For ten years scientists have been trying to develop an inhalant version of insulin. Now an FDA advisory panel has approved Exubera by Pfizer despite concerns about the fact that it clearly decreases lung function–though not drastically and not progressively.

Another case of balancing the good with the bad. Diabetes I and II both depend on close control of insulin, but the method of administering it for those who need it frequently has been tough–needle pricks, injections, etc. This area of research has yielded a little progress in patches and hardware for transdermal drug delivery methods, but so far nothing is risk-free or gives perfect control.

Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research folks and the Case Western Reserve University people are doing a presentation on developments in using nanotechnology to deliver drugs. If my schedule allows, I’ll be attending that next week. If I make it, I’ll write up what I hear.

I’ve written before about this organization and its powerful new tool called the Freeze Framer that lets you see your heart rate and rhythms on your computer screen–at home in the privacy of your own office. Their tagline is “A change of heart changes everything.” And on their site they ask:

“What Would You Like to Improve? Your work performance; your child’s school work; your golf game; your creative efforts; your health; your fitness; home or social relationships; your peace of mind?”

Last week I started using this biosensor myself. Read my first report and check out the research at HeartMath.org This is no-kidding revolutionary stuff.

Incredible. I wrote some time ago about an all-natural compound that’s used to neutralize odor and deactivate bad microorganisms on garbage. It was used to great effect in the cleanup of the tsunami–and the implication is that it could be extremely helpful in the aftermath of Katrina.

Late last night a sales representative from a company that sells this product commented on that blog entry that he and his company have been trying to talk to the U.S. government and state and local governments about it:

“…trying to reach the US government agencies since the Sunday before Hurricane Katrina hit. After contacting each state Governor, FEMA, The America Red Cross, the state Emergency Management Agencies, the US Senators from each state, etc., we still have not received even a reply. It has been 7 days!”

I don’t know about you, but as someone who’s done my fair share of selling, this non-responsiveness sounds like status quo to me.

As a bio-entrepreneur, how many doors have you knocked on–and for how long–to tell them about a product that could dramatically change their lives, do them good, and/or even pump up their bottom line–and they would not even give you a hearing?

Governments are no different. Read the blog and the comment (scroll to the bottom).

Heard a comedian from New Orleans on the radio this morning. He managed to slip in a few funnies even as he described how he got out of NO because he had the means. He said that 40+% of the city’s people are (or were) in poverty. He said there’s one main highway through the city–to those who asked why didn’t people just leave he pointed out that over a million people, many without private transportation or money to hire transport would have had to find a way to get out on the one main road. He said, “I can’t get ten people to get out of my house in one hour…”

As a contributing writer to Blogcritics, I give you the link to their site where you can give through PayPal and 100% of your donation will go to the Red Cross Hurrican Relief Fund. Give if you can. If you can’t or you just don’t do that sort of thing, send love and prayers. They can be far more valuable and even more powerful than gold.

Looks like you’ll be able to learn something at BIO’s conference this September 21 to 23 in Minneapolis. The lineup of speakers and topics is eloquent:

• Opening session: The Future of Emerging Markets in Biotechnology, Pharma, and Medical devices
• Partnering Workshop: The Future of Strategic Alliances
• Finance Workshop: Financing Health Care Companies: Trends in Deal Structures, Medical Devise versus Biopharmaceutical Companies, and Financing Companies in Various Geographic Markets
• University Tech Transfer Workshop: Creating Bridges Between the Worlds of University Technologies, Industry, and the Investment Community
• Valuation and IP Workshop: Under the Microscope: How IP Valuation Influences Investment Decisions
• Are We There Yet – Raising a Life Science Company in the Midwest
• Convergence Workshop: Biotech – Medical Device Convergence
• Reimbursement Workshop: Changes and Trends in Third Party Payer Policy: Impact on Novel Drugs and Devices

Today’s the last chance to get discounted registration and hotel rates. See more at BIO’s website.

Speaking of nano, which I was in the last post, very informative article about the industry in a newsletter a friend forwarded. It’s a new publication called the EnergyBizInsider newsletter–you’ve got to register, but it’s free and if you’re intereted in sustainability and energy issues, it looks like a good resource.

This issue of the e-newsletter gives a really good description of the nano industry and its possibilities (quotes lots of researchers from universities all over the U.S.)

“…700 nanotech companies now exist. About $711 million in venture capital funding was directed to such companies in 2002 and 2003, says Lux Capital. By 2015, the National Science Foundation says that $1 trillion will get invested into those companies with the most promise.”

Sorry I can’t give you a link to the newsletter itself–can’t seem to locate it on the site. But I’ll be happy to forward it if you email me with “Forward energy article” in the subject line.

A whole week of nano-related companies, people, facilities and ideas is coming to Cleveland this October. Today the conference announced the names of those who will be judging the nano-business idea contest (which apparently drew considerable national attention to the region last year). As always, the prestige of the judges makes a strong statement to the press and the public about how important an event is. Check ’em out:

— VC panelists: Jonathan P. Murray of Early Stage Partners; James L. Bildner of New Horizons Partners (Boston); and Ted Schroeder of the KAL Equity Capital Fund (Los Altos, Calif.).

— Tech corporations: Alan Olson, director of technology for Ferro Corp., and Scott Rickert, chief executive of Nanofilm

— Researchers: Don Blewett of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.) and Zachary Shulman of The Johnson School at Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.)

The Nanotechnology competitions (Northeast Ohio and National) sare the culminating event of NANO Week, October 17-21. All they want is an idea–you don’t have to write a whole business plan.

And the NEO winner gets $75,000–even if she lives somewhere else, as long as she’s willing to relocate to the region. Now there’s a nice incentive.

No surprise here. Whether you’re a hawk or a dove, the evidence of how negatively war affects the people who have to fight it has been around for years. Now science has taken another step and found that not only do soldiers tend to die and becomd disabled in greater numbers than the average citizen, they also develop all kinds of diseases in signficiantly greater numbers for years to come. New research says: “soldiers who fought in theatres as diverse as Vietnam and Lebanon…are also twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even cancer later in life”

The Centers for Disease Control have data that soldiers tend to die more often from accidents, overdoses and so on within the first five years after returning from a war. Then their numbers even out with non-combatant participants (still higher than regular citizens). But then, even 30 years later, those who were subjected to the horrors of war increasingly contract the conditions that kill us–earlier and in greater numbers than others. Stress, disease, and death are now definitively linked, both early and late–and war, as my dad and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower (a commander through many battles) used to say, is bullshit.

A WWWII tank commander who spent two-and-a-half uninterrupted years overseas fighting, dad had a heart attack at 70. They found he’d had a serious one much earlier, but his vascular system had found a way to bypass the damage. Here’s a man who never spoke about the war–at all–until he was in his late 60s. And besides saying that he saw his best friend cut in half by gunfire, one of his only utterances on the subject was, “I guess the government lost money on me in that war–because if I heard anything at all move, I emptied my gun at it.”

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the headline. A new colorectal cancer screening test called FIT (fecal immunochemical tests) promises greater sensitivity for some types of cancerous tumors but not others. In the never-ending battle to find less expensive, more effective, less intrusive testing options, scientists must often take a step back when they take one ahead.

In this case, the FIT test might successfully be combined with sigmoidoscopy instead of using the pricier colonoscopy. These investigators tested asymptomatic patients simultaneously with FIT and with colonoscopy to get a good comparison. ANyway, no one’s yet thinking of throwing away the old fetal occult blood test FOBT. Read the results here.

If you like to keep track of a lot of different websites (professional journals, medical news, etc.) and you’ve hesitated to get into RSS, I don’t blame you. Until now, it’s had a very techie-oriented way of presenting itself and many of us don’t have time to navigate that kind of interface. As a result, you may not even know how incredibly useful RSS can be.

Now comes our friend Google introducing a new desktop software that’s going to revolutionize your workday.

Read my opinion here. Read the article itself here.