News and notes from a day in MedCity, Ohio:
Thousands of Ohioans could lost their homes and possibly even their health and lives right now, not because of the loss of jobs but rather state budget cuts to mental health services, according to WKSU News.
The Cleveland Clinic has purchased 14 acres in the Brecksville Business Park south of Miller Road and west of Interstate 77 at a cost of $1.8 million where it plans to build a new data center, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
University Hospitals Case Medical Center is one of 12 sites conducting the first Phase 2 clinical trial of a gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease, according to a EurekaAlert! release by the hospital.
CareFusion, the San Diego, Calif., health care products company spun out by Dublin’s Cardinal Health this summer, is offering to exchange $1.4 billion of notes it sold in a private placement last summer for new notes that investors would be able to sell, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Chagrin Falls resident Anthony Rizzo, a Cleveland Clinic vascular surgeon at Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield, recently was named “teacher of the year” for the Department of Vascular Surgery, according to the Sun News.
Forbes has picked Quality Electrodynamics in Mayfield as No. 11 on its America’s Most Promising Companies list for 2009.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus has been designated an OptumHealth Center of Excellence for Pediatric Heart Transplant, joining Cleveland Clinic as the only such centers in the state of Ohio, according to a Children’s press release.
