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Dow, Sunol in plant-based cancer cure
Fat pill on cards
Imports, light beers drive US market
US women confused about calcium
BRIEFLY…
UK supermarkets are still selling
fresh food contaminated by pesticides, says the government’s
Pesticide Safety Directorate (PSD), suggesting no change in five years.
Green activists Friends of the Earth said the Co-op and MS appear to have
been successful in banning specific pesticides, such as methamidophos and
quintozene though both have been found in produce from other major
supermarkets. It wants retailers to phase out the most risky pesticides,
to help farmers find alternatives to toxic chemicals, and to reduce
farmers need to spray by not demanding cosmetic perfection.
A scheme to provide quality
assurance of wild Scottish venison attracted more than 50 suppliers
in its first three months. Seven more await approval.
Belgium’s Interbrew is to
swop shares worth 477m euros for Germany’s Gabriel Sedlmayr
Spaten-Franziskaner Bräu (Spaten) brewing interests. The deal creates the
country’s biggest brewing group with a capacity of 15.6m hectolitres,
11% of the market. Spaten is likely to concentrate on its real estate
business in the face of a declining beer market.
Aberdeen's Rowett Research
Institute is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a special cake and
primary school visits to teach the value of healthy eating, echoing the
principles of its founder, John Boyd Orr, the first person to link
poverty, poor diet and ill health, and who was responsible for the
introduction of school milk and the success of Britain’s war-time
rationing system.
Tim Berners-Lee FRS, founding
father of the World Wide Web, say the future belongs to his new invention,
the semantic web, a type of globally linked database of information
linked up so as to be easily processed by machines. In
a talk to be given at the Royal Society, Berners-Lee will discuss the
changes it could have on everyday life, which are potentially as
revolutionary as the World Wide Web.
The US Consumer Product Safety
Commission has asked Coca-Cola’s joint venture with Danone to recall
some 3.2m bottles of water because it believes the sports caps pose a
threat to children because the drinking spout of the sports cap can
come
UK food research house CCFRA has
published an introduction to food packaging and its role as a part
of the food product. More
details are at http://www.campden.co.uk/publ/pubfiles/kt7.htm
The UK’s Food Standards Agency's
second annual open meeting on research, due 6 November 2003 in London,
will discuss, among other topics, healthier diets and nutrition, food
authenticity and labelling, contaminants and ingredients, allergies,
food-born diseases and novel foods.
US-based Riviana Foods and
Spain’s Ebro Puleva are to combine their UK operations, Stevens
& Brotherton and Joseph Heap & Sons respectively, to distribute
rice as well as dried fruit and other food products.
US electronic retailer RadioShack
is climbing on the wellness bandwagon by launching a special range of
products aimed at improving consumers’ quality of life. The range
includes a digital humidifier, an oscillating heater fan, electronic air
purifiers, a wireless heart monitor, electronic body fat analyser, pulse
monitor watch and a digital pedometer. Health maintenance products include
blood pressure monitors, a pillbox timer and a digital in-ear thermometer,
while for personal wellness it offers massagers and an aromatherapy sleep
machine. The company is also setting up a Web site, www.LifeWiseOnline.com.
Research
Dow, Sunol in plant-based cancer
cure
The Dow Chemical Company and US
research house Sunol Molecular are working together on a plant-based cure
for cancer.
Dow will express in plants an
anti-tissue factor antibody, glycosylation, developed by Sunol for
treatment of several cancers. The aim is to study the efficacy of the
Sunol antibody as produced through plant technology and mammalian cell
technology. The results may show how useful plants are at producing
injectable biopharmaceuticals.
Over 90% of cancers express tissue
factor, which promotes tumour growth and tumour metastasis. This makes
cancer an attractive target for anti-tissue factor antibodies. Sunol's
anti-tissue factor antibody inhibits activities attributed to tissue
factor and also provides a cytolytic effect to help destroy the target
cancer cells.
Fat pill on
cards
US drug house CytRx is to set up
Araios, a $7m subsidiary, to develop orally active small molecule drugs,
based on UMMS’s RNA interference (RNAi) technology, to prevent, treat
and cure obesity and type II diabetes.
The new unit initially will use a
genomic and proteomic-based drug discovery approach that leverages RNAi to
swiftly screen and identify key drug targets and pathways in obesity and
type II diabetes. It will then develop orally active medicines against
these targets.
Obesity and type II diabetes are
associated, with 85% of type II diabetics being overweight. These two
diseases affect more than 85m of about 211m Americans and 180m worldwide,
and cost more than $100bn/y to treat.
Beer
Imports, light beers drive US
market
The US beer market grew for the
seventh year in a row in 2002to reach 2.8bn 2.25-gallon cases (238.5m
hectolitres), says the new Adams Beer Handbook, a 1.8% gain over 2001.
The light and import sectors drove
the upswing, Adams says.
Light beer is now by far the
largest of all beer segments with a 45.9% market share and four of the top
five US brews.
Imports nearly tripled in case
sales over the past decade and have proven resilient. Country of origin no
longer matters when it comes to international brews.
New flavoured malt beverage
introductions like Bacardi Silver and Skyy Blue drove a 16.0% gain in
malternatives. Flavoured malt drinks may not last, but first to market or
sufficiently different brands are most likely to survive for a while. But
several brewers dropped the sector.
Nutrition
US women confused about calcium
Nearly nine in 10 women believe
calcium is important to their health, yet they consume only about half the
amount of calcium recommended per day, according to a new study for the
American Dietetic Association (ADA).
The independent survey reported
that four out of 10 women are confused or uneducated about the recommended
daily amount of calcium. Almost two-thirds surveyed answered incorrectly
or just didn't know how much calcium a woman aged 19-50 years old needs
each day. The National Academy of Sciences recommends women between 19-50
consume 1000mg of calcium per day and older women 1200mg per day.
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Researchers
at BASF Plant Science have succeeded in identifying the genes that enable
the test plant mouse-ear cress to survive drought better. This drought
resistance is to be transferred to crops such as corn (maize), soybeans or
wheat. BASF hopes this will become an elegant way to cut crop losses from
water shortages and reduce the amount of water needed for irrigation. It
also hopes to breed more nutritious plants by optimising the composition
of plant constituents. By 2010, BASF wants to become one of the world’s
leading companies in the field of plant biotechnology.