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Roche is shutting down its Nutley, NJ, campus and consolidating oncology, virology, metabolism, and neuroscience research and development at existing sites in Germany and Switzerland. About 1,000 U.S. employees will be laid off. Roche said the move does not affect its Genentech subsidiary.
By a margin of less than 1%, California voters turned thumbs down on a heightened cigarette tax, the proceeds of which would have gone to cancer research, diagnosis, and prevention efforts.
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill that would give a $100-million boost for the NIH and a $13-million increase for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for fiscal year 2013. Final appropriations are not expected to be set until after the November federal election.
Worldwide, the biotechnology industry achieved more than 10% revenue growth in 2011 for the first time since the start of the global financial crisis, according to Ernst & Young's annual biotech report. Research and development spending increased 9%.
The population of cancer survivors in the United States, now estimated at 13.7 million, will near 18 million by 2022, according to a report by the American Cancer Society.
Six academic medical centers are joining in a consortium that will conduct clinical trials and research for patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). The MDS Clinical Research Consortium is a 5-year, $16-million privately funded initiative.
The automatic federal budget cuts that will go into effect in January if Congress does not pass sufficient deficit-reduction measures would affect every NIH program, director Francis Collins, PhD, told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. “We wouldn't do it in a completely blind fashion like a haircut, but everybody's hair would get cut—pretty significantly,” said Collins. “There would be a lot of people with very short hair.”
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