About ERIX
EiRx Therapeutics is a specialist provider of pre-clinical therapeutics to the pharmaceutical industry. Our unique scientific expertise and knowledge in the field of Apoptosis provide a sound base to discover and develop new medicines that will safely and selectively repair this natural process in disease. The potential benefits from these new medicines are enormous, since as many as 70% of all human disease have some defect in the control of Apoptosis.
Apoptosis - the biological process that determines whether cells in our bodies live or die...
http://www.eirx.com/index.html

Purchased some of these on the strength of the PROGRESS UPDATE looks promising.
http://moneyam.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200603200701130254A.html

ERX interview with John Pool
http://www.wallstreetreporter.com/interview.php?id=18589&player=real
Latest News
CANCER COLLABORATION WITH BIOMERIEUX SA
http://moneyam.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200607120700230534G.html
Biomerieux Web Site
http://www.biomerieux.com/servlet/srt/bio/portail/home
ABOUT ERX Focus Of The Month
http://www.billamag.net/focus-document-text.asp?FocusTextID=1
ERX pdf filehttp://www.eirx.com/eirx_heading_images/Yokohama2005.pdf
19/09/2006 A 50% reduction in breast tumour volume size seen with Eirx lead molecule in animal studies
http://moneyam.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200609190700171175J.html

Past and present collaborative partners include:

* bioMieux SA
* Almac Diagnostics Ltd
* Merck & Co, Ltd
* Biofocus plc
* MGI Pharmaceuticals, Inc
* OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc
* Sareum plc
* Regen Therapeutics plc
* SR Pharma plc

Dont be touchy, did I say there was anything wrong with it?

up and no buys, just sells.. very odd

in case any of you are wondering why ZYZ are buying PYC shares, think about it, our director sits on ZYZ board, to take over PYC we will need a controlling share, ZYZ bought ERX shares in 2005 for .0030 and are now selling ERX at .0030, reason.. M&A taking place.

I also think the reason why this is happening is ERX know how much money is coming from OSI and MGI and its far more than we were estimating.

rerating - M&A def on the cards

last chance... rumour of news tomorrow

???? just looking back to see where you said that before ! : )

Be fair smiler, at least this time the word rumour is included.
LOL

I'd heard there was only a rumour that there may be a rumour of news tomorrow, or Monday...maybe Tuesday or perhaps some other day! ;-)
kim

financials out tomorrow

OK NO FINANCIALS.

Were you the only one who did not know that they are not due yet PH?!!
kim

hehehehe they are due in december.. but noone said anything. ;-)

a little trap

Ewing's Sarcoma - Apoptotic And Anti-angiogenic Therapies Work Better Together Than Alone
Main Category: Cancer / Oncology News
Article Date: 13 Nov 2006 - 0:00am (PST)
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Prague, Czech Republic: American researchers have found that giving a combination of imantanib (Glivec [1]) and a drug that induces cell death (apoptosis) was better at inhibiting the growth of Ewing's sarcoma in mice than either therapy on its own.

Imantanib works by preventing the creation of new blood vessels to supply the growing tumour (anti-angiogenesis) and the researchers believe that this is the first report of synergy between apoptosis and anti-angiogenic therapy in pre-clinical work.

Professor Andrea Hayes-Jordan reported to the EORTC-NCI-AACR [2] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Prague today (Friday 10 November) that treating sarcoma cells with imantanib inhibited a growth factor called PDGFR-beta. This had the effect of increasing the sensitivity of the cells to a drug called tumour necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL).

Prof Hayes-Jordan, assistant professor of surgery and pediatrics at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA, said: "When I treated the tumour cells with imantanib, the anti-angiogenic drug, the receptors for TRAIL, the apoptotic drug, increased, thus increasing the efficacy of TRAIL. This was supported by the mouse studies, which showed increased inhibition of pulmonary metastases and primary tumour growth when both were used simultaneously. These findings are important because, if it proves to be effective in humans, it would be well tolerated and have significantly fewer side effects than traditional cytotoxic therapy. Also, at present, we have no effective chemotherapy for pulmonary metastases - the only effective treatment is surgery - so this would give us another option."

Prof Hayes-Jordan hopes to investigate the dual therapy in humans in a clinical trial within 12-18 months.

Abstract no: 474

1. Glivec is known as Gleevac or Gleevec in the USA.
2. EORTC [European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer, NCI [National Cancer Institute], AACR [American Association for Cancer Research].

Monday, November 13, 2006
CASH-STRAPPED SCIENCE

With research funding falling, is the nation jeopardizing future medical breakthroughs?

By Elizabeth Cooney TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
ecooney@telegram.com





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Nobel Prize winner Dr. Craig C. Mello says that falling research funding comes just as there are rising biomedical opportunities, creating a crisis in medicine.
(T&G File Photo)
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New Nobel Prize winner Dr. Craig C. Mello beamed as waves of applause washed over him from scientists, students, academic administrators and local politicians. But he wasted no time before leveraging his newfound celebrity.

Astonished that he and colleague Dr. Andrew Z. Fire were recognized so quickly for their seismic 1998 discovery of how nature can silence genes, he thanked his well-wishers at University of Massachusetts Medical School and then raised his voice in an urgent call to save science and lives.

Were losing time now because were not spending enough money to do research, he said. As a consequence of not acting, we are sentencing people to death when we could help them be treated with new drugs.


Dr. Mello believes the mismatch between falling research funding and rising biomedical opportunities creates a crisis that cant wait. After his award was announced last month, he was flooded with e-mails from hundreds of people facing disease and looking for hope. Many of them know that genes are implicated in their diseases, but they have also learned that identifying the genes is not enough. Drugs need a target to attack, and that pathway can take years to find, plus a decade more for development and regulatory approval.

What Dr. Mello, 45, and Dr. Fire, 47, discovered can dramatically speed up that search, especially when combined with the human genome sequence. The two scientists revealed how certain forms of RNA, once considered only a messenger for DNA, can turn genes on or off. RNA interference, or RNAi for short, holds the promise of treating or curing diseases by blocking genes.

Right now RNAi has revolutionized how biomedical science is done. Researchers can switch off genes in cells cultured in a laboratory dish to understand what they do in people in a fraction of the time and cost it used to take studying the same thing in specially bred animals.

In a way, the rapid and widespread adoption of the tool has unleashed more demands for funding to capitalize on these advances. Theres already a lag between RNAis discovery and the funding to support its use in experiments that also use the genome sequence, Dr. Mello said.The genome sequence, which identified the 30,000 genes that make up the human genetic code, is like a map for unexplored territory and RNAi provides a way to get to places on the map.

Theres just a huge potential for curing and identifying the cause of human disease and these opportunities just didnt exist a few years ago, he said. I think I feel it more because I have a child who has diabetes. It just really brings it home when you have a family member depending on a therapy every day.

When Dr. Mello and Dr. Fire reported their RNAi discovery, funding for the National Institutes of Health was just beginning a doubling of its budget, from $13.7 billion in 1998 to $27.1 billion in 2003. That five-year surge capped more than 20 years of increases.

Congress kept NIH funding flat in 2006 at $28.6 billion, but medical inflation meant a real decline of $80 million, according to the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research Funding. Increases made during the doubling period will vanish by the end of next year, scientists say, leaving it at the same level as if there had been 4 percent annual increases.

I would say we are living through a very difficult time for the individual scientist, said Dr. Norka Ruiz Bravo, deputy director for Extramural Research at NIH. It is a time when we have tremendous opportunities and yet we also have as a country made choices, difficult choices about the budget. If there were a way to have our cake and eat it too, that would be a wonderful thing.

NIH decides which projects get funded by the peer-review system. Individual scientists prepare grant applications that are examined by experts in the field who evaluate them based on scientific merit. They recommend approval, rejection or resubmission after more work is done. Individual institutes that are part of NIH make decisions on funding.

Dr. Michael P. Czech, chairman of molecular medicine at UMass Medical School, has served on review committees where, of 20 grant applications, only two go on to be funded.

Its heartbreaking because you have probably 30 percent to 40 percent of grant applications that look truly exceptional and have the potential to make breakthroughs in many different diseases, he said. Its a squandering of fantastic potential.

Dr. Mello isnt sure he and Dr. Fire, then working at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, would have gotten the grants that led to RNAi approved in todays more competitive environment. He was studying embryonic development in the worm c. elegans at UMass, for example, when they happened upon the gene-silencing mechanism.

Andy Fire and I might have had a hard time getting funded right now, even though we had great ideas, Dr. Mello said. I didnt have an NIH grant for RNAi research when we were first working on RNAi. We just pursued it.

Scientists fear that in the atmosphere of shrinking funding, basic science will suffer.

Really good dedicated people work at NIH. They have to choose between science that is clearly and immediately going to help people and the other types of research. If you end up with a situation where there are opportunities we have now for basic investigation, but not the resources to really follow them up, you end up watching the science die, said Dr. Fire, now at Stanford. I dont think science is going to die, but there are projects ongoing that are essentially being cut back or stopped because there arent the resources to follow them up.

Dr. Ruiz Bravo from the NIH said decisions are still made on the strength of the science.

Dr. Aldo A. Rossini, chief of the division of diabetes at UMass, lost a lab team researching diabetes after the lead scientists grant was denied. He and colleague Dr. Dale L. Greiner see a chilling effect on young researchers whose salaries cant compete with industry and who are waiting longer and longer for their first grants, called R01s, to be approved. The average age for scientists with a Ph.D. to receive their first R01 awards has climbed from 34 in 1980 to 42 in 2001. With grants come faculty appointments and job security.

Young people dont see this as a financially rewarding career, Dr. Rossini said. We need to do something more.

Dr. Greiner is concerned about the future, when senior researchers have retired and younger scientists will be looking for mentors. A lost generation will have traded post-doctoral positions paying $40,000 to $50,000 a year for industry jobs with starting salaries ranging from $75,000 to $100,000 a year.

Many have left science because of the funding crunch, he said. Its hard to keep your enthusiasm for a profession for which you get very little reward.

Academic research funded by NIH is just one part of the scientific enterprise, pointed out Patrick Larkin, director of the Massachusetts Technology Collaboratives Innovation Institute. If that foundation is cracked, the whole structure suffers.

What it really means is the downstream growth potential for our economy is at risk because historically we have leveraged federal research dollars to grow new ideas, new companies and new jobs, he said. When these dollars dry up, our most competitive position gets hurt.

The money that flows to NIH is determined by Congress, so thats where patient advocates like Dorothy Hargrove of Worcester are raising their voices. An American Cancer Society volunteer for 30 years and an 8-year cancer survivor whose sister died of cancer, she is passionate about securing support to prevent cancer and improve the quality of life for those affected by it.

She joined 10,000 other activists who went to Capitol Hill in September, seeking promises from their representatives that they would vote for an increase in funding for the National Cancer Institute, part of NIH.

You can pink-ribbon all you want, she said. But we want research, not pink ribbons.

U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, hopes the newly elected Congress will choose to significantly increase funding for NIH.

If weve got $400 billion to spend in Iraq or on medical research, I tell you, the world will be a lot better and safer place if you spend it on medical research, he said. The money exists. Our priorities are what are screwed up.

Interesting pot head but any chance you could just put the link in ? : )

You can buy any amount but can't sell any, avoid this one guys it's going to tank now

Well The Master, I think there is something afoot, and it smells dodgy.

I only have a very few quid in here, so I can be objective and watch and learn.

just went to sell and No problem !! sww I to only have a small holding so happy to wait and see what happens

What are you talking about 'TheMaster'. Just press your Trades button. People are selling (and buying, too). Got a short position out by any chance?

will hit 0.4 before xmas

Back from Bonny Scotland I see I havent missed much there must be some news on the horizon or at least before xmas, up tomorrow (only because Im back).