May 18, 2012, 10:40 a.m. EDT

May 18, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Precision Therapeutics, a leading life-science company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is dedicated to personalized cancer care. Precision offers a portfolio of products developed to help guide physicians and patients with difficult clinical decisions throughout the cancer care continuum.

Precision’s state of the art Comprehensive Tumor Profiling is an integrated straightforward approach combining three core platforms of personalized medicine to capture the total sum of genomic, proteomic and functional information for each patient’s cancer through a portfolio of multi-platform tests for cancer treatment in multiple tumor types.

Precision’s first commercial test, ChemoFx(R), is a proprietary drug response marker which measures an individual’s malignant tumor response to a range of standard therapeutic alternatives under consideration by a physician. Precision currently receives ChemoFx(R) specimens from 271 top medical institutions including 20 of the 21 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Member Institutions, and 8 of the US News and World Report Top 10 Hospitals for Cancer Care. To date, over 77,000 patient specimens have been submitted for ChemoFx(R) testing using 105 unique chemotherapy treatments and combinations.

For more information, visit www.precisiontherapeutics.com or www.chemofx.com .

        Company:                Precision Therapeutics, Inc.
        Headquarters Address:   2516 Jane Street
                                Pittsburgh, PA 15203
        Main Telephone:         412-432-1500

www.precisiontherapeutics.com            Type of Organization:   Private
        Industry:               Biotechnology
        Key Executives:         CEO: Sean McDonald
                                VP Marketing: Roberta Coffin
        Public Relations
                                Pam Ranallo
           Contact:
                                412-432-1502
           Phone:
                                pranallo@ptilabs.com
           Email:

SOURCE: Precision Therapeutics, Inc.

In the Journal of the National Cancer Institute this week: glycogen synthase kinase-3β in human osteosarcoma, staging systems for pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms, and more.

Full article at GenomeWeb  (Requires login)

Welcome to medicated America, where the fix for every problem–from incontinence to erectile dysfunction, stiff joints to mood swings, weight gain to wrinkles– is just a prescription away. Thus the beautiful images, stirring music, attractive actors, and soothing words in the omnipresent, multibillion-dollar kaleidoscope of drug advertising by Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other giants of Big Pharma–all pitching their particular brand-name nostrum directly at us hoi polloi (the industry spends a fourth of its income on ads and other promotions, nearly double its expenditures on research and development). The corporate come-ons typically conclude with a phrase that has achieved cliche status in America’s vernacular: “Ask your doctor if ‘Suprema Wundercure’ is right for you.”

The better question, though, is one that cartoonist Dan Piraro expressed in one of his “Bizarro” panels: “Ask your doctor if playing into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry is right for you.”

One would assume that in a rich, medically advanced, health-conscious nation like ours, dicey decisions about whether to allow a particular pharmaceutical product into our bodies would be among the most rational we make–as determined by (1) the best science available, (2) the strict moral duty of medical purveyors to “First, do no harm,” (3) good government regulation, and (4) the profession’s fear of public reproach and legal punishment. One would, however, be wrong on all counts:

• Science has been supplanted by rank hucksterism
• The strictest “moral duty” of corporate executives has been reduced to maximizing profits
• A “good” regulation is one that’s good for profit seekers
• Public reproach is just a momentary embarrassment to be covered over by corporate image makers
• Legal “punishment” never includes jail time, but only a fine that’s easily absorbed as a necessary cost of doing business by these immensely profitable entities.

In the past three decades, America’s healthcare system has radically metamorphosed from a public service network (largely run by independent physicians and nonprofit hospitals) into a corporate profit machine–one that Dr. Arnold Relman, the renowned former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, calls the Medical-Industrial Complex. Drugmakers have been among the most ambitious, in-your-face pushers of this transmutation of medicine into just another commodity to be sold by hook or crook. In this system, the concept of “care” has been reduced to “caveat emptor,” with the shareholders’ interest in monetary gain overriding all other interests.

“Today’s drug ads drive up health care costs, overstate the value of pills, and underplay the dangers of new drugs that have not been proved safe over time. The pharmaceutical industry should stop the hype and give consumers additional and more relevant facts.” –Consumer Reports, September 2006

The DTC contagion

A fast-moving, systemic epidemic called DTC has swept across America, endangering public health, jacking up our costs, and weakening the curative connection between health professionals and patients. DTC stands for “Direct-to-Consumer” drug advertising. It’s a plague of marketing, empowering profiteering corporations to short-circuit the judgment of doctors by using all of the tricks of Madison Avenue (including lies) to convince viewers and readers that (first) they’re suffering from a particular malady, (second) the advertiser’s brand-name medicine is the very best cure, and (finally) they must go to their doctors pronto to insist on getting a prescription for that specific drug. The essence of this marketing scheme is to turn consumers into sales representatives for drug peddlers. Brilliant.

Prescribing medicine through the television, radio, print, and internet ads of corporations (whose sole motive is to sell more pills) is so crass, so awash in conflicts of interest, and so inherently dangerous that only two countries have ever legalized it: New Zealand in 1981 and the USA in 1997.

In our country, the corporate-friendly government of Ronald Reagan first okayed DTC drug ads in 1985, but his Food and Drug Administration ruled that pages-long consumer warnings about health risks had to be included, so there were few takers. Then came Bill Clinton’s corporate-friendly government, which issued a revised FDA rule in 1997 allowing drugmakers to dodge the full disclosure provision–as long as their ads met an “adequate” standard for informing consumers about risks.

Such squishy words (slipped into regulations by industry lobbyists) are a corporate wet dream. Thanks to the adequacy loophole, fluffy-puffy, no-worries prescription drug ads quickly mushroomed. In 1997, spending on DTC ads was only $220 million; by 2002, it was $2.8 billion; and it has kept a steady pace of roughly $3 billion a year ever since.

A real reform

What if drug marketers had to tell us the details of every under-the-table payment (aka bribes) that they make to doctors? Well, here’s good news: One of the pluses in Obama’s healthcare reform law, is that they will have to do just that, perhaps as soon as next year. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley added it to ObamaCare, requiring all drug companies to publish on a publicly accessible website (as yet unnamed) every payment that they make to doctors–including the name of recipients and the amount and exact reason for each “gift.” Moreover, this reform has teeth. Federal officials will audit corporate records to assure complete disclosure. Failure to list a payment will result in a $10,000 fine for each deletion ($100,000 for knowingly hiding a payment), and top executives can be liable for omissions, since they must swear to the accuracy of each report.

Of course, industry lobbyists screeched: “Doctors may no longer want to engage in consulting arrangements,” wailed one, “and such reluctance could chill innovation.” Bullstuff. If such “arrangements” are above board, no sweat. The only thing that this breakthrough will chill is corruption. About time, too.

Corporations don’t spend that kind of money to dramatize the severity of their products’ nasty side effects. As two ad execs giddily put it in a 1998 report to the industry, “The ultimate goal of DTC advertising is to stimulate consumers to ask their doctors about the advertised drug and then, hopefully, get the prescription.” Obviously, to “get the prescription,” corporate ads don’t stress such unpleasant outcomes as these (taken from the small print of full-page ads for just a half dozen heavily advertised drugs): very high fevers, confusion, uncontrollable bowel movements, trouble swallowing, lower sperm count, prostate cancer, loss of vision, suicidal thoughts… and, of course, death.

Side effects do have to be addressed, but not conspicuously–for example, it’s “adequate” for an off-camera announcer to buzz through them with a muted, fast-paced delivery (usually while cartoon butterflies flutter playfully on-screen to distract viewer attention). It’s a disgusting, dishonorable way to generate sales–but it works. In 2008, the House Commerce Committee found that every $1,000 spent on drug ads produces 24 new patients, and a 2003 research report found that prescription rates for drugs promoted with DTC ads were nearly seven times greater than those without such promos. Ethics aside, these consumer hustles have proven to be profit bonanzas:

• From 2000 through 2004, Merck & Co. poured more than $500 million into adverts promoting Vioxx, turning the pain pill into one of the “Top 100 Megabrands” listed by Advertising Age. The drug was meant for the relatively few people who can’t stomach aspirin, but the PR push touted it to all arthritis patients, a much larger marketing pool. The campaign promised “everyday victories” over pain and immobility, featuring former Olympic skating champ Dorothy Hamill spinning effortlessly (and pain-free) on the ice. Merck’s ads sold some 20 million Vioxx prescriptions, including to people who paid the ultimate price for buying the hype–a 2005 research report in The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, attributed as many as 140,000 sudden cardiac “events” in America to the use of Vioxx. In September of 2004, Merck took the pill off the market over “safety concerns.” As an expert pharmacy consultant told Forbes magazine in 2006, “Vioxx wasn’t a bad drug for everyone, it was a bad drug for certain patients. Unfortunately, people saw the ads and started demanding the drug from their doctors.” That’s the deadly power of mass advertising for drugs.
• Some ads are simply frauds, including one that Pfizer ran on TV until 2006, hailing the prowess of the company’s cholesterol-lowering drug, Lipitor. The star of the spot was Robert Jarvik, who was described as the well-known “physician” who was the “inventor” of the artificial heart. In a picturesque outdoorsy setting, he was shown vigorously rowing a boat across a lake–visual “proof” that his own heart was in robust condition thanks to his use of Lipitor. His tagline was: “You don’t have to be a doctor to appreciate that.” Good, because he doesn’t practice medicine, and while he worked on the artificial heart, he did not invent it. Oh, he also wasn’t rowing the boat–a double played that role. Embarrassed, Pfizer had to yank the ad–but it continues to merchandize Lipitor with some $250 million a year in commercials, generating about $11 billion a year in sales, more than any other pharmaceutical in history.
• Bear in mind that these pitches are being made to consumers who cannot just go purchase the product–only licensed medical professionals can diagnose and prescribe. But, again, the promotions work, as an industry spokesman happily affirmed: “There’s a strong correlation between the amount of money pharmaceutical companies spend on DTC advertising and what drug patients are most often requesting from physicians.” He also noted that the trumpeting of brand-name pills “is definitely driving patients to the doctor’s office.” No surprise, then, that prescription drug use has soared in the past decade, during which spending (by consumers, private health plans, and governments) more than doubled. A 2010 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics not only found that about 35 percent of Americans over 60 take five or more prescription medicines a day (more than twice the intake in 1999), but even 22 percent of children under age 12 are on at least one Rx regimen. “People may be taking too many drugs,” deadpanned the NCHS leader. And in recent years, a whole new market has opened up for DTC hucksters: Medical devices. In 2007, Johnson & Johnson launched the first mass-audience TV commercials for highly specialized, complex therapeutic devices. This is beyond odd; it is dangerous. Only expert practitioners have the knowledge and experience to judge whether one brand-name medical gizmo is superior to another. Yet, here was J&J doing a pitch to us clueless consumers for “Cypher,” a drug-coated coronary stent for opening closed arteries. I’m all for consumers getting more say in health care, but–come on!–how would I know enough about the efficacy of various stents to instruct my doctor to “Make mine Cyphers”?

The DTD contagion

In addition to getting you and me to push particular products on our doctors, the drug and device industry runs a massive, sophisticated, and relentless “Direct-to-Doctor” sales program that skates on the thinnest ethical ice and frequently plunges all the way into illegality. While these efforts, costing more than $6 billion a year, occasionally pretend to be “educational,” they are in fact an elaborate exercise in medical flimflammery–nothing but a door-to-door ploy by each of the major makers to hoodwink your doctor into prescribing their brand-name pill, rather than a competitor’s brand or a generic.

To do this, the biggest of Big Pharma deploy an astonishingly large force of “sales reps” all across the country–90,000 of them! That’s roughly one for every nine physicians, and they swarm non-stop into doctors’ offices–one Virginia physician says his office had to set a quota of three visits in the morning and three visits in the afternoon in order to get any doctoring done. They are highly trained in persuasive arts, motivated to make the sale at all costs, and alarmingly successful (a 2003 Blue Cross survey found that more than half of “high-prescribing” doctors relied on the reps as their main source of information about new drugs).

INTRIGUING QUESTION: What occupational sub-group of Americans are, by far, the most heavily recruited to take jobs as drug reps? You might think pharmacists, marketing consultants, or even used car salesmen. All wrong. THE SURPRISING ANSWER: College cheerleaders.

Hey, the point is to “make the sale,” to entice this mostly male profession to switch from A to B. Solid scientific evidence is one thing, but winks apparently work, too–and who’s twinklier, prettier, more buffed, peppier, or more gregarious than cheerleaders? The University of Kentucky, which boasts champion-level cheerleading squads, has been one of the premier movers of talent from pompoms to Pharma. A UK “cheering advisor” notes that his perky collegians are naturals for sales rep positions: “Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm–they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want.” He says he routinely receives calls from drugmakers seeking to hire his graduates. “They don’t ask what the major is,” he says.

The demand is so high that an executive of a business that runs cheerleading camps set up a specialized employment firm in 2004 called “Spirited Sales Leaders.” Based in Memphis, it funnels hundreds of former cheerleaders into drug sales.

“There’s a lot of sizzle” in being a sales rep, he explains, and these experienced sizzle-generators can earn six figures a year, counting bonuses, for pep-talking doctors into writing more prescriptions for their companies’ medicines.

Not that these upstanding corporate citizens would stoop to hiring salespeople based on their sex appeal. No, no, explained a top executive of Bristol-Myers Squibb: “[It] has nothing to do with looks, it’s the personality.”

Sex appeal or not, the essence of the job is manipulation, and reps are highly trained and well armed to ingratiate themselves with each individual on their list of doctor-clients. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a doctor and professor at the Georgetown University Medical Center, is a drug company watchdog who has studied the doctor-sales rep relationship. In a 2007 article, she reported that the salespeople play to a doctor’s feeling of being overworked and underappreciated: “Cheerful and charming, bearing food and gifts, drug reps provide respite and sympathy; they appreciate how hard doctors’ lives are and seem only to want to ease their burdens. But every word, every courtesy, every gift, and every piece of information provided is carefully crafted, not to assist doctors or patients, but to increase market share for targeted drugs.” Here are key elements of the DTD operation:

The file. Each doctor is a mark, and drug reps are trained intelligence gatherers who build and constantly update a computerized corporate file on the doc’s personality, preferences, interests, and any personal tidbits that might help them change his or her prescribing habits. The strategic goal of good reps is to become each doctor’s trusted “friend”–not unlike the relationship that lobbyists try to cultivate with lawmakers.

The data. How can pill peddlers know which ones your doctor is prescribing–isn’t that a private matter? Not in today’s bluntly intrusive world of commercial data mining. A majority of pharmacies sell their records of every single prescription written by doctors doing business with them. This vast trove of computerized info is bought by such data hawkers as IMS Health, which procures prescriptions from about 70 percent of US pharmacies. While the names of patients are deleted, the name of the doctor who wrote each prescription is easily discernible, so pharmaceutical giants pay millions a year to buy, slice, and dice the electronic data on exactly which medicines each doctor has ordered and in what quantities. This is regularly fed to the laptops, iPads, and even smartphones of the sales reps on the ground–allowing them to target their daily pitches, and to precisely and carefully track the slightest of changes in a doctor’s prescribing habits.

The gift. Reps don’t go to a physician’s office empty-handed. Gourmet donuts and lunch treats for the entire staff are daily routines, and doctors and key staffers are treated to dinners at fine restaurants, holiday gift baskets, tickets to a game or show, and such nice personal presents as a silk tie or a monogrammed golf bag. A New York Times report in January of this year says that two-thirds of doctors accept such goodies. For the heavy prescribers of a drugmaker’s concoctions, the gifts grow ever-larger–a ski trip to Aspen, an invitation to make weekly paid “lunch and learn” presentations in other doctors’ offices, an honorarium to make brief comments at a conference in some five-star resort (complete with an “educational grant” to cover the bar tabs and other incidentals), big-buck “consulting” contracts that require practically no work, and outright cash payments for prescribing particular drugs. The Times’ January report found “that about a quarter of doctors take cash payments” and “that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways.”

The hoax. Few doctors are experts in the chemistry and biological impacts of particular medicines, so they rely on honest studies and tests (as reported in credible medical journals) to give them an un-hyped, non-sales-rep picture of the pluses and minuses of the drugs they choose to prescribe to you and me. Unfortunately, this process, too, has been corrupted–drugmakers have regularly paid doctors and researchers to conduct studies and publish results without revealing their financial ties. Pfizer, however, sank this sales-over-science approach to new lows when it launched its antidepressant, Zoloft, in the 1990s. It hired an advertising firm to fabricate “studies,” write them up as salutary reports about the drug, pay some big-name psychiatrists a couple of thousand bucks each to put their names on the reports, and convince major journals (read by thousands of doctors) to publish the ghostwritten “findings.” About half of the medical articles about Zoloft at that time were ad agency fakes. Journal editors, embarrassed by being scammed, have since imposed safeguards, but many doctors and observers say that up to 20 percent of major journal articles are still being ghosted.

We can do better

DTC and DTD are just two surging branches of the central stream running through America’s healthcare industry–an out-of-control stream that should be labeled DTP–”Direct-to-Profit.” The very fact that healthcare, an essential human need, has been twisted into an “industry”–a commercial activity for the purpose of maximizing profits–is a damning measure of its moral bankruptcy.

As avaricious and monopolistic drug corporations have demonstrated again and again, “care” is treated, at best, as an externality to their real work of making money–and at worst as an impediment to that corporate imperative. Thus, top executives and boards of directors constantly seek ever more sophisticated forms of deception and manipulation to, at all costs, make the sale. In this ethos, such loathsome products as blatant price gouging, artificial shortages of vital medicines, deliberate promotion of pills that kill, falsification of medical research, and routine corruption of doctors are not merely tolerated, but expected and accepted as normal.

Is this the best that this great, super-rich country can do? Of course not–we Americans can, must, and will create a system that puts public need over private greed. This month’s “Do Something” features some groups leading the way. I’ll give the final word to Dr. Relman, the thoughtful, insistent, and unflagging voice for an ethical and sensible system of care built around the concept of “Medicare for all.” A decade ago, he wrote that “our health policies have failed to meet national needs because they have been heavily influenced by the delusion that medical care is essentially a business… A different kind of approach could solve our problems, but it would mean major reform of the entire system… Since such a reform would threaten the financial interests of investors… the short-term political prospects for such reform are not very good. But I am convinced that a complete overhaul is inevitable, because in the long run nothing else is likely to work.”

AUSTIN, Texas, May 17, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The childhood cancer research computing cluster created and donated by Dell for the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is ready to support the world’s first precision medicine clinical trial for pediatric cancer. The computation performance of the cluster is expected to accelerate analysis and identification of targeted treatments beyond initial projections.

Oncologists from the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC) and biomedical researchers from TGen will use the new high performance computing and collaboration cloud to identify targeted treatments for pediatric cancer patients based on the specific genetic vulnerabilities of each child’s tumor–an approach that could be used to treat many pediatric and adult cancers in the future.

Dell’s team has completed the high performance computing cluster that will serve as the cloud’s computational foundation and basis for a private cloud. When equipped with Dell’s latest server technology–the PowerEdge M420–and a parallel approach to computation, TGen can analyze comprehensively a patient’s tumor RNA profile in one day versus the seven days that were previously required–an important advantage in the battle against aggressive childhood cancers. With the dedicated computing cluster in place, Dell will begin to connect the biomedical researchers sequencing and analyzing patient tumors at TGen in Arizona with oncologists providing treatment to patients participating in the trial at 11 medical centers. The new cloud will eliminate the need to express mail hard drives containing tumor and diagnostic images and genomic sequencing data between locations.

There has been only one new treatment for pediatric cancer approved by the FDA since the 1980s, compared with 50 treatments approved for adult cancer in this same timeframe. As a result, pediatric oncologists have relied upon treatments designed for adults, with toxic side effects that are frequently as physically detrimental to the child as the cancer itself. Precision medicine can overcome these barriers with treatments that target the specific vulnerabilities of each child’s tumor, leaving healthy cells untouched.

In related news, the NMTRC welcomed Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas, to its membership and the list of hospitals participating in the clinical trial as it continues to expand medical center participation in the US and globally. And Ronald McDonald House Charities announced Dell’s contribution of $100,000 to support Ronald McDonald houses in 14 cities and the families who rely upon them when they are away from home for treatment.

Dell’s donations of cloud computing to TGen for the precision medicine clinical trial and funds to Ronald McDonald House Charities are part of the company’s multiyear, multimillion dollar commitment of technology, funding and employee engagement to improve childhood cancer treatment globally.

Quotes

“There is no time to waste for children and families battling aggressive and deadly cancers like neuroblastoma,” said James Coffin, Ph.D., vice president and general manager, Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences. “That’s why Dell is focused on driving results faster–faster than our initial projections–for TGen and NMTRC so that they accelerate time-to-targeted treatment for children participating in the clinical trial and can open participation to more children over time.”

“This conference provides a great opportunity for researchers, clinicians and families to assess the state of pediatric cancer care today,” said Dr. Jeffrey Trent, TGen’s President and Research Director. “The collaborative model behind this conference is a great example of how through partnerships we can positively move research and treatment forward at a pace not seen before.”

“On behalf of the NMTRC, we are incredibly thankful for Dell’s support and expertise to help in the care of our patients,” said Giselle Sholler, Co-Director of the Pediatric Oncology Translational Research Program at the Van Andel Institute. “This meeting will bring together the top physicians, researchers and parent advocates working collaboratively to accelerate the search for a cure.”

Additional Information:

@DellHealth on Twitter Dell Powering the Possible NMTRC.org NMTRC Participating HospitalsVirtual Press Kit TGen

About Dell

Dell Inc. DELL -0.50% listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. Dell’s Powering the Possible program is funded by the company’s pledge to contribute 1 percent of its pre-tax profits to learning, pediatric cancer, innovative social entrepreneurship and disaster relief initiatives that address unmet needs globally and enable human potential. Information about Dell Powering the Possible is available at www.dell.com/pediactriccancer .

As the leading provider of healthcare IT services in the world, Dell helps healthcare organizations harness the power of information to simplify administration; coordinate and manage patient care; transition from episodic care to prevention and wellness management and ultimately to deliver personalized medicine.

About TGen

The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a Phoenix, Arizona-based non-profit organization dedicated to conducting groundbreaking research for life changing results. Research at TGen is focused on helping patients with diseases such as cancer, neurological disorders and diabetes. TGen is on the cutting edge of translational research where investigators are able to unravel the genetic components of common and complex diseases. Working with collaborators in the scientific and medical communities, TGen believes it can make a substantial contribution to the efficiency and effectiveness of the translational process. TGen is affiliated with the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For more information, visit: www.tgen.org .

About the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium

Founded in 2008, the NMTRC is a nationwide network of childhood cancer trials based at the Van Andel Research Institute and chaired by Dr. Giselle Sholler. The consortium includes the following clinical partners: Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; Center for Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, MD Anderson Cancer Center Orlando; Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics; Connecticut Children’s Medical Center; Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, Oregon Health & Science University; Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital; Levine Children’s Hospital; Medical University of South Carolina; National Cancer Institute; Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego, UCSD School of Medicine and the University of Hawaii Cancer Center.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=50280743&lang=en

SOURCE: Dell Inc. and Translational Genomics Research Institute

        Dell Inc.
        Cathie Hargett, 512-750-0996
        Cathie_Hargett@dell.com
        or
        Amanda Engler, 512-723-7381
        or
        TGen
        Galen Perry, 602-377-4734
        gperry@tgen.org
        or
        Steve Yozwiak, 602-343-8704
        syozwiak@tgen.org

CHICAGO, IL (May 16, 2012)––Nearly half of the research presented at ASCO’s annual meeting last year came from researchers with ties to companies, and the amount appears to be increasing every year, according to new findings from Fox Chase Cancer Center. The new findings will be presented this year at the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting on Monday, June 4.

“The results suggest that there may be an increasing dependence on industry to support cancer research,” says study author Angela R. Bradbury, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Genetics at Fox Chase. “This doesn’t mean the research is flawed or biased in any way,” she cautions, “but it does mean that the professional and research community has to investigate the impact of these relationships and find ways to manage any potential conflicts of interest.”

Bradbury and her colleagues reviewed research submitted to the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, which requires all authors who want to present their findings to state if they have any relationships with industry. This includes being employed by a company, as well as owning stock, serving as a consultant or expert witness, and receiving honoraria for giving talks or participating in research projects.

They found that 48% of research accepted for presentation at the meeting in 2011 came from a group where at least one author had a relationship to industry—up from 39% of research presented in 2006. These ties to industry appeared to increase every year.

Interestingly, in a second related abstract by the same authors, Beverly Moy, M.D., M.P.H., clinical director of the Breast Oncology Program and a medical oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, reported that high profile research—selected to be presented more prominently at the meeting—was more likely to come from scientists with relationships to industry. Studies from authors with ties to industry also tended to receive higher scores from their peers.

“This finding doesn’t mean that researchers with industry have some ‘in’ that others don’t,” says Bradbury. “Rather, it suggests that authors of much of the cutting-edge, clinically important research have relationships with industry.”

This is not a surprise, she says, given that other sources of research funding have dried up recently. “We need money for cancer research, and it has to come from somewhere. The government has had to cut back on its support, and with the economic crisis research foundations have less money to allocate as well.”

But if cancer researchers are going to continue to link up with companies that can profit from their data, the community has to be aware of the potential issues, Bradbury cautions. “If we’re going to have relationships with industry, we’re going to have to find ways to monitor and manage these relationships, to ensure they don’t end up biasing any results.”

Given that many great clinicians work with companies, patients shouldn’t worry about asking their doctors if they personally have ties to industry, Bradbury reassures. “Whether or not a doctor has a relationship with a company shouldn’t have any impact on patient care,” she says.

This period can be extended with adequate local intervention and adjuvant chemotherapy, which has become common practice. Several prognostic factors have been reported in many different studies, e.g.

age, breed, weight, sex, neuter status, location of tumor, serum alkaline phosphatase (SALP), bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP), infection, percentage of bone length affected, histological grade or histological subtype of tumor. Most of these factors are, however, only reported as confounding factors in larger studies.

Insight in truly significant prognostic factors at time of diagnosis may contribute to tailoring adjuvant therapy for individual dogs suffering from osteosarcoma.The objective of this study was to systematically review the prognostic factors that are described for canine appendicular osteosarcoma and validate their scientific importance.

Results: A literature review was performed on selected studies and eligible data were extracted. Meta-analyses were done for two of the three selected possible prognostic factors (SALP and location), looking at both survival time (ST) and disease free interval (DFI).

The third factor (age) was studied in a qualitative manner. Both elevated SALP level and the (proximal) humerus as location of the primary tumor are significant negative prognostic factors for both ST and DFI in dogs with appendicular osteosarcoma.

Increasing age was associated with shorter ST and DFI, however, was not statistically significant because information of this factor was available in only a limited number of papers.

Conclusions: Elevated SALP and proximal humeral location are significant negative prognosticators for canine osteosarcoma.

Author: Ilse BoermanGayathri T SelvarajahMirjam NielenJolle Kirpensteijn
Credits/Source: BMC Veterinary Research 2012, 8:56

Lance Armstrong with supporters of Proposition 29 Friday at Children’s Hospital. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times / May 12, 2012)

Every morning when UC San Diego physicist Herbert Levine laces up his running shoes and chugs alongside Mission Bay, his earphones crackle with radio ads opposing a proposed $1-per-pack cigarette tax to raise money for cancer research.

The ads are funded by the tobacco industry. They call Proposition 29, the tobacco tax that state voters will consider on the June 5 ballot, a bureaucratic boondoggle, an initiative that would raise mountains of cash for research but not a penny for treatment.

“They’re saying cancer research is bad? It’s a strange message,” said Levine, whose own work relies on the fundamentals of physics to help unlock the mysteries of cancer.

He’s leaving next month for Rice University, lured away in part by the fruits of a $3-billion bond measure Texas voters approved in 2007 to fund the study and treatment of the disease.

The Texas success helped inspire the American Cancer Society, former Democratic state Sen. Don Perata and others in California to launch a similar campaign in Proposition 29 — but with a big difference. They hitched it to a new tobacco tax.

The upside, they say: Along with raising more than $800 million for research on tobacco-related diseases and prevention programs, the hike in cigarette prices will stop 220,000 kids from starting to smoke and encourage 100,000 current smokers to quit.

The downside? Two of the nation’s largest tobacco companies — Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. — and their affiliates have spent more than $30 million against the initiative thus far, dwarfing the $4 million raised by proponents.
“These guys aren’t going to lie down,” said seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, whose Livestrong Foundation spearheaded the Texas campaign. “The goal is saving lives. Period. We are 100% sure that this will do that.”

The Proposition 29 campaign, Californians for a Cure, is relying heavily on social media, including blasts to Armstrong’s 3.4 million followers on Twitter, and husbanding its limited funds by airing 15-second television ads and staffing volunteer phone banks. Livestrong contributed $1.5 million to the campaign, with other major backing coming from the American Cancer Society andAmerican Heart Assn.

The tobacco companies have remained in the background, allowing a coalition of taxpayer and business groups to be the public face of the opposition. Their committee, Californians Against Out-of-Control Taxes and Spending, unleashed an onslaught of mail and other ads attacking the initiative for allowing the proceeds to be used out of state and raising money for research instead of treatment.

“We have major budget problems in California. More than 2 million Californians are unemployed, and instead of addressing those issues, this would fund an entirely new bureaucracy,” said David Kline, spokesman for the California Taxpayers Assn.

Voters were stung by a similar initiative in 2004, when they approved a $3-billion bond measure for stem cell research, said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. The stem cell agency, already short of money, paid its part-time chairman a salary of $400,000 annually and hired former California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres at $230,000 a year to serve as one of the institute’s vice chairmen.

“The fact that this creates a new bureaucracy should be a red flag to everyone,” Coupal said.

Proposition 29 supporters call the ads and criticism a ruse, orchestrated by tobacco companies that expect to lose nearly $800 million a year in cigarette sales if the initiative passes.

“They are trying to protect their profits, which go out of state,” said Jim Knox of the American Cancer Society. “They deceive and lie about their deadly product. It’s what they do.”

Knox cited a recent tobacco-funded television ad featuring Northern California doctor La Donna Porter. Major medical organizations have backed Proposition 29; but in the ad Porter, dressed in a white lab coat, criticizes the measure for “creating a huge new research bureaucracy with no accountability.” Porter was featured in a similar tobacco-funded ad in 2006, when cigarette companies successfully fought off an effort to hike tobacco taxes.

It’s because of the companies’ political muscle, Knox said, that Californians haven’t approved a tobacco tax at the ballot box in 14 years. The Legislature, awash in campaign contributions from tobacco interests, hasn’t raised tobacco taxes since 1994.

If approved, Proposition 29 would raise an estimated $860 million a year, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Sixty percent of the money would be used to support research on prevention, diagnosis, treatment and potential cures for tobacco-related diseases, including cancer, heart disease and emphysema; 15% would be used to build or lease facilities or be spent on equipment; 20% would go to tobacco prevention and cessation programs; 3% would be directed to law enforcement programs to reduce illegal sales to minors and smuggling; and 2% would pay administrative costs, the analyst said.

Tyler Izen, president of the union that represents LAPD officers, said he opposes the initiative because it offers no flexibility on how the tax funds could be spent. The initiative would provide some money for law enforcement but without “the discretion to spend the resources fighting serious crimes like murder, assaults or rape.”

The fund would be administered by a new nine-member Cancer Research Citizens Oversight Committee. Four members would be appointed by the governor, including three from a designated California cancer center — a research and treatment facility such as UCLA‘s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center; two members would be chosen by the state director of public health; and three would be either chancellors from a University of California campus or their designees.

Perata, who survived prostate cancer and who kicked in $1 million from a campaign account he controlled to get Proposition 29 on the ballot, said the oversight panel is modeled after the one that doles out research funds at the National Cancer Institute.

He said voters want assurances that their money is well spent, and “don’t want to see taxes going into the general fund, because they have no confidence in Sacramento. Even taxes they’re not paying.”

phil.willon@latimes.com