Abano Healthcare plans to grow in Dental Practice

New Zealand based Abano Healthcare Group announced last friday that it has entered the Australian dental market through a partnership with Dental Partners, an Australian-based dental company owned by experienced dental sector executives, dentists and management. Abano will acquire up to 70% of Dental Partners and the remaining 30% will be held by the founding shareholders, headed by Mike Timoney and David Garofalo.

With a vision to create a new professional network of dental practices in Australia, Dental Partners will commence operations over the next fortnight with the acquisition of nine initial practices, concentrated mostly in the Queensland area.

The initial investment of approximately $10 million will be funded through equity from the founding shareholders and Abano as well as a stand alone, five year separately secured debt funding facility with Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

According to the company, the Australian dental market is estimated to be worth more than A$4 billion – over eight times bigger than the New Zealand market. Managing director of Abano, Mr Alan Clarke, said: “By May 2009, the end of the current financial year, we plan to have over 40 practices in New Zealand, and over 15 practices in Australia, with a number of acquisitions for both dental businesses to be finalised over the coming months.“

Taiwanese Researchers sheds light on Genetic Mutations

In a report by Taipei Times, a new research by the National Yang-Ming University has indicated a way forward in the treatment of certain hereditary disorders.

Messenger ribonucleic acids (mRNA), which are essential in the production of proteins in eukaryotic genes, including human genes, through translation, are made from nuclear pre-messenger RNAs though a splicing process. Sometimes errors occur in the complex splicing process, leading to the production of mutated proteins.

It had previously been believed that the splicing and translation was a one-way process, but National Science Council-sponsored researcher Cheng Soo-cheng (鄭淑珍), a professor at the university’s Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, said yesterday her research team had found that both of the catalytic steps in splicing were reversible.

While her research was published in the journal Science yesterday, the research shed new light on how some mutated-protein productions are avoided, as well as how future treatments for certain genetic disorders can be done.

Daiichi Sankyo to purchase majority stake in India’s Ranbaxy

Japan’s third largest pharmaceutical company, Daiichi Sankyo is set to purchase up to 50.1% of India’s largest pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy for as much as $4.6 billion. The company agreed to buy the entire 34.8% held by Ranbaxy’s billionaire Chief Executive Officer Malvinder Singh and his family and a portion of about $1 billion of preferential stock that Ranbaxy will issue. The sale will trigger a mandatory offer for 20 percent more from shareholders under Indian takeover rules.

This move represents Daiichi’s strategy to enter the generic-drug market where sales are growing twice as fast as branded medicines. By acquiring Ranbaxy, Daiichi would be closer to break into the top 10 companies in the $120 billion generic- pharmaceutical market, which grew 11.0% last year, compared with 6.0% for all drugs. This acquisition is Daiichi’s second one within 2 months after acquiring a German biomedical firm in April this year.

Riken moves forward with research on Alzheimer’s

A team from the Laboratory for Proteolytic Neuroscience at RIKEN is conducting extensive research on Alzheimer’s disease, specifically focusing on the study of somatostatin, a neuropeptide that inhibits the secretion of growth hormones. This research in intended to lead to the discovery of new medicine for Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is a cognitive dysfunction disorder that occurs when nerve cells are impaired and and thus affects brain activity. There are around 24 million Alzheimer patients worldwide. Amyloid peptide has been identified as the pathogen that exhibits neurotoxicity and consists of 42 amino acids which are produced in the brain. The disease occurs when amyloids peptides accumulate in excess outside of the nerve cells.

The Researchers at Riken also discovered that Neprilysin, which breaks up amyloid peptide, diminishes with age and decreases even further upon the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

In the laboratory, they treated an Alzheimer’s disease model mouse with a gene therapy that boosted the activity of Neprilysin by 10 times, and as a result, were able to suppress the accumulation of the amyloid peptide.

Riken is currently conducting bio-chemical and histological analysis of the brain using an Alzheimer’s disease model mouse.

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