University of Manchester: New collections launched on Manchester Digital Collections. “The Syriac Manuscripts and The Museum of Medicine and Health are the latest additions to the University’s world-class image viewer, giving users all over the world access to the unique collections held at the University of Manchester.”
EurekAlert: Using virtual populations for clinical trials. “A study involving virtual rather than real patients was as effective as traditional clinical trials in evaluating a medical device used to treat brain aneurysms, according to new research. The findings are proof of concept for what are called in-silico trials, where instead of recruiting people to a real-life clinical trial, researchers build digital simulations of patient groups, loosely akin to the way virtual populations are built in The Sims computer game.”
EurekAlert: Personalised medications possible with 3D printing. “Customised medicines could one day be manufactured to patients’ individual needs, with University of East Anglia (UEA) researchers investigating technology to 3D ‘print’ pills. The team, including Dr Andy Gleadall and Prof Richard Bibb at Loughborough University, identified a new additive manufacturing method to allow the 3D printing of medicine in highly porous structures, which can be used to regulate the rate of drug release from the medicine to the body when taken orally.”
UCLA: UCLA researchers digitize massive collection of folk medicine. “A project more than 40 years in the making, the Archive of Healing is one of the largest databases of medicinal folklore from around the world. UCLA Professor David Shorter has launched an interactive, searchable website featuring hundreds of thousands of entries that span more than 200 years, and draws from seven continents, six university archives, 3,200 published sources, and both first and second-hand information from folkloric field notes.”
Indiana University: #IDBoardReview Case Studies a Hit on Twitter. “Every evening, [Dr. Saira] Butt posts a case study on the @IUIDFellowship account and invites others to guess the diagnosis. (A brief warning: some of the photos that accompany the case studies are graphic, and may disturb the squeamish.) She responds to the suggestions, questions and guesses, and sometimes posts additional information, before finally revealing the correct diagnosis. She says she draws case studies from textbooks, the CDC website, and other Infectious Diseases resources, sometimes making minor alterations to the patients’ histories to further anonymize or vary them.”
Politico: Game-changing coronavirus medicine gears up for production. “Amid alarming spikes in infections and a wave of new restrictions announced across Europe, some good news is emerging: Monoclonal antibodies are likely to be the first game-changing therapy against COVID-19. Big drugmakers have ample experience in manufacturing these kinds of medicines, and their existing facilities can readily be converted to produce doses of a future COVID-19 treatment, experts say.”
Chronicle Live: Operating Theatre Live goes online with free lessons for teens during coronavirus lockdown. “Award-winning show Operating Theatre Live is now running free online lessons for teenagers in lockdown. The show – described as the UK’s only touring surgical experience – has launched an educational channel to help 14 to 19-year-olds with distance learning. The viewers will follow the role of a trauma doctor as body systems are dissected and can ask questions during a live stream through social media.”
France24: Medicine shortage looms over coronavirus-hit Europe. “While the world waits for a coronavirus vaccine, medicines used to deal with the symptoms of the disease are increasingly in critically short supply in Europe, the worst-hit continent. From sedatives needed to intubate patients struggling to breathe to anti-malarial drugs heavily backed by US President Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic is eating up stocks.”
Regulatory Focus: FDA Launches Searchable Purple Book. “The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday unveiled the first version of its searchable online database of biological product information, known as the Purple Book. Building off the previous PDF lists of biological products, the database now allows for easier searches and includes information on product names (proprietary and proper), the type of biologics license application (BLA) that was submitted, strength of the biologic, dosage form, product presentation, license status, BLA number and approval date.” I didn’t know how a “biological product” was defined. I got educated via this FDA PDF.
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland: Cataloguing of RCPI’s historic book collection complete. “The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland is celebrating an important milestone in the ongoing project to catalogue our historic library holdings. We have now catalogued all the books in our collection, with all 14,718 items now available in our online library catalogue. This significant project, led by Keeper of Collections, Harriet Wheelock, has taken ten years to complete.” The link provided in the announcement doesn’t work, but if you remove the leading www it works fine.
BusinessWire: Kramer Levin Launches Biologics Law Blog (PRESS RELEASE). “Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP today launched the Bio Law Blog, which provides insights into intellectual property law and regulatory developments for biologic medicines. The blog is edited by Kramer Levin partners Irena Royzman, Ph.D., Jonathan S. Caplan and Hannah Lee.” I wasn’t sure what “biologic medicine” was, but MedicineNet helped me out.
Newswise: Women Have Substantially Less Influence on Twitter than Men in Academic Medicine. “Women who are health policy or health services researchers face a significant disparity in social media influence compared to their male peers, according to a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Although the average number of tweets among all researchers tend to be consistent, women trail behind men in follower counts, regardless of how active they are on Twitter.”
International Business Times Singapore: NTU scientist develops digital tool to study ancient traditional medicines all over the world. “In collaboration with the Research Centre for Digital Humanities at the National Taiwan University and recently NTU’s Office of Information, Knowledge and Library Services, Assistant Professor Michael Stanley-Baker designed the digital tools platform DocuSky. This tool was designed to track medical products derived from animals, plants and minerals across different genres of texts—in particular, the digitised Buddhist and Daoist canons, as well as early medical literature.”
UKAuthority: UK may lose access to verified medicines database. “Patients will be at risk from fake medicines if the UK leaves the EU without a deal because access to a new EU-wide database could be lost, pharmaceutical leaders have warned.”
500 Women Scientists: 500 Women in Medicine launches to improve gender equity in medicine . “500 Women in Medicine (500WIM) is a satellite of 500 Women Scientists established by Kate Gerull, Jane Hayes, Iris Kuo, Maren Loe, and Tamara Sanchez-Ortiz, five medical students on a mission to improve gender equity in medicine. For the past 25 years, women have represented greater than 40% of medical school matriculants but continue to be underrepresented in positions of academic medical leadership: Women account for only 22% of full professors, and 16% of deans and department chairs in U.S. medical schools. The trends suggest that the number of talented women in medicine is not lacking, but rather the promotion and advancement of women is stifled.”
