Companies: NEJM
NEJM last week published a quartet of perspectives offering a range of opinions on the value of GWAS and DTC testing, but two critical articles in particular caused financial analysts and the American news media to conclude that the perspectives could negatively impact companies that provide tools for these studies.
HPV Test Decreases Cervical Cancer Deaths in Indian Study
Researchers from France and India reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine that human papillomavirus testing significantly decreased cervical cancer deaths among previously unscreened women in rural India, whereas cytology and visual screening methods had little effect on mortality.
Genetics Improves Some Warfarin Dosing; Clinical Trials Next
A paper appearing in today's issue of NEJM demonstrates that combining genetic and clinical data can improve stable warfarin dose predictions — especially for those taking high or low doses of the drug. Now, large clinical trials in the US and Europe are slated to test the effect such dosing improvements have on clinical outcomes.
NHLBI plans to launch next month the prospectively designed, randomized-controlled study, called Clarification of Optimal Anticoagulation through Genetics trial, which will follow 1,200 patients to see if PGx-guided dosing is clinically useful.
St. Jude's Leukemia Researcher Receives ABI Sequencing Prize
Charles Mullighan and Applied Biosystems researchers will use the ABI SOLiD 3 system to detect genetic changes related to acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Feb 4, 2009