From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— A tobacco research center at UW-Madison has been awarded $11.1 million in federal funding to develop treatment strategies for adult patients at community health centers.
The University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention is getting the five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute, funding efforts to partner with 16 community health centers in Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
Today’s announcement notes about 22 million adults receive care at community health centers annually. These patients are more than twice as likely to smoke cigarettes than the general population, with 22% compared to 10%, respectively.
Researchers will develop and test tobacco use treatments for adult patients, leveraging the health centers’ existing programs to screen for tobacco use, help patients quit and track related data. They will also create new resources to raise awareness of free tobacco helplines for community health centers across the country.
The project is being led by UW-CTRI Director Dr. Hasmeena Kathuria and Danielle McCarthy, the center’s co-director of research. Other partners include Massachusetts-based Azara Healthcare, which will focus on outreach and tracking related efforts, and RVO Health, a national tobacco helpline operator.
See more on the center, and see the release below.
— Elephas Biosciences Corporation will test a therapy being developed by Italian firm Tes Pharma to treat a form of lung cancer, the Madison company announced yesterday.
The two businesses will collaborate to evaluate the investigational therapy TES-4207, designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer.
Elephas will use its “elive” oncology therapy testing platform to assess human tissue responses to the treatment, providing valuable data for later development. By preserving the “native tumor microenvironment” for human tissue samples of this type of cancer, the platform can directly measure how a patient may respond to the therapy.
“These insights can help inform clinical development and support a more precise approach to identifying groups most likely to benefit,” Erika von Euw, vice president of scientific affairs for Elephas, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Tes Pharma Project Leader Franceso Greco said understanding how human tissue responds to TES-4207 “provides an important layer of information” to support its drug development program.
Greco says partnering with Elephas will “help us better understand the potential of TES-4207, alone and in combination with other therapies, as we determine the best path forward.”
See the release below.
— Wisconsin is getting a small payout from a $2.3 million multistate settlement with Labcorp following a data breach in 2019 that exposed the information of more than 16,000 state residents.
The state Department of Justice yesterday announced the settlement with the Laboratory Corporation of America, which is related to an investigation of a data breach at the company’s debt collector.
Retrieval-Masters Creditors Bureau — doing business as American Medical Collection Agency — potentially exposed personal information of more than 27.5 million Americans, including 10.2 million Labcorp patients, according to the state DOJ.
“This settlement ensures that, going forward, Labcorp will have stronger protections against this kind of incident in place,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement.
As part of the total payment going to states, Labcorp will pay $17,534 to Wisconsin.
See the release below.
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Press Releases
– UW-Madison: Receives $11.1 million to improve tobacco use treatment
