Transcept Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: TSPT) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Complete Response Letter regarding the New Drug Application (NDA) for Intermezzo® (zolpidem tartrate sublingual tablet). The NDA, submitted by Transcept in September 2008, seeks approval to market Intermezzo® for use as-needed for the treatment of insomnia when a middle of the night awakening is followed by difficulty returning to sleep.

Distinguished transplant and cancer surgeon, Alan Hemming, MD, has been recruited to the University of California, School of Medicine to launch a multidisciplinary center for the treatment of advanced liver disease at the UC San Diego Medical Center and Moores UCSD Cancer Center.

The comparative study of chronic wound treatment at the Hospital Civil of Cd. Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico, was concluded successfully. Due to the significantly superior therapeutic success the Ministry of Health ordered the control to be abandoned and moved to Hemospray treatment for ethical reasons. 22 of the 24 patients within the Hemospray group were healed completely, while 22 of the 24 patients of the control group showed no comparable progress.

Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (Nasdaq: AMLN) and Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved an expanded indication for BYETTA® (exenatide) injection. BYETTA is now approved for use as a stand-alone medication (monotherapy) along with diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes.

Cancer Research UK scientists have used a cutting edge microscopy technique to identify genes whose activity could be blocked by drugs to stop the spread of the breast cancer. The research is published in Nature Cell Biology* . The scientists from Cancer Research UK’s

The Salk Institute has been awarded a $10.8 million grant by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) for translational research focusing on developing a novel stem-cell based therapy for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) - or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Sam Pfaff, Ph.D.

With the rapidly increasing problem of cardiovascular (CVD) disease in Asia Pacific (AP), there is an urgency to raise awareness of risk factors. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is addressing the need to develop and adopt an integrated approach to CVD management, through important events organised in the region. CVD has become more prevalent in India and China than in all of the economically-developed countries in the world combined.

Two University of Rhode Island associate professors, biophysicists Yana Reshetnyak and Oleg Andreev, have discovered a technology that can detect cancerous tumors and deliver treatment to them without the harming the healthy cells surrounding them, thereby significantly reducing side effects. The URI couple has attracted more than $6 million in grants in four years. In addition, a number of health care and pharmaceutical companies have expressed interest in their work.

The Lymphoma Research Foundation (LRF) is pleased to announce that David Frank, MD, PhD of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Thomas Kipps, MD, PhD, Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego are the recipients of the second round of funding under the Foundation’s Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)/Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma (SLL) Research Initiative.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $75 million to Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science and three other historically black institutions to establish a medical research consortium to combat health disparities in minority and underserved populations.