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The growth of brain tumor is halted with abemaciclib: a novel new drug

Meningioma is a brain tumor that is not metastatic and occurs even after a patient undergoes surgery and radiation. In such a situation, the patient with brain tumor is left with no treatment option.

Such aggressive tumors cannot be treated with drugs. These tumors occur in about 20% of the cases, making patients disabled or even prone to death.

Currently, researchers at the Northwestern University of Medicine have collaborated with the University of California and the University of Hong Kong.

They are on a mission to develop a novel drug that can inhibits the development of meningiomas. They are the most aggressive form of brain tumors. They are also working on identifying how accurately the drug are effective in destroying meningiomas.

These scientists have developed a new drug named abemaciclib, which is an anti-cancer agent. The drug was tested successful in a human clinical trial of selected patients. It was also tested on animal model of mouse.

Moreover, a three-dimensional brain tumor was extracted from living tissues. Such a tumor was known as organoids, and the drug was tested on this organoid and other cell cultures.

Investigators created two subgroups of meningiomas as their clinical outcome and recurrence rates were different. This new method of classifying tumors was more effective in predicting the recurrence rate as compared to the existing method.

Currently, patients with brain tumor have to undergo surgery. After undergoing surgery, a specimen of the tumor is examined by the doctor under a microscope and graded according to its aggression: one, two, or three.

But gradation of tumors has only 70% accuracy level. This implies that some tumors would behave in a way that does not resemble the specimen observed under the microscope.

In this study, we identified the patient who were suitable for being treated with abemaciclib, the novel anti-cancer drug. It is highly likely that the brain tumor of these patients would respond to this drug.

According to the lead investigator of this study, the drug has the potential to give such patients a longer life that is devoid of any symptoms. Dr. Stephen Magill is the corresponding author of this study and practices neurological surgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. This study was published in the esteemed journal Nature Genetics.

 

 

 

 

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Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine prevents 110,000 deaths in the US

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has a profound impact on the health of American citizens, ever since it was introduced on a commercial scale this year in the US. This finding has been published in the latest report of the esteemed Journal of Medical Economics.

The vaccine was introduced in the year 2021 in the US, and it became the most widely used vaccine against COVID-19 in the US. The vaccine has been successful in preventing 8.7 million cases of coronavirus. In fact, it was so effective that it prevented 690,000 cases of hospitalization and even about 110,000 deaths in the US.

The healthcare industry has been able to save more than 30 billion dollars due to this vaccine. Moreover, it has also prevented $ 40 billion in what could have been lost productivity of patients and people prone to developing coronavirus.

Pfizer-BioNTech was the first COVID-19 vaccine to have been made commercially in the US. In fact, almost six out of ten American citizens received this vaccine according to the Center for Disease Control, which is a leading public health agency in the US.

The market research study was conducted by authors who received funding from Pfizer. The authors were either employees or consultants of Pfizer. They used a real-world model to test the clinical trial data and estimate the number of cases with symptoms of COVID-19.

They also estimated the number of hospitalizations and deaths that could have occurred in the year 2021 if the vaccine had not been provided to these subjects. Moreover, they estimated the impact of these cases on the existing healthcare system and economy in general.

In the clinical trial model, the authors fed the following data: the number of people vaccinated, the efficacy of the vaccine according to different age groups, the probability of developing COVID-19, the symptoms developed, and the chances of being hospitalized.

The long-term effects of COVID-19 were also considered in the number of working days lost by the patient. The infection was classified as the leading cause of premature deaths, causing an economic burden on the country.

This research study has some limitations, which could have led to an underestimation of figures. The authors did not take into account the potential the vaccine had in reducing the transmission of COVID-19.

The severity of the cases was also not considered. Moreover, the authors did not measure the overall impact that long-standing COVID-19 cases had on the economy.  The research model did not take into account the omicron variant of the COVID-19 as it emerged much later.

 

 

 

 

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American Chemical Society and JISC sign an agreement to promote open access publishing in the the UK

                         

Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is a consortium that announced its partnership with the American Chemical Society (ACS) for publications. With this development, researchers across the UK would have better access to articles in OA journals and periodicals of chemistry.

The publications department will not charge any money from the researcher for publishing articles in the OA format in ACS journals. These researchers have to be affiliated to universities and institutes in the UK. All the scientific articles are accessible through the open access (OA) model. The agreement between ACS and JISC would be effective for three years, dated May 2022.

JISC’s content marketing head, Anna Vernon, issued a press release stating the agreement between ACS and JISC is remarkable for all researchers based in the UK. As the OA movement is gaining momentum, they will now be providing many OA publishing modes in all ACS journals. This would facilitate collaborations between authors, institutions, and publications of chemistry. Thus, researchers in the UK would be improving their work and discoveries in the world of chemistry and interdisciplinary areas.

James Milne, the president of the publications department of ACS, also issued a press statement, emphasizing how transformative was the impact of this innovative agreement with JISC. World-class path-breaking research is being conducted by scientists in the UK. They regularly publish their work in ACS journals, which always adhere to high standards of quality and integrity. With this agreement, the reach of chemistry articles will be extended to the global community of chemists. The findings published would benefit both the funder and the institutions.

In recent times, ACS has been quietly making efforts to transition into the OA model of publications. Its read and publish program is a significant effort in this direction, supporting OA researchers. The program is being practiced in more than 400 institutions and more than 20 countries, enabling rapid growth in the readership of OA articles. ACS is a society that is committed to innovations in the open science movement, serving its growing demand in the author and reader communities.