Don’t know what it is like where you are but here in the nation’s capitol it definitely feels like the dog days of August.  If you bet on a forecast of hot, hazy, and humid you’ll get good odds.

CONGRESS, BIOSIMILARS, AND HEALTH CARE REFORM – Over the weekend there was continued analysis and commentary on the House-passed health care reform measure.  The lead in the Wall Street Journal characterized the vote to keep a 12-year exclusivity “a setback to efforts by President Barack Obama and consumer groups to open the market to generic drug makers.”  However in Kevin Noonan’s post on Patent Docs — perhaps the most exhaustive review of the different proposals — he concludes that “the decisions by the key Congressional committees in recent weeks have been encouraging to innovator biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.”  You can also find details of the different proposals in review by the House committee at the FDA Law Blog.    Representing a dissenting view is Valerie Gutman writing in the Seton Hall’s HealthCareReformWatch.  But according to Phrma Exec News, the congressional action and direction of health care reform has been good for biotech stocks.  That influx of capital infusion will certainly help many of the small to medium sized companies continue research and fund needed projects for the next blockbuster drug.

A CELL FOR ALL TIMES? – eScience news reports on advances in taking ordinary cells and reprogramming them to a pluripotent state, all without gene insertion.

A DRUG FOR ALL CANCERS? – Not all, but a growing number.  Over the weekend we caught a release stating that the FDA approved Avastin for treatment of the most common form of kidney cancer.  In the release the biotech maker of Avastin, Genentech, said that “During the last five years, Avastin has been approved by the FDA to treat five different types of cancer,” … “We aim to help more people facing difficult-to-treat cancers and will continue studying Avastin in more than 30 other tumor types.”

BUDDHISTS + BIOTECH = MENTAL HEALTH SOLUTIONS – Luke Timmerman of Xconomy has a fascinating article on Bennett Shapiro, a former top executive at Merck and now a partner at Seattle-based PureTech Ventures.  Shapiro talks about how Buddhism and meditation give a clue to how biotech can be appropriately used to help address mental health woes.  In a related article on biotech and mental health, Timmerman reports on the advancements by biotech company BrainCells, on using biotech to treat depression.

BIOTECH = REDUCED LIVESTOCK METHANE – The report from New Zealand is that biotech is the only we can address a serious problem — the global warming implications of livestock methane (loosely translated … animal farts).  According to a story in the New Zealand Herald:

… trials have shown the technology would result in more efficient nitrogen cycling, meaning less nitrous oxide and ammonia being expelled, while modifying lipids resulted in less methane emissions.

BIOTECH FOR KIDS – A quick shout out to our friends at Canadian Biotechnologist 2.0. Their recent post and video are a terrific way to expose kids to biotech.