Infection control company Inviro Medical Devices will be exhibiting its flagship product, the InviroSNAP!® Safety Syringe, as well as its allergy trays at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI). This will be the second time that the company has attended the AAAAI meeting, which will be held this year from March 14 through 18 in Philadelphia.

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have uncovered a new way to develop more effective tumor vaccines by turning off the suppression function of regulatory T cells. The results of the study, titled “A20 is an antigen presentation attenuator, and its inhibition overcomes regulatory T cell-mediated suppression,” will be published in Nature Medicine.

The pharmaceutical lobby has “increasingly worked itself into the good graces of the Democratic Party” and in doing so has helped block Democrats from passing a measure permitting Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and legislation allowing drug reimportation from Canada, the Washington Post reports.

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission Chair Glenn Hackbarth in a Tuesday hearing of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee said traditional Medicare is a more efficient way of delivering benefits to beneficiaries than Medicare Advantage plans, CongressDaily reports (Johnson, CongressDaily, 3/12).

Republicans have unveiled a fiscal year 2009 budget plan that includes cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in response to the Democrats’ $3 trillion budget proposal (H. Con. Res. 312) that would increase funding for many domestic programs, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports.

China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission Minister Zhang Weiqing on Monday said the country would not change its one-child-per-family policy for at least 10 years, the Wall Street Journal reports (Chao, Wall Street Journal, 3/11).

SATB1 is a nuclear protein well known for its crucial role in regulating gene expression during the differentiation and activation of T cells, making it a key player in the immune system. But SATB1 has now revealed a darker side: it is an essential contributing factor in the most aggressive forms of breast cancer.

A protein signaling pathway recently discovered to guide the formation of the skeleton in the fetus also keeps bones strong through adult life, according to two papers published recently in the journal Nature Medicine. Furthermore, the same mechanism may be at the heart of osteoporosis, where too little bone is made over time, and bone cancer, where uncontrolled bone growth contributes to tumors.

Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, released a statement Tuesday denying allegations in a lawsuit that PPAC overcharged the government for oral contraceptives, the Los Angeles Times reports.

A new study by an international team of researchers from Cardiff University and University of Maryland has revealed how the humble cup of tea could well be an antidote to Bacillus anthracis - more commonly know as anthrax.As a nation, Brits currently drink 165 million cups of tea, and the healing benefits of the nation’s favourite beverage have long been acknowledged.