Body

DENVER, Colorado and TUSTIN, Calif., April 21, 2009--Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PPHM), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of cancer and serious virus infections, today reported that two preclinical studies presented during the AACR 100th Annual Meeting 2009 provided further confirmation of the immunomodulatory mechanisms contributing to the anti-tumor activity of its phosphatidylserine (PS) targeting antibodies.

April 21, 2009, Cambridge, UK – Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome (WHS) is a human disease caused by spontaneous genetic deletions. Children born with WHS have a characteristic set of facial features, including a wide flat nose bridge, downturned mouth, high forehead, and highly arched eyebrows. Other symptoms associated with this disease include heart defects, seizures, mental retardation, and skeletal abnormalities, and the severity of these symptoms varies between individual WHS patients.

PITTSBURGH, April 21 – The longer women breastfeed, the lower their risk of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular disease, report University of Pittsburgh researchers in a study published in the May issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

DALLAS – April 21, 2009 – Kidney damage associated with the autoimmune disease lupus is linked to a malfunction of immune cells that causes them to congregate in and attack the organs, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered in a mouse study.

In a separate study with an international team, the researchers also found that a certain set of genes appears to protect the kidneys from a different sort of immune attack in both mice and humans.

DURHAM, N.C. – So-called "silent" heart attacks may be much more common than previously believed, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

Studies show that each year, nearly 200,000 people in the U.S suffer a heart attack but may not realize it. These "silent" heart attacks aren't noted because they don't cause any pain – or at least any pain that patients believe is related to their heart – and they don't leave behind any telltale irregularities on electrocardiograms (ECGs).

Bioinformatics researchers from UC San Diego just moved closer to unlocking the mystery of how human cells switch from "proliferation mode" to "specialization mode." This computational biology work from the Jacobs School of Engineering's bioengineering department could lead to new ideas for curbing unwanted cell proliferation—including some cancers. This research, published in Nature Genetics, could also improve our understanding of how organs and other complex tissues develop.

Dr. Esther Chang describes the most recent developments in human trials of the first systemic, non-viral, tumor-targeted, nanoparticle method designed to restore normal gene function to tumor cells while completely bypassing normal tissue April 21 at an American Association of Anatomists (AAA) scientific session at Experimental Biology 2009 in New Orleans.

Several forms of cancer, including bladder cancer and multiple myeloma caused by the t(4;14) genetic abnormality, are associated with either overexpression or perpetual activation of the protein FGFR3. A team of researchers, at Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, has now generated evidence that FGFR3 might be a good therapeutic target for these diseases and developed an FGFR3-targeted antibody that had potent antitumor activity in mice transplanted with either human bladder cancer cells or t(4;14)-positive multiple myeloma cells.

The life of many individuals with inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis has been dramatically improved by treatment with drugs that target the protein TNF, so called anti-TNF therapies. However, anti-TNF therapies can decrease the ability of the immune system to fight infections and have been associated with an increased incidence of tuberculosis.

The Colorado River system supplies water to tens of millions of people and millions of acres of farmland, and has never experienced a delivery shortage. But if human-caused climate change continues to make the region drier, scheduled deliveries will be missed 60-90 percent of the time by the middle of this century, according to a pair of climate researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

BOSTON, Mass. (April 20, 2009) — Health care disparities in the U.S. have long been noted, with particular attention paid to the gaps separating racial and economic groups. And while some research has looked at how insurance—and lack of insurance—contributes to this imbalance, few, if any, studies have quantified the impact of universal coverage on differences in health outcomes between these groups.

Healthcare Reform should start with "evidence-based reimbursement", structuring physician payment incentives around existing empirical evidence of clinical benefit, which would improve quality and reduce the cost of healthcare, says a commentary written by two cardiologists and published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Healthcare Reform should start with "evidence-based reimbursement", structuring physician payment incentives around existing empirical evidence of clinical benefit, which would improve quality and reduce the cost of healthcare, says a commentary written by two cardiologists and published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Superobese gastric bypass patients appear to have improvements in quality of life and obesity-related co-existing conditions, and despite losing weight remain obese after surgery, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

With more than 30 muscles in your arm, controlling movement -- whether it's grasping a glass or throwing a baseball -- is a complex task that potentially takes into account thousands of variables.

But researchers at Northwestern University have shown that it could be possible to control a limb by stimulating groups of muscles rather than individual muscles -- a finding that could make it easier to restore muscle movements in people who have become paralyzed.