Faculty Bibliography

[Troyen A. Brennan], who holds degrees in medicine, public health and law, said he was outraged that Edelman Medical Communications of New York City, a prominent medical public relations firm, offered to pay him to write an editorial on liability issues that might arise from prescribing drugs with sedative side effects, such as antihistamines. Edelman is now helping a doctor and a lawyer prepare the manuscript that Brennan declined to write. It has not yet been submitted to a journal, and the client drug company declined to be identified, she said. Brennan wrote that Edelman had sent him a packet of material that included an editorial it said it had commissioned, which appeared in 1993 in a weekly journal. Brennan would not identify the journal other than to say it was not the New England Journal of Medicine

Two studies to determine the most effective dose of heparin, a widely used drug for treating heart attack patients, have found that a high dose can unexpectedly prove unacceptably dangerous. Tests of the drug were halted in Apr 1994 because of a high risk of paralyzing and fatal strokes

The drug is heparin, a powerful agent that interferes with the body's normal clotting process. Heparin, along with other drugs, is recommended for heart-attack patients because it inhibits the formation of blood clots that can lead to a second heart attack. Doctors are using heparin in a range of doses on hundreds of thousands of heart-attack patients, the study leaders said. A large study established last year that a low dose of intravenous heparin was reasonably safe and effective when given with clot-dissolving drugs. Two large follow-up trials involving patients in more than 365 hospitals in the United States and 12 other countries were then begun, testing a high dose of heparin and a similar but experimental drug

The Johns Hopkins group developed the test through industry-financed research from which the researchers and the university stand to profit. Today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they are reporting on the use of the new test in saliva, urine and tissue samples from 105 patients, all with three types of cancer (lung, bladder, and head and neck) that had been diagnosed through standard means. The test is being developed by a team at Johns Hopkins headed by Dr. David Sidransky that has just begun the first of a series of larger trials to validate the test's accuracy. The team needs to determine whether its test actually detects cancer earlier than standard methods and, if so, whether earlier diagnosis would improve therapy and survival rates. In May, Sidransky's team reported that it had used the test on frozen tissues saved from Hubert H. Humphrey's bladder and was able to show that the former vice president did have bladder cancer in 1967 when he developed bloody urine

A cell that throws off these controls and divides repeatedly will form a group of identical descendant cells known as a clone. The new test scans the DNA sequence of cells for certain subtle fingerprints of these aberrant clones. Leading cancer experts praised the theory of the research, saying the test could help refine the diagnosis and recognition of the stages of cancer. It might also help detect the spread of malignant cells in the body and monitor the effects of drugs and other anti-cancer therapies. ''This is definitely a research advance, elegant work, science at its very best,'' said Dr. Samuel Broder, who heads the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. ''But it is very important to have no illusions about the difficult challenges that we would face'' in harnessing it for screening healthy people for cancer

A new test that can detect several kinds of cancerous human cells was reported yesterday by scientists from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. The scientists say they can quickly develop the test into a general method for screening healthy people for the incipient stages of most kinds of cancer. A cell that throws off these controls and divides repeatedly will form a group of identical descendant cells known as a clone. The new test scans the DNA sequence of cells for certain subtle fingerprints of these aberrant clones. Leading cancer experts praised the theory of the research, saying the test could help refine the diagnosis and recognition of the stages of cancer. It might also help detect the spread of malignant cells in the body and monitor the effects of drugs and other anti- cancer therapies, the experts said

A new test that can detect several kinds of cancerous human cells was reported on Oct 10, 1994 by scientists from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The scientists say they can quickly develop the test into a general method for screening healthy people for the incipient stages of most kinds of cancer. Other experts say the team appears to have made an important advance but that the work is preliminary and much more remains to be done to make the test available for widespread use. The team's studies are being reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Oct 11

Two Americans, Alfred G. Gilman and Martin Rodbell, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct 10, 1994 for discovering natural substances known as G-proteins and how they help cells convert signals from the environment and from within the body into cellular chain reactions that control fundamental life processes. The Nobel-Prize winning research has helped scientists begin to understand how the body receives signals from outside stimuli like light and odor, and from a variety of hormones in the body, and transmits the signals to the interior of cells

The test is being developed by a team at Johns Hopkins headed by Dr. David Sidransky that has just begun the first of a series of larger trials to validate the test's accuracy. The team needs to determine whether its test actually detects cancer earlier than standard methods and, if so, whether earlier diagnosis would improve therapy and survival rates. Sidransky has worked with Dr. Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins in pioneering research that has identified defective genes that lead to colon and bladder cancer. Using an early version of tests for clonal markers developed from such research, the Johns Hopkins team detected cancer in 26 of 100 patients. In May, Sidransky's team reported that it had used the test on frozen tissues saved from Hubert H. Humphrey's bladder and was able to show that the former vice president did have bladder cancer in 1967 when he developed bloody urine