Month: July 2014

By Scott Malone SPENCER Mass. (Reuters) – Tucked off a two-lane highway in a hilly, wooded section of central Massachusetts, a group of Roman Catholic monks has embraced a centuries-old tradition they hope can sustain their aging members in a world of rapidly rising health costs. "We're trying to reinvent our economy," said Father Isaac Keeley on a recent tour of the abbey's low-slung stone buildings and starkly modern 30,000-square-foot brewery, nestled in a wooded property some 60 miles (97 km) west of Boston. "The health costs are huge," said Father Dominic Whedbee, the abbey's 65-year-old prior, the group's second-ranking member.

Police in China have arrested a man on suspicion of castrating or partially castrating four patients at a nursing home, state media said on Thursday, the latest scandal to hit the country’s medical sector. Doctors discovered on Tuesday that three men at the nursing home in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang had had either one or both of their testicles removed with a blunt razor, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Britain's leading fraud prosecutor on Thursday charged a British subsidiary of French engineering group Alstom with three offences of corruption and three offences of conspiracy to corrupt after a five-year investigation. The charges by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), flagged by the agency's head David Green in a Reuters interview on Wednesday, come just weeks after the French parent agreed a 12.4 billion euro (9.8 billion pounds) sale of most of its power business to U.S. conglomerate General Electric (GE). Officials for Alstom in Paris declined to comment. The charges against Alstom Network UK relate to large transport projects in India, Poland and Tunisia carried out between June 2000 and November 2006, the agency said.

LONDON (AP) — Pharma giant GSK said Thursday it is submitting its malaria vaccine for regulatory approval to the European Medicines Agency.

China's food regulator has visited close to 600 restaurants, businesses and food distributors as it investigates a fast-spreading food safety scare that has dragged in a number of global brands and hit food outlets as far away as Japan. Hong Kong said on Thursday it suspended, with immediate effect, all imports from the U.S.-owned Chinese supplier at the center of the latest scare. It was unclear when the company last shipped its products to Hong Kong. Shanghai police detained five people on Wednesday, including the head and the quality chief of Shanghai Husi Food, a supplier to foreign fast-food brands including KFC, McDonald's Corp and coffee chain Starbucks Corp over allegations it supplied out-of-date meat.

(Reuters) – U.S. regulators have accepted an application by Sandoz – the generics arm of Novartis – seeking approval for a copycat version of Amgen's drug Neupogen, or filgrastim, for patients with low white blood cell counts. The Food and Drug Administration's decision to accept the filing under a new pathway for so-called biosimilar drugs marks a milestone in the rollout of cheaper copies of injectable biotech medicines in the United States. Sandoz said on Thursday that overcoming the first hurdle in the approval process was an important step in increasing U.S. patient access to such treatments. The generics company already sells a biosimilar version of Amgen's drug in more than 40 other countries, but the United States has been slower than other markets to establish a regulatory framework for biosimilars.

Israel-based Atox Bio, a developer of therapeutics for severe infections, said on Thursday it has raised $23 million in an investment round led by SR One, the healthcare venture capital fund of GlaxoSmithKline. Lundbeck’s Lundbeckfond Ventures and OrbiMed Israel also invested. The funds will enable Atox Bio to initiate a late stage clinical study of AB103, for the treatment of necrotizing soft tissue infections (NSTI), commonly referred to as the “flesh eating bacteria” and other severe infections. AB103 completed a Phase 2 study in patients with NSTI.

No one at the Environmental Protection Agency has been willing to talk on the record about air pollution associated with fracking in Texas.