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Oregon House Passes Preemptive Health Reform Bills
The Oregon House of Representatives passed two health reform bills that a leading Democratic lawmakers says will help Oregon "fit into whatever happens on the national scale," the Portland Oregonian reports. One bill would tax insurers and hospitals more than $300 million over two years to provide coverage to an additional 115,000 Oregonians. These funds would "leverage nearly $1 billion in federal Medicaid matching money." The second measure would create an Oregon Health Authority to replace an existing Department of Human Services, but with a broader mandate to track health care claims data and harness consolidated purchasing power to "pressure insurers and hospitals to use evidence based care." State officials say the measure "would create an estimated 3,600 high-paying jobs in hospitals, medical clinics and other areas" (Graves, 6/8).

UCB Receives CHMP Positive Opinion On Bringing Neupro(R) Back To All Patients In Europe
UCB announced that the European Medicines Agency"s (EMEA) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has issued a positive opinion recommending that the European Commission lifts the treatment restrictions for Neupro® (rotigotine transdermal patch) in Europe.
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Two New Studies On Circadian Rhythms
Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have made new inroads into understanding the regulatory circuitry of the biological clock that synchronizes the ebb and flow of daily activities, according to two studies published May 15.
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Swine Flu (H1N1) Infectivity To Increase Markedly And Lethality To Remain Low According To Latest Replikin Peptide Genomic Data

Amid all the speculation over what course the Swine Flu epidemic will take, Boston-based biotech firm Replikins Ltd. last week analyzed the most recent peptide genomic sequence data available and determined that the infectivity of the H1N1 virus will increase markedly, while its lethality will remain relatively low for the immediate future. The company"s quantitative analysis of the most recent sequence data available on PubMed, a standard scientific repository for published papers, showed an increase of 46% in the Replikin Count over the past five months. This points to a marked increase in infectivity in humans. At the same time, while the total number of replikins has gone up significantly, their composition appears to have changed in a way that makes them more closely resemble their counterparts in earlier pandemics. The firm, which had predicted a year ago the likelihood of the current H1N1 outbreak, used its proprietary FluForecast(TM) software program to make these determinations. "The dual differentiation of these properties may provide advance warning of the future course of H1N1," noted Samuel Bogoch MD PhD, chairman and founder of Replikins Ltd. "Our understanding of the protein chemistry of rapid replication enables us to develop synthetic vaccines specifically tailored to destroy or restrict replication of the targeted virus strains prior to an outbreak." Earlier this month, Replikins announced that it had succeeded in synthesizing the first H1N1 influenza vaccine, which is now ready for testing. It used the same approach to produce a peptide H5N1 (avian flu) vaccine that successfully blocked low path H5N1. It has not previously been possible to correlate virus structures with a virus outbreak or cessation of outbreak, let alone to predict six to 12 months ahead of the outbreak or its cessation. In 2001, Drs. Samuel and Elenore Bogoch first demonstrated this correlation retrospectively for whole-organism replikin counts in outbreaks and pandemics of the common influenza strains over the past century. About Replikins Ltd. Replikins, Ltd, a Boston-based biotech company, develops and markets novel forecasting tools and synthetic vaccines to fight virulent rapidly replicating diseases including bird flu, malaria, and HIV. The company"s predictive products and vaccines in development are based upon the company"s discovery of replikins, a new group of peptides related to the rapid replication function in viral and other diseases. The company has designed unique products to predict the emergence of virulent strains of particular diseases (FluForecast(TM)) and is designing synthetic vaccines specifically tailored to combat a given strain and against shared properties of several strains (Syntope(TM) vaccines). The company is partnering with governments and the private sector in providing predictive tools and vaccines in furtherance of the public health initiative to prevent and combat epidemics. The company"s vaccines and predictive tools are based on the company"s discovery of a new group of peptides related to rapid replication called Replikins, whose increase in concentration in virus or other organism proteins (Replikin Count(TM) = number of replikins per 100 amino acids) is associated with rapid replication. Replikins, Ltd


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