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Insurers Refuse To Stop Canceling Some Sick Patients' Policies
Members of Congress grilled executives from the insurance industry"s big three - UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, and Assurant - for canceling coverage of more than 20,000 paying policy holders at a hearing Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reports. The executives responded that they would continue the practice, known as rescission, which has saved them an estimated $300 million over a five-year period.
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Insights Into Failed HIV-1 Vaccine Trial: Study
Following the disbandment of the STEP trial to test the efficacy of the Merck HIV-1 vaccine candidate in 2007, the leading explanation for why the vaccine was ineffective - and may have even increased susceptibility to acquiring the virus - centered on the hypothesis that high levels of baseline Ad5-specific neutralizing antibodies may have increased HIV-1 acquisition among the study subjects who received the vaccine by increasing Ad5-specific CD4+ T-cells that were susceptible to HIV-1 infection.
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Blogs Comment On Planned Parenthood Ad Campaign, Sex-Selective Abortion, Other Topics
The following summarizes selected women"s health-related blog entries.~ "A Radical Notion: Women"s Health Care as Mainstream," Cecile Richards, Huffington Post blogs: "To hammer ... home" the message that "Planned Parenthood and other essential community providers are the affordable, local access to basic preventive care that saves lives," the Planned Parenthood Action Center has introduced advertisements "educating the policy folks involved in fixing our health care system" about "why women"s health care needs to be taken care of in this mega-reform effort," Richards writes. She writes, "From cancer screenings to contraception to immunizations, the majority of women who go to women"s health care centers consider them their primary health care provider," adding, "In fact, more than 90% of what Planned Parenthood health centers do is preventive and primary care." According to Richards, "Essential community providers, including those who provide women"s health care, need to be part of any newly established health care system." She adds that "the three million patients who came to Planned Parenthood health centers last year can testify to it." Richards writes that "[f]amily planning and reproductive health care are unfortunately still not fully part of mainstream health care, even though 98% of women use contraception at some point in their lives -- there"s nothing more universal!" The "fact that women reproduce and, therefore, have different types of health care needs makes some folks on Capitol Hill go pale and start to sweat," Richards writes. She concludes, "Maybe one day we won"t need a special campaign to support women"s health," but "until then, Planned Parenthood is here to make sure women aren"t worse off after health care reform than before" (Richards, Huffington Post blogs, 6/18).~ "The Role of Medical Education in Preserving Abortion Access," Our Bodies, Our Blog: In response to a recent Salon opinion piece that examined whether there will be a next generation of abortion providers, the blog post discusses a few organizations that are "working to increase access to (accurate) abortion-related training." The blog includes links to Medical Students for Choice -- a group that "does student organizing and advocacy to influence medical school curricula, workshops ... and lectures on abortion techniques" -- and The Ryan Program -- which offers "funding, technical expertise, curriculum, workshops and other res to support training opportunities in abortion and contraception for ob-gyn residents." The blog entry also highlights the work of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, which partners with members of the American Medical Student Association "to provide "project in a box" materials for medical students wanting to access and influence their schools" curricula on sexual and reproductive health" (Our Bodies, Our Blog, 6/18). ~ "Regulating Abortion May Be OK But Not To Avoid Sex-Selection," Marianne Mollmann, Huffington Post blogs: "Sex-selective abortion raises a multitude of overlapping ethical concerns regarding eugenics, population control and provider privilege or knowledge," according to Mollmann, advocacy director for the Human Rights Watch"s Women"s Rights Division. Mollmann writes that recent media reports indicating that sex-selective abortion occurs among some ethnic communities in the U.S. "has generated new discussion about what to do -- indeed what to think -- about the practice here." She continues that the "effect of abortion regulations depends on the context and motivation," adding that "[f]rom a human rights perspective, the regulation of medical procedures and interventions is legitimate and indeed often necessary so long as they are based on full respect for the full range of human rights." It is "perhaps tempting to hope that banning sex-selective abortions would safeguard the gender balance of future generations," but the "criminalization of abortion for whatever reason has in the past led only to underground and unsafe prac
Diagnostics

Nanobiotix Reports Exciting Preclinical Results Using Its NanoXray™ Therapeutics Technology To Destroy Tumors

Nanobiotix, an emerging nanomedicine company, announced exciting preclinical results using its patented nanoXray therapeutics platform to fight tumors. The preclinical study, performed at Institut Gustave Roussy, one of Europe"s leading cancer treatment centers, showed that an intratumoral injection of NBTXR3 nanoparticles and activated via standard radiation therapy led to complete tumor regression in mice at 60 days, compared to zero tumor regression in mice treated with xray only or NBTXR3 only. The study was led by principal investigator, Jean Bourhis, M.D., Ph.D. a prominent radiation oncologist and researcher at Institut Gustave Roussy. Nanobiotix is using technology that it calls "nanoXray therapeutics" to resolve radiation therapy"s biggest drawback: destruction of healthy tissue and its subsequent deleterious side effects when a high dose of xray is necessary. The Company believes that nanoXray therapeutics offer a dramatic innovation in cancer therapy, based on a technology that is designed to allow destruction of cancer cells only-a new treatment weapon that could be used alone, or in concert with existing anticancer protocols: chemotherapy, surgery, and immunotherapy. Because NBTXR3 is comprised of crystalline nanoparticles, it does not have deleterious effects on healthy cells, unlike chemotherapy or other systemic anticancer agents. "Our nanotechnology is designed to allow for the precise destruction of cancer cells via the controlled application of an outside-the-body energy -in this case, an xray. We are extremely excited by these preclinical results, which demonstrate the novel therapeutic effect of nanoparticles on human tumor models," said Laurent Lçİvy, Ph.D., President and CEO of Nanobiotix and Co-President of the French Technology Platform on Nanotechnology (FTPN). "It is very important to note that after 120 days of this study, 90 percent of the mice treated with NBTXR3 nanoparticles activated by radiotherapy were still alive, whereas all of the mice in the other two groups had to be sacrificed after 60 days due to tumor progression," added Elsa Borghi, M.D., Chief Medical Officer for Nanobiotix. One in four deaths in the United States is from cancer, making it the second-leading cause of death after heart attack. Radiation therapy-also called radiotherapy, xray, or irradiation-is typically used to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation therapy injures or destroys cells in the area being treated by damaging their genetic material, making it impossible for these cells to continue to grow and divide. The goal of radiation therapy is to damage as many cancer cells as possible, while limiting harm to nearby healthy tissue. About half of all cancer patients receive some type of radiation therapy, which may be used alone or in combination with other cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy or surgery. Radiation therapy may be used to treat almost every type of solid tumor. About the NBTXR3 Preclinical Study Through experiments on resistant and radiosensitive tumor models, NBTXR3 activated by xray has shown its strong ability to reduce the clonogenic activity of cancer cells. In vivo models have demonstrated the same type of improvement, up to tumor elimination, when radiotherapy alone could show only five-day tumor growth delay. In several models including an HCT116 colon cancer tumor and an HT1080 fibrosarcoma tumor, NBTXR3 has strongly impaired tumor growth and improved Overall Survival (OS). The study showed a statistically significant tumor regression and a prolongation of survival in NBTXR3-treated mice when irradiated both with one dose of 8 Gy or two doses of 4 Gy. This is an important parameter since radiation therapy is delivered in fractions to cancer patients. Similar results were also obtained with Swiss nude mice bearing sarcoma tumors, in spite of the fact that these are known to be resistant to radiotherapy. Other studies in non-epithelial cancer models demonstrated comparable survival improvements as well. Compatibility with different energy s has also been demonstrated, proving that NBTXR3 could be easily used with the different radiotherapy equipment presently on the market. Nanobiotix


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