Vascular Closure Systems, Inc. is pleased to announce that it has recently secured initial corporate funding. The proceeds from the funding will be used to accelerate the development of the company’s core technology and to support regulatory activities. The company’s technology is based on several issued and pending patents, and has been engineered to be easier to learn, easier to use and more cost effective than current vascular closure systems. [click link for full article]

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) have released an updated joint guideline on the use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs), a class of drugs that stimulate the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells, to treat chemotherapy-related anemia. [click link for full article]

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has updated its clinical practice guideline on the use of tumor markers in breast cancer. The guideline authors observed that although researchers have made progress in developing tumor markers in areas such as diagnosis and treatment planning, mammography remains the gold standard in screening for breast cancer.A tumor marker is a substance found in a person’s blood, urine, or body tissue. [click link for full article]

The world’s maternal mortality ratio (the number of maternal deaths per 100 000 live births) is declining too slowly to meet Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5, which aims to reduce the number of women who die in pregnancy and childbirth by three-quarters by 2015. While an annual decline of 5.5% in maternal mortality ratios between 1990 and 2015 is required to achieve MDG 5, figures released today by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank show an annual decline of less than 1%. [click link for full article]

With the wildfires still escalating, Red Cross supplies and volunteers are en route to Southern California by the thousands. More than 500 American Red Cross workers have been hard at work since Sunday morning and the Red Cross is expanding its services rapidly as the needs change and escalate. [click link for full article]

The Detroit Free Press on Tuesday examined “the issues that are putting nonprofit hospitals and their tax-exempt status under scrutiny as never before in an important debate” for the U.S. Not-for-profit hospitals nationwide receive $12.6 billion annually in tax exemptions. [click link for full article]

Medical professionals across the nation are “beginning to bone up” on culturally competent health care, in particular with diabetes, “given the rising incidence of the disease, its prevalence among minority groups, and the changes in diet and lifestyle that treatment often entails,” the Wall Street Journal reports. [click link for full article]

What: New understanding behind the causes of melanoma is starting to yield exciting and promising new pathways to prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease. [click link for full article]

Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on Monday introduced a bill that would reverse a CMS decision to limit Medicare coverage for use of anemia medications — Aranesp, marketed by Amgen, and Procrit, marketed by [click link for full article]

The Cancer Council Australia has called on federal political parties to expedite and extend the national bowel cancer screening program and improve tobacco and obesity control and support for rural cancer patients as part of their election commitments. [click link for full article]