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GeneNews Enters Into MOU With Shanghai Biochip to Establish First Sentinel Centre for Personalized Medicine

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In Control

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 6, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Singularity University (SU), the only educational institution uniquely focused on the impact and opportunities presented by exponentially advancing technologies, has announced a new high-level partnership with Genentech, one of the world's leading biotechnology companies. The announcement was made on the opening day of FutureMed, a signature SU program which explores the future of medicine through rapidly developing, disruptive, and convergent technologies and how they are poised to revolutionize healthcare.

Genentech will join Singularity University Founding Partners Autodesk, Cisco, Google, the Kauffman Foundation, Nokia, and ePlanet Ventures at the highest level of sponsorship, in addition to becoming a Platinum Sponsor of the 2012 FutureMed Program at Singularity University. FutureMed runs from February 6-11 on the SU campus at NASA Research Park at Moffett Field, California.

“We are very excited to welcome Genentech to Singularity University as our first large-scale biotech partner,” said Rob Nail, CEO of Singularity University. “It's a tremendous opportunity to be partnered with a company so committed to cutting edge science, innovation, and improving medicine and healthcare.”

The new partnership between Singularity University and Genentech will also support the annual SU Summer Graduate Studies Program, a 10-week graduate-level interdisciplinary curriculum designed to facilitate innovation across a broad range of scientific and technological disciplines whose developments are accelerating exponentially. The keystone of the program, the Ten to the Ninth Plus (10^9+) Team Projects, challenge students to develop services, products, companies and organizations that have the ability to positively affect the lives of one billion people within 10 years.

About Genentech (www.gene.com)

Founded more than 30 years ago, Genentech is a leading biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines to treat patients with serious or life-threatening medical conditions. The company, a member of the Roche Group, has headquarters in South San Francisco, California. Their current portfolio of pharmaceuticals includes therapies in Oncology, Immunology, and Infectious Disease. Genentech is also acknowledged for their commitment for Access To Care initiatives. Approximately $2.3 billion in free medicine has been donated through the Genentech Access To Care Foundation (GATCF) for at-risk and underinsured patients.

About FutureMed (www.futuremed2020.com)

FutureMed is a unique multidisciplinary and immersive hands-on experience, uniquely designed for healthcare professionals and those interested in medical related innovation. The week-long program educates and prepares physicians, senior health care executives, entrepreneurs and investors to understand and recognize the opportunities and disruptive influences of exponential and rapidly developing technologies. The implications of these technologies are poised to revolutionize medicine, healthcare, and the biotechnology industry in the decade ahead. Core tracks include Information/Data-driven and Internet enabled health care, Genomics and Personalized Medicine, Regenerative Medicine, Robotics & Future Interventional approaches, NeuroMedicine, Device & Drug development, and Entrepreneurship.

About Singularity University (www.singularityu.org)

Singularity University's mission is to assemble, educate, and inspire a new generation of leaders in business, science, finance, and government who strive to understand and utilize exponentially advancing technologies to address humanity's grand challenges. Since it was established in 2009, Singularity University has hosted students and industry leaders from 40 countries at its campus at NASA Research Park in California.

Singularity University offers both graduate studies and executive programs focused on the impact and incubation of exponentially growing technologies in six key areas: medicine and neuroscience, networks and computing systems, artificial intelligence and robotics, biotechnology/bioinformatics, nanotechnology, and energy and environmental systems.

Schedule of upcoming 2012 Singularity University Programs:
FutureMed: February 6-11, 2012
Executive Programs: April 11-18; October 13-20; December 1-8, 2012
Graduate Studies Program: June 16-August 26, 2012 (Application deadline: March 31)

For more information, visit: www.singularityu.org and http://www.FutureMed2020.com

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Unused medicine a toxic dilemma

Credit: DEAN HOFFMEYER/TIMES-DISPATCH

(l-r) Hampton University student Whitney Wills and George Mason student Nora Hassan learn about ultrasound echo (sonographic) equipment in practical use from VCU mediacl center resident Michael Vitto (right).

Medical student Kirbie Ewens peered over her classmate's shoulder as they watched an ultrasound demonstration.

Ewens, who is from Houston, originally wanted to be a pharmacist because her father is one. She changed her mind, she said, after shadowing a family physician.

“I was really inspired by the work he did and the way he connected with his patients,” Ewens said. “I decided that medicine would give me more of a hands-on opportunity to work with people.”

Ewens and dozens of other medical students and pre-med students from Virginia, Maryland and Washington universities attended a daylong program Saturday at the VCU School of Medicine.

The program was presented by the Student National Medical Association, a group with a mission of increasing the number of minority physicians and those who take care of underserved populations.

After morning sessions on clinical skills such as suturing and ultrasound techniques, the afternoon provided a dose of something more practical — politics.

A panel of health policy experts, including Sheldon Retchin, VCU vice president for health sciences; and Jack Lanier, chief executive officer of the Richmond Behavioral Health Authority; and politicians Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-3rd, and Del. Jennifer L. McClellan, D-Richmond, talked about local, state and national health policymaking.

“Oftentimes as physicians we overlook the importance of health policy, for health diversity research, for insurance programs that target minority communities,” said Priscilla Mpasi, president of the SNMA chapter at VCU.

Retchin said he is vice chair of a national health-care workforce commission that has never met because, while it was included as part of health-care reform, it wasn't funded.

“Here's a commission that was established in September of 2010. … It's a commission that has never met, cannot even discuss any elements regarding the workforce policy.”

McClellan said she cast a record number of “no” votes in the General Assembly last week, a period where legislators tackled high-profile gun laws and abortion policy. Physicians, she said, have to make their voices heard when policies that affect health care are being made. Legislators, she said, “are probably making it worse.”

“How many doctors do you think come to the committee meetings and talk to their legislators on a regular basis? It's not very many. So here's part of the problem we have. You have public policies that are being made by people about health care who don't fully understand the impact of what they are doing,” McClellan said.

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Future doctors talk policy

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– What type of healthcare financing and business models nurture entrepreneurship? Which novel approaches are enabling innovation? What does the future hold for personalized medicine? And how are global companies navigating diverse policies and regulations?

These questions and more will be addressed at this year’s MIT Sloan BioInnovations Conference: Driving Innovation & Entrepreneurship in a New Era. Now in its ninth year, the conference will be held on Friday, February 24, 2012 from 8am through pm at the Boston Marriott Cambridge located at Two Cambridge Center, 50 Broadway in Cambridge, MA. A poster session featuring MIT and other local university student research and networking session will follow. The 2011 conference attracted more than 250 participants from across the healthcare and life sciences industry, government, and academia.

Debuting this year is the MIT Sloan 2012 Healthcare Case Competition. Sponsored by the MIT Sloan Healthcare Club and AVEO Pharmaceuticals, the focus is on digital marketing for healthcare. A $4000 and $1600 cash prizes will be distributed to the first and second place teams.

Team Applications are due by 9pm February 9, 2012. For more information, please visit: http://sloanhcc.mit.edu/case-competition.html

Slated key note speakers for the conference are:

Chris Viehbacher, CEO of Sanofi; Phillip Sharp, Nobel Laureate and co-founder of Biogen and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.; and George Scangos, CEO of Biogen Idec.

Additional panel discussions will explore value network and open innovation business models in pharma; bringing value to limited partners and corporate investors; emerging market healthcare that tackles global challenges; and how personalized medicine is being used today.

“Our location in Kendall Square, which is one of the world’s leading biotechnology hubs, provides both MIT Sloan students and our conference attendees with key insights into the healthcare and life science industry,” says Conference Co-Chair Andrea Ippolito. “We are very excited about bringing together thought leaders from industry, academia, and government to facilitate healthy debate on current issues impacting two key healthcare growth drivers, that of innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Platinum sponsors for this year’s conference Philips Healthcare; Merck; and Sanofi.

For more information or to register for the conference, please visit: http://web.mit.edu/sloanhcc/bioinnovations/2012/index.html

The MIT Sloan Healthcare Club, formerly known as the Biomedical Business Club, leverages MIT’s unique cutting edge research, Boston’s biotech foundations, and leading area teaching hospitals to serve as a beacon for those in industry and academia through its annual BioInnovations Conference.

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Feb 1, 2012 – 21:24

Image Caption: DNA sequencing can reveal if a person is susceptible to certain types of disease (Keystone)

by Scott Capper, swissinfo.ch

Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, with over SFr9.5 billion ($10.35 billion) in profits for 2011, is looking to secure its future and betting on personalised medicine in the process.

Last week, the Basel-based firm made an offer worth $5.7 billion for Illumina, a San Diego company that makes machines which help decode DNA at lower cost.

It was ten years ago that the human genome was sequenced for the first time, at a cost of around $3 billion and a decade’s worth of research. Today, the goal is to cut the price tag to below $1,000 and carry out the sequencing in just a day.
 
Illumina is one of the front-runners to reach that target. On January 10, the company announced that it would have a machine capable of completing the task on the market by the second half of the year – though it is not alone in that claim.
 
While the cost of gene sequencing has dropped, its potential in medicine has been on the rise.
 
Sequencing helps identify new targets for pharmaceuticals. It also better defines patients that are most likely to respond to drugs. And with Illumina at the front of the field, Roche doesn’t want to be left behind.
 
“DNA sequencing is the foundation of personalised medicine,” said Karl Heinz Koch, analyst with Swiss equities broker Helvea. “Roche is weak in this field so far and cannot afford to miss the boat in this sector.”
 
Roche already expects a new generation of drugs targeted at specific groups of patients, a shift that is pushing the boundaries of modern medicine.

” We will need huge amounts of data that will have to be handled by very powerful computers and software so we can understand the underlying mechanisms and design preventive and therapeutic measures. “
Ernst Hafen, molecular biologist

Everybody’s different

In an interview with the Reuters news agency, CEO Severin Schwan compared advances in molecular biology that are improving understanding of how cells work to the revolution in medicine several centuries ago when doctors first started opening up patients' bodies.
 
“In ten years we would see half of our portfolio to be targeted therapies. And if anything, I would assume in 20 years this percentage is going to increase,” Schwan said.
 
Roche, the world's largest maker of cancer drugs, leads the pack in targeted therapies thanks in part to its closely integrated diagnostics arm that helps its pharmaceutical division pinpoint the gene mutations that its drugs should zero in on.
 
Half of the products in Roche's late-stage pipeline already have companion diagnostics – tests that determine if the patients are a genetic fit with the therapies.
 
Genetic testing has certainly changed the way medicine considers illnesses.
 
“We have learnt the same disease can have different causes depending on the person, and require different therapies,” said Ernst Hafen, a molecular biologist at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology.
 
“People also do not all react the same way to drugs. And all that depends on the environment and genetic factors.”

Financial incentives

Besides boosting its bottom line, Roche is hoping that better targeted medicines will also help cut healthcare costs.
 
Patients whose genetic makeup means they will not benefit from a drug simply will not get it, reducing spending on administering drugs as well as the cost of potential side effects. The costs of developing drugs could potentially also fall with cheaper clinical testing.
 
According to Koch, purchasing Illumina fits this strategy, even if the Californian company is playing hard to get after rejecting Roche’s hostile bid.
 
“Illumina is the highest quality company in this field, with a strong double-digit growth potential,” he told swissinfo.ch. “The sequencing technology is a bridge between discovering genetic dysfunctions and designing drugs or diagnostic tools.”
 
However, this bridging role means that more research is needed on the human genome and the development of diagnostics.
 
“We will need huge amounts of data that will have to be handled by very powerful computers and software so we can understand the underlying mechanisms and design preventive and therapeutic measures,” Hafen told swissinfo.ch. “We are only at the beginning.”
 
Cheaper genetic testing is already on the market. Sending a saliva sample to some US companies provides a person with an outline of their genetic makeup and the likelihood of developing some diseases, although the precision of the data is controversial and experts warn the results should be considered with the utmost circumspection.
 
Some observers of the pharmaceutical industry have raised questions about Roche’s intentions, such as whether the company is seeking to corner the gene patenting market and potential direct-to-consumer testing.

Future usage

Specialists also say that decoding entire DNA sequences is set to move from research institutes and government laboratories to the healthcare system as it becomes a more widespread. There has been speculation that the firm is betting that the technology could become a publicly marketed tool with a Roche label.
 
Sequencing the entire genome also changes the logic of diagnostics according to Alexandre Mauron, professor of medical bioethics at Geneva University.
 
“Traditionally, diagnostics involves a selection process, whereby a doctor decides which tests are carried out on a patient. With sequencing, diagnostics becomes simpler and potentially cheaper,” he said.
 
“But it also provides answers to questions that weren’t raised. So advising patients about their genetic makeup will become more important, because you can’t just simply ‘download’ that information and give it to them, without an explanation as to what data are relevant and why.”
 
Mauron points out though the patient will have a bigger say in the diagnostic process, and will in fact be able to claim ownership of any information produced. 
 
“It would be wrong for doctors to decide what a patient should know,” he told swissinfo.ch. This also means that providing expert counselling about genetic information will become even more important in the future, meaning the role of those providing it will have to be rethought.
 
The Geneva professor says there is no reason to feel concerned that the latest gene sequencing technologies will cause major problems in Switzerland.
 
“Swiss legislation on human genetic testing has enough scope to cover new technological developments and includes all the necessary ethical considerations,” he said. “The degree of genetic counselling must for example be proportionate to the wider implications of the tests carried out.”

Scott Capper, swissinfo.ch
(With input from Gaby Ochsenbein)

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Roche looks to personal future

SHANGHAI, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ — China Health Resource, Inc. (OTCBB: CHRI.OB – News), announced today that world renowned Traditional Chinese Medicine expert, Professor Liang Li, has been engaged to lead the Company's Gastrodia Deep Processing Research. The research initiative is focused on optimizing yields from raw Gastrodia and to find new potential uses of Gastrodia using deep processing.

Professor Liang Li, age 73, is currently a member of the State Modernization of Chinese Medicine Technology Industry (Sichuan) Base Expert Committee. He is also Professor Director of the Institute of Chinese Medicine in Mianyang City. Professor Li is currently employed by Tailing Bio Technology Co., Ltd as technology director; Chief Editor of “National TCM Herbal GAP Guide.” He participated in the world's traditional medicine event in Las Vegas, USA (Vitality Cup) and received the Gold award for best paper. His current focus is now in “Modernization of Chinese traditional medicine research and industrial development” & “Sichuan TCM origin Gastrodia planting standardized research” projects. He prepared the “Gastrodia ('TianMa') standardized planting procedure” (GAP).

“We are very excited at having Professor Liang Li lead our Gastrodia research. He is a highly accomplished and well known scientist in TCM,” stated Jiayin Wang, Chairman and CEO of CHRI. “Gastrodia is known by name by many but little scientific research has been devoted to it. Professor Li is one of the few experts worldwide in Gastrodia. Gastrodia has not received the level of research it deserves and we intend to take advantage of this opportunity. It is undervalued as a healthcare component and CHRI is planning to capitalize on this fact just as we did by creating a franchise in GAP DAR before others and making us a recognized leader in DAR,” added Mr. Wang.

About CHRI

China Health Resource, Inc. engages in the development, manufacturing, processing, marketing and sale of raw and pharmaceutical TCM products including Dahurian Angelica Root (DAR) and Rhizoma Gastrodiae and is only the provider of GAP quality DAR in the People's Republic of China under the registered Trademark Chuan Baizhi™. DAR, which is also known as “Bai Zhi” in Mandarin Chinese, is an herb that is employed as an ingredient in medicine, cosmetics and food, as well as used in TCM for the treatment of pain, swelling and pustule. The Company's DAR-related products include the Bailing Capsule, Yisheng Capsule, Kimchee-Mate and Fragrant Bag, all of which are sold through regional distributors. The Company was founded in 2001 and is based in Suining, Sichuan Province.

For more information refer to www.chinahealthresource.com.

Certain statements in this document regarding financial matters, other than historical facts, and statements of our expectations, intentions, plans and beliefs, constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, that are subject to certain events, risks and uncertainties that may be outside our control. The words “believe”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “optimistic”, “intend”, “will”, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. The company intends that such proclamations about future expectations, including future revenues and earnings, future business expansion plans, and all other forward-looking statements be subject to the safe harbors created thereby. Since these statements involve risks and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time, the Company's actual results may differ materially from expected results. These and other risks and uncertainties related to our business are described in greater detail in our filings with the Commission. The foregoing information should be read in conjunction with these filings. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made.

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