Speaker
Sheldon Silver

Legislative Commission on Science and Technology Legislative Update

Legislative Update
Chairwoman
Francine DelMonte

November 18, 2009

New York State
Assembly

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Top News

Biotech company's drug shows potential   A promising cancer drug from Kinex Pharmaceuticals, one of Buffalo's fledgling biotech companies, has emerged successfully from its first phase trials and is soon to enter larger tests of its effectiveness and safety. The drug, which is referred to as KX2-391, belongs to a large new family of targeted cancer treatments called protein kinase inhibitors. The Buffalo developed drug blocks a chemical messenger in the body called Src kinase that tells cancer cells to keep growing.

Source:  The Buffalo News


Investment in software company to help with promotion and research   Apprenda, a Capital Region tech firm founded by graduates from two Capital Region colleges, has received $5 million from an investment firm that will help with promotion and research. New Enterprise Associates -- a venture capital firm which has invested in such tech companies as Salesforce.com, WebEx, Juniper Networks, and XenSource -- announced the investment, in partnership with Troy-based investment firm High Peaks Venture Partners.

Source:  timesunion.com


New York hospital revives ailing computer network  It's no secret that the installed base of technology at large medical facilities needs refreshing, especially as hospitals work toward digitizing medical records. At St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in New York, a nonprofit with 42 facilities across five boroughs, the constant accessing and updating of patient records through the hospital's shared-bandwidth Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network resulted in unacceptable lag time pretty much all day, every day. So Kane Edupuganti, director of IT Operations & Communications, convinced the higher-ups to retire the hospitals' hundreds of five-plus-year-old desktops and buy more than 600 zero client cubes from Pano Logic.

Source:  cnet news


Experts Criticize Nanoparticle Study The headlines are laced with fear. "Nanoparticles 'can damage DNA.'" "Nanoparticle Safety Looking More Complicated." "Nanoparticles Indirect Threat to DNA." All seem to suggest that a new study, released yesterday, has found that nanoscale materials, used in everything from medical imaging to cancer treatment, can damage genetic material in our bodies, feeding public fears. But this particular study has little relevance to human exposure risks, experts say, and it is deeply flawed in other ways. "I think it's a meaningless study, to be blunt" says Günter Oberdörster, a nanotoxicologist at the University of Rochester in New York State.

Source:  ScienceNOW