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What Genaissance did had nothing to do with mad cows per se. They're share price got goosed but all they really did was trace the lineage of several groups of cows. Genealogy companies like FTDNA do that kind of stuff every day.
Most scientists believe that mad cows are a result of a protein that's been "misfolded" and as such have nothing to do with genes.
Slopster, man. Lay off the fortune cookies. <g>
Considering the approval process is partly based on how much you can offer back to the university and community in a few years (so it's not first come, first serve) I'd think that it's probably a good deal. They get to scout young talent at the university and are in a natural spotlight for potential Tampa Bay investors. I would hope, though, that they don't need any venture capital types after this funding is done. It's certainly better visibility than 900 Coconut Ave.
Gotta go - got work to do...have a good day, people.
Yes - that patch of dirt is going to be DNAP's new home
Thanks, Ming. Wonder what the rent will be?
They have a little webcam. No building yet - they're getting ready to pour the perimeter foundation.
http://www.research.usf.edu/webcam/
yes, A few months ago I called Genelink to see if they still had a working relationship with DNAP. They said yes but wouldn't elaborate except to say that they rely on DNAP for processing the skin care kits. The impression that I got was that the relationship is somewhat dormant until GNLK and DNAP get more money to expand their operations. But that's just a guess.
nope. eom.
Also, I think DNAP's approach to "race based" medicine is a little different that what Craig Venter was describing. Venter is talking about homogeneous populations. He also seems to be inferring that population genomics is about finding differences in populations that are the root of things like negative drug response.
DNAP's point of view (as I understand it) is that the sequences for responsible negative drug response are, in fact, large in number and frequently occurring. That the AIMs often act like road signs that tell them where to go.
Interesting article. The thought struck me that Mr. Venter might have his own personal reasons for disregarding race-based medicine as he is actively pursuing the $1000 genome. Then again, he might be pursuing the $1000 genome partly because he doesn't buy into the whole "race-based" thing.
I thought this part was interesting because it seems to be very much true:
To Venter, the relatively low number of human genes indicates that there probably are not genes for every disease condition.
only 10 posts and you're already out of breath. you need to get in shape.
I think stockholder has a training video.
Cool. Thanks. Does it require a particular browser or is Safari ok?
Question - is anyone here using Ameritrade with OS X? Is there a streaming option available for OS X users?
I'm thinking about switching to Ameritrade but couldn't find any info on their website about streaming quotes for non-pc users. TIA.
shoot, you're just on the other side of the river from me. I live close to downtown PDX.
It's a fascinating story and I'm sure everyone at DNAP already knows about it. Ancestry is well suited for this kind of investigation but the problem is getting enough DNA from a 9,000 year old skeleton. I don't think they can do it. Maybe someday.
Kennewick Man will go to scientists
A federal court panel says four tribes, which sought to rebury the remains, failed to prove they were linked to the skeleton
02/05/04
RICHARD L. HILL
After seven years of uncertainty about the fate of Kennewick Man, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided that four Northwest tribes and the U.S. government had failed to show a tribal link to the 9,300-year-old skeleton and that eight prominent anthropologists could proceed with a study of the bones.
A three-judge panel of the court flatly rejected arguments that the skeleton -- discovered in 1996 in shallow water along the Columbia River at Kennewick, Wash. -- be turned over to four Northwest tribes for burial under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, called Nagpra.
Rob Roy Smith, a Seattle lawyer who argued the case for the tribes at a hearing in September, called the decision "a blow to cultural resource protection" that the federal law establishes.
"What the tribes have argued all along is that Nagpra is human rights legislation that created a presumption in favor of returning remains to tribes," Smith said. "Now they've reversed that presumption."
But the appeals court judges disagreed in a detailed 30-page decision. The scientists, who sued to assert their right to investigate the skeleton, were elated.
"That's fantastic news," Robson Bonnichsen, one of the anthropologists, said when told late Wednesday of the court's findings. "We've been waiting so long, and it's been so immensely frustrating."
Bonnichsen, who was at Oregon State University when the suit was filed and now is at Texas A&M University, said the scientists have a study plan prepared and will discuss their next steps within a few days.
Kennewick Man -- a collection of 380 bones and bone fragments now stored at the Burke Museum in Seattle -- is one of the oldest, most complete skeletons ever found in North America.
"There's so little known about (Kennewick Man's) time period that you have to take the opportunity to learn this individual's secrets when you have such an important discovery," said another plaintiff, Douglas Owsley, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Officials with the U.S. Justice Department and the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Colville and Yakama tribes will review the decision within a few days to determine whether they'll take a next step. That could be one of two things: asking the appeals court to rehear the case with an expanded panel of judges, or going to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Smith, who represented the Colville tribe, said tribal leaders and attorneys will have 45 days to decide.
In an opinion written by Judge Robert M. Gould, the appeals court judges supported a 2002 ruling made by Magistrate John Jelderks of the U.S. District Court in Portland. Jelderks had rejected a decision by former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to turn over the remains to Northwest tribes without a study.
The entire dispute has centered on the repatriation act, or Nagpra, which requires tribes to show affiliation with the unidentified remains they seek.
Age muddies test results The appeals court said the age of Kennewick Man makes it almost impossible to establish any relationship between the remains and modern Native Americans. Further, no evidence exists that shows the remains "are connected by some special significant genetic or cultural relationship to any presently existing indigenous tribe, people or culture," Gould wrote.
The opinion cited tests by government-appointed scientists that indicated cranial measurements and other features of Kennewick Man most closely resemble those of groups in Polynesia and southern Asia rather than modern Native Americans.
Babbitt's only evidence for a possible cultural relationship between Kennewick Man's group and modern tribes were oral histories, Gould said. "But we conclude that these accounts are just not specific enough or reliable enough or relevant enough to show a significant relationship" with the Columbia Basin tribes.
The wrangling began shortly after the bones were discovered by two college students wading in the river. Jim Chatters, a forensic anthropologist working for the coroner's office in Benton County, Wash., excavated the bones. No cultural artifacts were found, except for a spear point found in Kennewick Man's pelvis.
Chatters -- who was not one of the plaintiffs -- and other anthropologists thought the narrow skull was that of a 19th-century white settler until a radiocarbon test revealed the skeleton's age. He determined that the individual was a 5-foot-9-inch man who died in his mid-40s.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the land where the skeleton was found, ruled that the bones should go to Northwest tribes. The eight anthropologists sued, however, saying the corps did not follow federal law in making its determination. Jelderks agreed and ordered the decision be reassessed. The corps turned over the case to the Interior Department, which conducted its own tests.
New radiocarbon dates confirmed the skeleton's age, but attempts at three labs to conduct DNA tests of bone samples were unsuccessful.
Babbitt, in what he termed a "close call," ruled in September 2000 that Kennewick Man should be transferred to the tribes without further studies. The scientists then reactivated their lawsuit.
From a genetic point of view, I suppose Malaysia has a much more diverse population, so that's a bonus. Business-wise, well, I'm sure you know what a pain in the butt it is to get things done in Singapore!
Have a good evening.
If you go to your utilities folder and open up "Activity Monitor" you should see 5 buttons on the bottom half of the window. The default monitor is set to "CPU". All the way to the right you should see "Network"
If you click on "Network" it should give you a little line chart with packets in/out, total data in/out, and data transfer rate. If you don't see this then we might be running different versions. I'm on 10.3.2 - not sure if older versions are the same.
Let me know if that doesn't work for you.
I see. You're talking about the floating window? Sorry, don't know of a bandwidth equivalent.
Are you talking about the CPU monitor in the Activity Monitor window or a different monitor? I've always used the Network monitor under the same Activity Monitor to see data transfer rates.
ming, how did you know that Dr Jegathesan was connected to DNAPhenomics six months ago? I don't see the direct connection. Was it an educated guess? If so, it was a pretty damn good one!
Interesting article on a test that parallels DNAP's Taxol classifier. One might expect some of the same challenges/interest that Ovanome will have.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/03/health/policy/03CANC.html?ex=1076389200&en=811182a26e24d965&am...
New Cancer Test Stirs Hope and Concern
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: February 3, 2004
ill Doimer's mother died in 2002 from ovarian cancer, detected too late to be effectively treated.
So Ms. Doimer is eagerly awaiting the introduction of a new test that holds the promise of detecting early-stage ovarian cancer far more accurately than any test available now, using only blood from a finger prick.
Not only does she plan to be tested, but an advocacy group she helped found, Ovarian Awareness of Kentucky, also intends to spread the word to women and doctors.
"If it's going to happen to me or anyone I know, I want it to be caught at an early stage," said Ms. Doimer, who lives in Louisville.
The new test, expected to be available in the next few months, could have a big effect on public health if it works as advertised. That is because when ovarian cancer is caught early, when it is treatable by surgery, more than 90 percent of women live five years or longer. But right now, about three-quarters of cases are detected after the cancer has advanced, and then only 35 percent of women survive five years.
The test is also the first to use a new technology that some believers say could revolutionize diagnostics. It looks not for a single telltale protein — like the prostate-specific antigen, or P.S.A., used to diagnose prostate cancer — but rather for a complex fingerprint formed by all the proteins in the blood. Similar tests are being developed for prostate, pancreatic, breast and other cancers. The technique may work for other diseases as well.
"I've been in cancer research for 40 years and I think it's the most important breakthrough in those years," said Dr. John S. Kovach, director of the Long Island Cancer Center at Stony Brook University. "I think in 10 years ladies will have blood tests instead of a mammogram for breast cancer."
Some experts, however, say that the technique, while promising, is still unproved. They say the ovarian test in particular has not been adequately validated and is being put on the market prematurely through a route that does not require approval by the Food and Drug Administration. If the test is not accurate, they say, it could result in unnecessary surgery for biopsies or ovary removal for many women.
"Certainly there's no published work that would make me tell a woman she should get this test," said Dr. Nicole Urban, head of gynecologic cancer research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Three statisticians from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston analyzed data put on the Internet by the test developers and say they found various inconsistencies.
"We're saying that on the basis of the data they posted, no, we don't believe this works," said one of the statisticians, Dr. Keith A. Baggerly, assistant professor in the department of biostatistics and applied mathematics.
The test, called OvaCheck, was developed by Correlogic Systems Inc., of Bethesda, Md., with scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration.
Correlogic Systems has licensed the test to Quest Diagnostics of Teterboro, N.J., and Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, known as LabCorp, of Burlington, N.C., the nation's two biggest clinical laboratory companies. Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, which will compete, say they expect to begin offering the test in the next few months. The price is expected to be $100 to $200.
Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp will analyze blood samples sent by doctors, rather than sell test kits to doctors and hospitals. Tests performed at a central location do not require F.D.A. approval.
Diagnostic companies say such "home-brew" tests are a common way to make them available quickly and that for some tests it would not be economically practical to conduct the clinical trials needed for F.D.A. approval. At times, though, the agency has had concerns that such tests have not been adequately validated. The agency recently ordered Roche to take a complex genetic test off the market until it could be approved by the agency.
Dr. Emmanuel F. Petricoin III, an agency scientist who helped develop OvaCheck, said the criticisms of it were based "in some instances on not understanding the entirety of the science." And executives at Correlogic Systems, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp say it is not fair to cite lack of validation because they are validating the test now.
Gary Samuels, a spokesman for Quest Diagnostics, said his company and LabCorp were each testing the same 1,000 samples to see if they got the same results, a validation process he called "lengthy and meticulous." He said Quest Diagnostics expected to decide by the end of the month whether the test was reliable enough to market.
Brad Smith, executive vice president for public affairs at LabCorp, agreed, saying, "If we're not comfortable with it, it won't launch."
Many companies and academic labs have joined the race to find so-called biomarkers, blood components like proteins or lipids that can signal disease.
"There are very few diseases, when you really go through it, that we can diagnose with a simple blood or urine test," said Dr. Gordon Ringold, chairman and chief executive of SurroMed, a Menlo Park, Calif., company looking for such markers.
Until now, said Dr. Howard Schulman, vice president of research and development at SurroMed, "biomarker discovery has relied on knowing everything possible about the disease," searching for proteins involved in the cause of the disease.
But results have been sparse. In the last decade only about 10 proteins have been the basis for diagnostic tests approved by the F.D.A. For instance, Matritech Inc., a company in Newton, Mass., sells a bladder cancer screening test that looks for a protein called NMP22.
A single biomarker may not work because a disease is heterogeneous or because more than one condition can cause a protein's level to rise, resulting in false positives. That is the case with the P.S.A. for prostate cancer.
So, now, the search for biomarkers is shifting. Instead of trying to understand disease mechanisms, some companies are using new technology called proteomics to screen cells or blood rapidly, looking for proteins present in diseased people but not in healthy ones. Similar efforts are being used for genes and metabolites, substances like fatty acids made by cells.
Moreover, in many cases, scientists are trying to find not a single marker but several that could be used together to get a more accurate reading.
OvaCheck goes a step beyond that. It analyzes patterns made by all the proteins in the blood without even knowing what the proteins are.
In the tests, proteins in the blood sample are analyzed by a mass spectrometer, a complex machine that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The proteins are vaporized, given an electric charge and propelled down a tube. How fast they make the trip depends on their mass. The machine produces a squiggly graph that essentially shows the distribution of masses in the blood sample. There are thousands of data points, with spikes corresponding to particularly abundant proteins.
Correlogic Systems developed a computer program that analyzes these complex patterns and learns to distinguish between blood from patients with cancer and blood from those without.
When the technique was first tried on 116 blood samples from women whose disease status was already known, it correctly detected all cases of ovarian cancer, including 18 in the earliest stage. It classified only 5 percent of the noncancerous samples as cancerous. When the results were published in the medical journal Lancet in 2002, it suggested a powerful testing method was at hand.
"We think now that there is an entire ocean of biomarkers that never before was known to exist," said Dr. Petricoin. He is co-director of the clinical proteomics program run by the F.D.A. and the National Cancer Institute with Dr. Lance A. Liotta, who helped develop the ovarian test.
Ovarian cancer, which causes about 14,000 deaths a year in the United States, is now diagnosed with a test for a single protein called Cancer Antigen 125. But CA-125 is best at detecting a recurrence of cancer or a late-stage cancer, not a disease in the early stages. Vaginal ultrasound, another often-used technique, is also not so good for early-stage disease, experts say.
But experts say OvaCheck must give virtually no false positives to make it useful for general screening. Fifteen women out of 100,000 get ovarian cancer each year, said Dr. Beth Y. Karlan, director of gynecologic oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
So if OvaCheck were used for yearly checks on the whole population, even a 1 percent rate of false positives would mean 1,000 false diagnoses for every 15 cases detected.
Peter J. Levine, president of Correlogic Systems, said for that reason, the test would be recommended only for women at high risk for ovarian cancer, a population of about 10 million in the United States. This includes women with relatives who have had ovarian cancer, women who have had breast cancer, and women with mutations in genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2 that indicate a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Other experts said that women who tested positive would be given the CA-125 test and vaginal ultrasound to try to confirm the diagnoses, rather than being sent for surgery immediately.
Yet another problem, some experts said, is that the samples taken to test the technique so far have come mainly from women who were scheduled for surgery, meaning their cancer had produced noticeable symptoms. Dr. Petricoin conceded that it was unclear if the test would work equally well for early-stage ovarian cancer that does not produce symptoms, as is often the case.
Some experts say they would not trust a test in which the proteins being measured and their biological relationship to cancer are unknown.
"If you don't know what you're measuring, it's a dangerous black-box technology," said Dr. Eleftherios P. Diamandis, head of clinical biochemistry at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He said the rare proteins that might indicate cancer were likely to be drowned out by abundant proteins in the blood. "They are rushing into something and it could be a disaster," Dr. Diamandis added.
Dr. Petricoin countered that recent studies had shown that the rare proteins adhere to more abundant blood proteins, so their concentration is increased to detectable levels. And he said the failure to develop many biomarkers so far showed how hard it was to identify specific proteins. "We don't understand many of the basic mechanisms of cancer yet, and we think we have knowledge of what markers to use?" Dr. Petricoin said. "It's false."
Some critics say that for the test to be accepted, the Lancet data must be reproduced by others and the technique tested in larger trials.
For instance, Dr. Karlan of Cedars-Sinai said, a few years ago scientists were excited by early results of an ovarian cancer test using a marker called LPA, but results of a larger test were disappointing. LPL Technologies, a Cleveland company, is still working to validate that test.
The Lancet data could not be reproduced exactly even by the test developers. They found that the mass spectrometer they used, which was made for research, not high-volume work, produced different patterns even when the same samples were tested on different days. So they switched to a new machine.
William E. Rich, president and chief executive of Ciphergen Biosystems Inc., which made the equipment used in the Lancet study, said that the machines were reliable and that his company had stopped working with Correlogic Systems because "we don't have confidence in that approach." Ciphergen Biosystems, which is based in Fremont, Calif., hopes to introduce its own ovarian cancer test, based on three known proteins, by the end of this year, Dr. Rich said.
Developers of OvaCheck said that though different machines and sample preparation techniques resulted in different patterns, the computer could figure out how to discriminate cancer from noncancer. They retested the Lancet samples with different equipment and got the same good results, they said. With a larger sample, they had 100 percent accuracy, with no false positives. So as long as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp are consistent in how they process samples, they should get good results, they said.
And others have shown the approach works. Dr. O. John Semmes, an associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, is using protein patterns to develop a prostate cancer diagnostic. He said his group had found that multiple labs got the same results when they ran the same set of samples. Still, he said, more extensive validation is needed and is under way.
OvaCheck's developers plan to conduct a clinical trial to win F.D.A approval for diagnosing recurrences of ovarian cancer. A trial for approval as an early-stage diagnostic tool would take too long, they said.
Dr. Petricoin says that even if the test is not perfect, it is "blowing away what's being used now," like the CA-125 test.
"You have women right now that are getting prophylactic oophorectomies based on CA-125," he said, referring to the surgical removal of ovaries to prevent cancer.
For that reason, some doctors think the test will be in great demand from anxious women who view ovarian cancer as a death sentence.
"Before you mass-market to the uninformed, fearful population, it should be peer-reviewed," said Dr. Karlan of Cedars-Sinai. But when asked whether she would recommend her patients not get tested, she said: "It doesn't matter what I recommend. They are going to do it anyway."
The Flying Doctor? lol. Thanks.
Anyone watching the DOW right now? Look at all that overlap. Yuck.
Also - I don't object to what you say because I think you're a meanie. I may disagree with what you say but how you conduct yourself is a seperate issue. You keep confusing them.
Yup. Most people don't like to hang around with meanies. I don't see what's so wierd about it.
Your opinions aren't at issue. Nor is ethics. Nor is your self-assigned mantle as "bearer of news". The point of contention is your mean spirited behavior.
I don't think that the presentation of "rational evenhanded arguments" are so much the issue but rather the way that those arguments are presented. You make very little effort to get along with others to put it mildly.
lol. True. Even easier to do nothing at all.
You can rationalize all you want. But it doesn't change the fact that pharmaceutical companies are not interested in changing their core business right now.
Of course it's short sighted. But that's the way capitalism works. Wallstreet doesn't look beyond the next three months.
You can argue with me about it but you can't argue with reality. The reality is that pharmas will try to move into this business when there is something to move into or something to buy. Right now there's nothing.
But it's not more profitable. Its less profitable.
Moving towards personalized medicine opens up the market to a host of other potential competitors because the differences between drugs is quantifiable. The marketing dollars that the pharmaceutical industry is built on no longer work for them.
Secondly, and more importantly, all large pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded. The board of directors are under extreme pressure to perform for the short term. They are risk averse and as far as they are concerned, there is no long term. It costs them far less money to make one drug for millions of people than it does 10 different drug for the same group.
Yes, they probably know that change is coming. But they don't necessarily have the collective vision to do anything about it right now. Just look at Kodak. Did they miss the boat or what?
Maybe so. Whatever it is you two were talking about isn't available for me to see. I don't always catch things as they happen.
I beg to differ. But if you want to take up this grave injustice with someone who can make a difference then you need to talk to this person:
http://investorshub.com/boards/profile.asp?User=2744
Otherwise, leave it off the board. This isn't the first time I've had to mention this to you.
Sometimes its not the content of the post that is so important as what that post invites. Maybe I was overreacting. I apologize if I was. I dunno. If the board gets emotional, I try to err on the side of caution. Please understand that once people start hurling insults, its pretty hard to stop. It's like nuclear fission.
Miss Scarlet - sorry. that post couldn't stay, I know it was probably in jest but not everyone would know that.
I don't care what anyone else thinks. They can all be on your side.
So much for sticking to your guns. Since when do you judge the value of your own thoughts based on what others think?
I asked you to go back and justify you statement based specifically on what your little quote said. You couldn't do it.
Not ambiguous. At least it wasn't ambiguous here:
The PR specifically points out the ability of the product to determine the contribution of a single great grandparent. (Something not previously possible.)
You're just shooting from the hip as always. But maybe if you took the time to read the background literature you would get it right the first time.
Read it again. But this time think about it. The quote you just cited says, with no ambiguity, that it can determine low level admixture such as the contribution of a single great grandparent with more accuracy and sensitivity.
I would like for you to break down that quote and tell me how you arrive at the conclusion that 2.0 cannot detect 12.5% admixture.
The PR does not say that 2.0 cannot detect the contributions of a single great grandparent. You made that part up.
wow. you're more bearish than me. lol.
I'll be interested to see what you find. IMO - Bayer, AstraZeneca and all the others parter with GNSC for the same reason. They get access to a haplotype map for chump change and they don't have to give up much in return. Wether it's useful to them or not I have no idea.
bag -
I read through DNAP's statin application and the one thing that stood out to me was that there was a lot of information that wasn't reported in the present application. Atorvastatin was the only drug whose progress was detailed even though we know they've been working through the others as well.
IMO, the award of patents is not as pressing a concern as you might think. Ultimately, it's crucial. But the key right now is establishing more revenue streams. They need to get retinome and ovanome to a point of completion so that they are able to support themselves without further dilution once the 8MM runs out. That has to start soon because they are creating new markets with each product.
I haven't been following GNSC closely anymore. Their sudden shift to a service based business model doesn't make sense to me. How profitable can it possibly be? Especially when their one big stick, the haplotype map, is going to be published in the public domain in a few years?
I know that their initial results from the Strength trial were disappointing. The majority of the genes that turned up in that study were false positives and the one gene that they did trump as a success was already in the public domain.