The Lost Decade
Canada's decline in clinical trials means profits for developing countries
With Canada already one of the least popular places in the world to conduct clinical trials, Canadian labs face significant challenges to bring future trial work home. Canada faces competition from developed economies and developing countries, where the costs of conducting trials is lower, finding patients to volunteer for drug testing is easier, and regulation is simpler.
Canada’s ranking as a place to conduct clinical trials has dropped steadily over the last five years. Between 2006 and 2010, the number of clinical trials and trial sites in Canada dropped approximately 30 per cent, with clinical trial applications for non-generic drugs decreasing to 596 from 777.
This flight of research from Canada sparked industry, academia and government to gather in Ottawa in September 2011 for the first Canadian Clinical Trial Summit. There, industry and policy-makers discussed Canada’s downward trend and worked on an action plan to improve Canada’s competitiveness.
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As White Nose Syndrome ravages the bat population, researchers struggle to find a cure
Hundreds of dead bats litter the floors of bat caves across North America. Dismembered wings and legs are scattered throughout the dark chamber. All of the remains have one common characteristic: a mysterious white fluff growing along the corpse, most apparent on the muzzles of these winged rodents.
Little is known about Geomyces Destructans (G. Destructans), the fungus that leads to White Nose Syndrome (WNS) and eventually death for so many bats. The fungus grows in temperatures under 20 C and is typically found on the muzzles, wings and ears of infected bats.
“Imagine having your wings being digested while you sleep. It would be quite disturbing. The bats are disturbed out of their sleep by discomfort. They also experience water loss from their tissues and wake up cold, hungry and thirsty,” says Dr. Greg Thorn, associate biology professor at the University of Western Ontario.
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Nothing Spreads Like Fear
Contagion cashes in on social anxiety
Imagine a world gone mad – infected with fear – as a fatal airborne virus spreads rapidly from continent to continent killing those infected within days. This is the premise of Steven Soderbergh’s medical thriller, Contagion. In the film, a series of plotlines are intertwined, and the viewer follows several characters as they deal with the outbreak.
Fascination with such disasters may be traced to recent events such as SARS and H1N1. “SARS in 2003 created a global interest in the effect of infectious disease. What happened now is that rather than societies being looked at as static, we began to understand that societies are globalized and mobile,” says Roger Keil, Professor and Director, The City Institute at York University. Keil co-edited a book, Networked Disease: Emerging Infections in the Global City, which focuses on how pathogens interact with economic, political and social factors. Keil says societies are affected by infectious disease in a variety of unpredictable ways, due to increase in transportation, communication, and economic and human exchange. The interconnected nature of the new world has created a playground for the easy spread of infectious disease.
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Leaching into samples from plastic consumables.
To see YouTube video from Eppendorf, click here.
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