Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 4th 2021
The objective of this study is to quantify the overall and cancer type-specific risks of subsequent primary cancers (SPCs) among adult-onset cancer survivors by first primary cancer (FPC) types and sex. Among 1,537,101 survivors (mean age, 60.4 years; 48.8% women), 156,442 SPC cases and 88,818 SPC deaths occurred during 11,197,890 person-years of follow-up (mean, 7.3 years). Among men, the overall risk of developing any SPCs was statistically significantly higher for 18 of the 30 FPC types, and risk of dying from any SPCs was statistically significantly higher for 27 of 30 FPC types as compared with risks in the general po...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 3, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 8th 2020
Fight Aging! publishes news and commentary relevant to the goal of ending all age-related disease, to be achieved by bringing the mechanisms of aging under the control of modern medicine. This weekly newsletter is sent to thousands of interested subscribers. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletter, please visit: https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/ Longevity Industry Consulting Services Reason, the founder of Fight Aging! and Repair Biotechnologies, offers strategic consulting services to investors, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the longevity industry and its complexities. To find out m...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 7, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Reuse of a Small Molecule to Increase Autophagy in the Brain is Trialed for Alzheimer's Disease
Today I'll point out an example of drug reuse and autophagy upregulation. The processes of autophagy are responsible for recycling molecular waste and broken cellular structures. Autophagy is upregulated in response to stress placed upon cells, whether by heat, cold, lack of nutrients, a toxic local environment, and so forth. This is beneficial to tissue function, health, and longevity, and thus there is considerable interest in the research community in producing therapies that boost the operation of autophagy. This hasn't made a great deal of progress towards the clinic, but nonetheless in any of the sizable databases of...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 5, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 20th 2019
Fight Aging! provides a weekly digest of news and commentary for thousands of subscribers interested in the latest longevity science: progress towards the medical control of aging in order to prevent age-related frailty, suffering, and disease, as well as improvements in the present understanding of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to extending healthy life. Expect to see summaries of recent advances in medical research, news from the scientific community, advocacy and fundraising initiatives to help speed work on the repair and reversal of aging, links to online resources, and much more. This content is...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 19, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

The Goal of Fixing the Power Plants of the Cell
The power plants of the cell are, of course, the mitochondria. Every cell has a herd of hundreds of mitochondria roaming its cytoplasm, working to generate ever more copies of the chemical energy store molecule adenosine triphosphate that is used power cellular processes. Mitochondria are the distant descendants of ancient symbiotic bacteria. Like bacteria they replicate by division, but also tend to fuse together and promiscuously pass around component parts. Since the original symbiosis, mitochondria have evolved into component parts of the cell. They have their own remnant DNA, but much of the original genome has migrat...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 13, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Trials of Autophagy Enhancement to Treat Parkinson's Disease
Researchers are planning trials of a repurposed drug in order to test the effectiveness of enhanced autophagy to treat Parkinson's disease, a condition characterized by loss of the small population of dopaminergenic neurons in the brain. Autophagy is a cellular housekeeping method, and the various genes associated with Parkinson's suggest that the underlying disease mechanism is made worse by inadequate clearance of damaged mitochondria in neurons. Beyond Parkinson's disease, methods of producing increased autophagy are of general interest to those who would like to slow the aging process. Greater levels of autophagy are o...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 16, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

What They Really Think of Us (Swiss Version) - Novartis CEO Would Not Commit to Changing Company Behavior After Latest of Multiple Legal Settlements
The huge corporations which now dominate global health care are creating amazing records of repeated ethical misadventures.  We last discussed multinational Swiss based pharmaceutical manufacturer Novartis' escapades in early 2014.   Since then, the legal settlements and other legal findings just keep on coming, capped with a big one in late October, 2015.We will summarize them in chronological order.Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry Found that Novartis Concealed Serious Adverse EffectsIn August, 2014, per the Japan Times, but apparently not reported widely outside of that country.Novartis Pharma ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - November 5, 2015 Category: Health Management Tags: corporate integrity agreement deception Express Scripts impunity kickbacks legal settlements Novartis Switzerland what they really think of us Source Type: blogs

Novartis fails to report side effects, fatality
6:52 pm, August 30, 2014Jiji PressNovartis Pharma K.K. said it has failed to report to the health ministry at least 2,579 cases of serious side effects, including a fatality, from its drugs for leukemia and other diseases even though its employees were aware of the problems.Of the total, 1,313 cases were related to Glivec and 514 cases to Tasigna, both drugs for leukemia treatment, and 261 cases involved cancer drug Afinitor, said the Japanese unit of Swiss drug giant Novartis AG on Friday.The findings were reported to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry the same day.Marketing employees at the firm had recognized the si...
Source: PharmaGossip - August 30, 2014 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Former Novartis Japan Employee Held for Data Manipulation
A former employee of Novartis AG (NOVN)’s Japanese unit was arrested in Tokyo on charges of manipulating data on a drug study, the latest setback for the pharmaceutical company in the country.Nobuo Shirahashi, who was a director of the unit’s scientific affairs department, violated pharmaceutical law by understating side effects in a study that evaluated hypertension drug Diovan’s efficacy in cutting stroke risk and getting researchers to publish it, the Tokyo prosecutors office said in a faxed statement today.Shirahashi couldn’t be reached and Novartis Japan declined to make contact information for him or his...
Source: PharmaGossip - June 11, 2014 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Cancer - Big Pharma want to drain you of cash before you die
Avastin, $5,000/month; Zaltrap, $11,000/month; Yervoy, $39,000/month; Provenge, $93,000/course of treatment; Erbitux, $8,400/month; Gleevec, $92,000/year; Tasigna, $115,000/year; Sprycel, $123,000/year. (Photo: Illustrations by Remie Geoffroi) http://nymag.com/news/features/cancer-drugs-2013-10/#! (Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - October 29, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Just When You Thought Meta Tags Were Safe, Along Comes Twitter's "Ad Card"
You might recall this post I made three years ago: "Who's in Charge of Your 'Invisible' Metadata? WARNING: Don't Invoke the 'Invisibility Rule'".In that post I pointed out that Google automatically grabs meta data or "tags" (invisible text that describes the content of the web page) from Rx product web sites when generating the content for natural search results. Meta data text is written by the web developer, but it is visible to the Google search engine, which republishes it verbatim as if it owns the content without getting permission from the web developer.If you are an unscrupulous pharma marketer, you can use this to...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - September 10, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: AstraZeneca social media meta data Source Type: blogs

Doctors Denounce Cancer Drug Prices of $100,000 a Year
With the cost of some lifesaving cancer drugs exceeding $100,000 a year, more than 100 influential cancer specialists from around the world have taken the unusual step of banding together in hopes of persuading some leading pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down. Prices for cancer drugs have been part of the debate over health care costs for several years — and recently led to a public protest from doctors at a major cancer center in New York. But the decision by so many specialists, from more than 15 countries on five continents, to join the effort is a sign that doctors, who are on the front lines of caring for...
Source: PharmaGossip - April 26, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

The PBM Sky Hook
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ’s toughest fight wasn’t on a basketball court. In his early 60s, the six-time NBA champion was diagnosed with leukemia, the deadly blood cancer. Fortunately, Abdul-Jabbar had access to state-of-the-art medications, including the advanced drug Tasigna, which paralyzed his cancer cells and preven ted further growth. Today, eight years after his initial diagnosis, Abdul-Jabbar is thriving and cancer-free. Unfortunately, many of today’s leukemia patients won’t be so lucky. CVS Health, the nation’s second-largest pharmacy benefit manager that oversees 65 million Americans’ drug plans, r ecently ...
Source: drugwonks.com Blog - September 6, 2007 Category: Pharmaceuticals Source Type: blogs