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Indian
amongst Cisco's new generation technology leaders
San
Jose, US: Cisco Systems, Inc. has announced the appointment
of Charles H. Giancarlo to the position of Chief Technology
Officer (CTO) as part of its drive to reshape its technology
organization. Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president and
11-year Cisco veteran, will lead the newly formed Security
Technology Group, reporting to senior vice-president and
Chief Development Officer, Mazzola. Amongst other changes
announced, Tony Bates, vice president and general manager,
will now have sole responsibility for the Carrier Core
Multiservice Business Unit, reporting to Prem Jain and
Mike Volpi, both senior vice presidents of the Routing
Technology Group. Giancarlo holds an M.B.A. from Harvard
and M.S. and B.S. degrees in electrical engineering from
the University of California at Berkeley and Brown University,
respectively. Cisco Systems, Inc., is a worldwide leader
in networking for the Internet.
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Filters
to reduce mad cow disease proteins from blood East Hills
US: Pall Corporation has unveiled an innovative, proprietary
technology that reduces prions from blood prior to a transfusion
at the annual meeting of the International Society for
Blood Transfusion (ISBT) in Edinburgh, Scotland today.
The
soon to be released Leukotrap(R) Affinity Prion Reduction
Filter will provide the dual benefit of reducing harmful
white blood cells while also reducing infectious prions,
the rogue proteins that cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease (vCJD).
The
Company presented the latest animal model research results
in anticipation of launching the new filter in Europe
in early 2005, where the problem of vCJD, the human form
of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease,
is most critical. The Pall prion reduction technology
will provide a multi-targeted approach to blood safety
by reducing leukocytes and infectious prions that are
either cell associated or non-cell associated. In blood,
about 60 percent of prion infectivity resides in leukocytes
(cell-associated) and about 40 percent in plasma (non-cell
associated). Research results show that the new filter
has an affinity to all types of prions, including aggregated,
denatured and normal.
The specter of prion transmission from human-to-human
via a blood transfusion came to the forefront in December
2003 when a case of vCJD was identified in a person who
received a blood transfusion six years earlier from a
donor who later died of the disease. Since vCJD has an
unknown, albeit lengthy, incubation period that is asymptomatic,
there is no way to know how many people already have the
disease and how many could have already transmitted it
via blood transfusion. Although the incidence of new cases
of vCJD have appeared to slow down over the past few years,
many experts believe we should not be lulled into a false
sense of security. Since the disease has an unknown incubation
period without clinical sign or symptoms, a proportion
of the population could be harboring vCJD and acting as
blood donors.
The existence of sub-clinical prion carriers raises concerns
of a human-to-human wave of transmission, posing a potential
threat to the safety of the blood supply. These experts
contend that the possibility of further increases in the
number of cases, even a human epidemic of vCJD, cannot
be dismissed. Prion diseases are fatal, neurodegenerative
diseases, referred to as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies
(TSEs) that affect both humans and animals. They include
scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy in
cattle and variant CJD in humans. It is estimated that
the incubation period (prior to clinical symptoms) for
variant CJD may be anywhere between 10 to 20 years. Since
the first human case of vCJD was identified in 1994, there
have been 154 confirmed cases worldwide with the vast
majority (143) in the United Kingdom. On December 17,
2003, the Secretary of Health of the United Kingdom announced
the first case of a patient dying from variant CJD received
from a blood transfusion during an operation. Pall Corporation
is the leader in the rapidly growing field of filtration,
separations and purification.
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Grid
Computing adoption rises by 75 per cent
Santa Cruz, US: Survey findings from Evans Data
Corporation new Database Development Survey Summer 2004
show that grid computing has risen by more than 75 per
cent in the past six months. Thirty seven percent of database
developers are implementing or planning to implement a
grid computing architecture. According to an Evans' database
analyst, data warehouses will only keep getting bigger.
As companies can't afford to keep upgrading their systems
and hardware to support these massive repository and associated
tools, grid computing offers an intelligent way for companies
to better redeploy IT systems existing within their enterprises.
One out of three database developers planning to use grid
technology indicated that Business Intelligence software
is the expected target for the new computing architecture.
The study also found that the recent increase in IT budgets
means more database developers and managers are concentrating
on Business Intelligence software.
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WHO
pre-qualification list: New anti-Aids
Medicines
Bangkok/Geneva: Four new AIDS medicines are this
week being added to the World Health Organization (WHO)
pre-qualification list, thus further increasing access
to a choice of quality products. At the same time, product
assessment reports on quality and bio-equivalence of triple
fixed-dose combination (FDCs) antiretrovirals already
pre-qualified will be made public. Manufacturing site
inspection findings will soon also be published, which
will make the WHO pre-qualification the most transparent
of all similar quality assurance programmes to date.
The
four new products being added to the list are: lamivudine
(150 mg tablet) from a newly prequalified generic manufacturer
and the antifungal fluconazole in three different strengths
(50 mg, 150 mg, 200 mg capsules) also by a generic manufacturer.
The lamivudine tablet is an alternative to the product
manufactured by Cipla that was recently delisted due to
lack of proof of bioequivalence. In keeping with the World
Health Assembly resolution of 23 May 2004, WHO has taken
measures to make public the assessment reports resulting
from its prequalification process. WHO therefore joins
the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicines (EMEA)
as the only other organization that makes such reports
publicly accessible through its quality assurance programme,
with the only difference being that WHO will also provide
reports on generic medicines.
The
public assessment reports include information about products'
compliance with international standards for quality, safety
and efficacy as well as bioequivalence for generic products.
This information will be particularly useful to developing
country regulatory authorities, procurement agencies and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The WHO public
assessment reports (WHOPARs) will assist in establishing
the acceptability and appropriateness of a medicine in
countries that do not have sufficient regulatory capacity
to fully assess products and determine their acceptability
before licensing. In an effort to provide even greater
transparency, the prequalification project will make available
in the next few weeks the findings resulting from inspections
carried out at production sites according to Good Manufacturing
Practices standards. No other quality assurance programme
makes both the assessment reports and inspection findings
available to the public.
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