed as a good basis for feature selection to account for cardiac abnormalities. The study is analyzed with higher-order statistics, in contrast to the conventional methods that use only geometric characteristics of feature waves and lower-order statistics. A new algorithm — viz. PCA variance estimator — is developed for this analysis, and the results are also obtained for different combinations of leads to find correlations for feature classification and useful diagnostic information. PCA scatter plots of various chest and augmented ECG leads are obtained to examine the varying orientations of the ECG data in different quadrants, indicating the cardiac events and abnormalities. The efficacy of the PCA algorithm is tested on different leads of 12-channel ECG data; file no. 01 of the Common Standards for Electrocardiography (CSE) database is used for this study. Better feature extraction is obtained for some specific combinations of leads, and significant improvement in signal quality is achieved by identifying the noise and artifact components. The quadrant analysis discussed in this paper highlights the filtering requirements for further ECG processing after performing PCA, as a primary step for decorrelation and dimensionality reduction. The values of the parameters obtained from the results of PCA are also compared with those of wavelet methods.

An early biomarker would transform our ability to screen and treat patients with cancer. The large amount of multi-scale molecular data in public repositories from various cancers provide unprecedented opportunities to find such a biomarker. However, despite identification of numerous molecular biomarkers using these public data, fewer than 1% have proven robust enough to translate into clinical practice. One of the most important factors affecting the successful translation to clinical practice is lack of real-world patient population heterogeneity in the discovery process. Almost all biomarker studies analyze only a single cohort of patients with the same cancer using a single modality. Recent studies in other diseases have demonstrated the advantage of leveraging biological and technical heterogeneity across multiple independent cohorts to identify robust disease biomarkers. Here we analyzed 17149 samples from patients with one of 23 cancers that were profiled using either DNA methylation, bulk and single-cell gene expression, or protein expression in tumor and serum. First, we analyzed DNA methylation profiles of 9855 samples across 23 cancers from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We then examined the gene expression profile of the most significantly hypomethylated gene, KRT8, in 6781 samples from 57 independent microarray datasets from NCBI GEO. KRT8 was significantly over-expressed across cancers except colon cancer (summary effect size=1.05; p < 0.0001). Further, single-cell RNAseq analysis of 7447 single cells from lung tumors showed that genes that significantly correlated with KRT8 (p < 0.05) were involved in p53-related pathways. Immunohistochemistry in tumor biopsies from 294 patients with lung cancer showed that high protein expression of KRT8 is a prognostic marker of poor survival (HR = 1.73, p = 0.01). Finally, detectable KRT8 in serum as measured by ELISA distinguished patients with pancreatic cancer from healthy controls with an AUROC=0.94. In summary, our analysis demonstrates that KRT8 is (1) differentially expressed in several cancers across all molecular modalities and (2) may be useful as a biomarker to identify patients that should be further tested for cancer.

The incidence of cervical spine injuries in Switzerland was 272 per 100 000 insured people. The value of degenerative changes as a risk factor for a prolonged recovery after whiplash injury cannot be confirmed with satisfaction, although some evidence can be drawn from retrospective studies which demonstrate higher percentages of degenerative changes of the cervical spine in the therapy resistant groups. Careful diagnostic procedures will allow exclusion of bony lesions and initiate adequate therapy, especially intervention that promotes activity such as mobilization/manipulation and exercises in combination with analgesics or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents. Early return to work is recommended. Return to usual activities should be encouraged as soon as possible, typically in less than one week for grade 2. Work authorization prescription should be reassessed in three weeks.