“Down on luck, Lilly finds comfort in pets - Ibj.com” plus 1 more |
| Down on luck, Lilly finds comfort in pets - Ibj.com Posted: 19 Jan 2011 03:28 AM PST Eli Lilly and Co. continues to misfire on getting new human medicines approved, but its animal health unit is on a roll. Elanco, based in Greenfield, has introduced three products in just the last month, two of which come in its fast-growing companion animal (read: pets) business line. On Monday, Elanco unveiled Trifexis—a monthly chewable tablet for dogs that kills fleas as well as hookworm, roundworm and whipworm. The extra parasite-killing power sets it apart from the flea tablet Comfortis, which Elanco launched in 2007. Earlier this month, Elanco launched Assurity, a topical flea treatment for cats. And in December, Elanco launched Keto-Test, a strip test for dairy cows in the United States that detects elevated ketone levels, which can lead to lost milk production and impaired reproduction. Elanco's sales grew 13 percent last year through the end of September, the most recent data available, putting the unit on pace for revenue of about $1.36 billion in 2010. Overall, Indianapolis-based Lilly's revenue grew 6 percent through September of last year, to a total of $16.9 billion. Lilly will announce its 2010 financial results on Jan. 27. Meanwhile, Lilly's human medicines keep getting smacked down by U.S. regulators. On Tuesday, staff at the Food and Drug Administration balked at Lilly's experimental drug to help identify plaque in the brain tied to Alzheimer's disease, saying it hasn't been shown to be clinically useful. A panel of outside medical experts will discuss the drug, known as florbetapir, on Jan. 20 and issue a non-binding recommendation on whether it should be approved for market or not. The FDA is scheduled to make a decision on the drug application by March 17, according to the report. Lilly acquired florbetapir in December by paying $300 million, and promising up to $500 million more, to Philadelphia-based Avid Radiopharmaceuticals. Avid has proposed to market the drug under the brand name Amyvid for use in patients undergoing PET scans, also known as positron emission tomography. Also, last week, an FDA advisory panel voted that Lilly's experimental drug Solpura has not shown benefits that outweigh its risks in patients with cystic fibrosis or other digestion impairments. Lilly picked up Solpura last year by acquiring Massachusetts-based Alnara Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $180 million, with as much $200 million in later payments. Lilly needs new drugs on the market to replace five of its bestsellers that are losing patent protection between 2010 and 2013. Generic copies of those drugs stand to drain Lilly of nearly half its current revenue. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Dogs were pets and meals about 10,000 years ago, researchers say - AZCentral.com Posted: 19 Jan 2011 05:37 AM PST Jan. 19, 2011 06:33 AM PORTLAND, Maine - Nearly 10,000 years ago, man's best friend provided protection and companionship - and an occasional meal. That's what researchers are saying after finding a bone fragment from what they are calling the earliest confirmed domesticated dog in the Americas. University of Maine graduate student Samuel Belknap III came across the fragment while analyzing a dried-out sample of human waste unearthed in southwest Texas in the 1970s. A carbon-dating test put the age of the bone at 9,400 years, and a DNA analysis confirmed it came from a dog - not a wolf, coyote or fox, Belknap said. Because it was found deep inside a pile of human excrement and was the characteristic orange-brown color that bone turns when it has passed through the digestive tract, the fragment provides the earliest direct evidence that dogs - besides being used for company, security and hunting - were eaten by humans and may even have been bred as a food source, he said. Belknap wasn't researching dogs when he found the bone. Rather, he was looking into the diet and nutrition of the people who lived in the Lower Pecos region of Texas between 1,000 and 10,000 years ago. "It just so happens this person who lived 9,400 years ago was eating dog," Belknap said. Belknap and other researchers from the University of Maine and the University of Oklahoma's molecular anthropology laboratories, where the DNA analysis was done, have written a paper on their findings. The paper has been scientifically reviewed and accepted, pending revisions, for publication in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology later this year, said editor in chief Christopher Ruff. He declined comment on the article until it has been published. Dogs have played an important role in human culture for thousands of years. There are archaeological records of dogs going back 31,000 years from a site in Belgium, 26,000 years in the Czech Republic and 15,000 years in Siberia, said Robert Wayne, a professor of evolutionary biology at UCLA and a dog evolution expert. But canine records in the New World aren't as detailed or go back nearly as far. For his research, Belknap - who does not own a dog himself - had fecal samples shipped to him that had been unearthed in 1974 and 1975 from an archaeological site known as Hinds Cave and kept in storage at Texas A&M University. The fragment is about six-tenths of an inch long and three- to four-tenths of an inch wide, or about the size of a fingernail on a person's pinkie. He and a fellow student identified the bone as a fragment from where the skull connects with the spine. He said it came from a dog that probably resembled the small, short-nosed, short-haired mutts that were common among the Indians of the Great Plains. Judging by the size of the bone, Belknap figures the dog weighed about 25 to 30 pounds. He also found what he thinks was a bone from a dog foot, but the fragment was too small to be analyzed. Other archaeological digs have put dogs in the U.S. dating back 8,000 years or more, but this is the first time it has been scientifically proved that dogs were here that far back, he said. Darcy Morey, a faculty member at Radford University who has studied dog evolution for decades, said a study from the 1980s dated a dog found at Danger Cave, Utah, at between 9,000 and 10,000 years old. Those dates were based not on carbon-dating or DNA tests, but on an analysis of the surrounding rock layers. "So 9,400 years old may be the oldest, but maybe not," Morey said in an e-mail. Morey, whose 2010 book, "Dogs: Domestication and the Development of a Social Bond," traces the evolution of dogs, said he is skeptical about DNA testing on a single bone fragment because dogs and wolves are so similar genetically. Belknap said there may well be older dogs in North America, but this is the oldest directly dated one he is aware of. For many years, researchers thought that dog bones from an archaeological site in Idaho were 11,000 years old, but additional testing put their age at between 1,000 and 3,000 years old, he said. "If there's one thing our discovery is showing it's that we can utilize these techniques and learn a lot more about dogs in the New World if we apply these tests to all these early samples," he said. The earliest dogs in North America are believed to have come with the early settlers across the Bering land bridge from Asia to the Americas 10,000 years ago or earlier, said Wayne, who has not seen Belknap's research. It doesn't surprise Belknap that dogs were a source of food for humans. A lot of people in Central America regularly ate dogs, he said. Across the Great Plains, some Indian tribes ate dogs when food was scarce or for celebrations, he said. "It was definitely an accepted practice among many populations," he said. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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