Health Evolution Partners unveils its plans to transform healthcare
(UPDATED: See below.)
Three months ago, the California Public Employees’ Retirement Fund committed $700 million to a newly formed San Francisco private-equity firm called Health Evolution Partners, promising that the resulting investments would aim to improve healthcare efficiency and to bring down soaring medical costs. At the time, however, the partners were purposefully vague about exactly how they planned to proceed. (See our coverage here.)
Today, HEP began to outline exactly how it intends to begin transforming the… Continue Reading
Roundup: Guilt-free stem cells, the trials of Avandia, sponsor research bias, news from ASCO, and more
Flip switch for stem cells – Three research teams reported a technique for “reprogramming” skin cells into embryonic stem cells, those primordial bits of protoplasm that can propagate themselves indefinitely and, under the right conditions, transform themselves into any type of cell in the body. Deriving embryonic stem cells normally requires destroying an embryo — the main reason research with the cells remains limited, as does federal support for the work.
Teams from Kyoto University, MIT and… Continue Reading