2:20AM

Goodnight, and Happy Thanksgiving!

- Kate

Some breaking news in the realm of chronic hep B treatment:

Yesterday, Gilead and GlaxoSmithKline signed an agreement to commercialize chronic hep B treatment Viread in Asia.

I pasted a blog about this from http://www.mysmartrend.com/nw/15683

Gilead Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline announced a licensing agreement to commercialize Viread. Viread is for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B infection in adults in five countries in Asia. Under the terms of the agreement, Gilead will retain exclusive rights for commercialization of Viread in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. GlaxoSmithKline will have exclusive commercialization rights and registration responsibilities for the drug in China. Both companies will pay royalties to the other on sales of Viread. Gilead Chairman and CEO John C. Martin said, "Chronic hepatitis B infection is a significant global health problem and the need for new effective treatment options is particularly urgent in Asia, where approximately 280 million people are living with this serious, life-threatening disease. Through this agreement, Gilead is proud to ensure broader access to Viread for chronic hepatitis B in some of the world's highest prevalence regions." 

A little down time during board meeting right now...

We're currently going through and tabulating results from our pre and post surveys. Francis has made an excellent spreadsheet (modeled after the ALC's survey analysis spreadsheet, but keeping individual surveys separate at the same time). This is going to make data analysis so much easier than last year...

And now, back to the surveys... We have so many!!!

- Kate

Francis already blogged about this, so check out his blog for more thorough details.

Team HBV's dinner discussion with Dr. Lau and a few Harvard med students turned out to be surprisingly productive!

Originally, I had hoped for Dr. Lau to get to know Team HBV at Harvard better and find out what we're doing to improve hepatitis B awareness. In turn, I hoped that she would offer advice for our club and tell us about her personal experiences with patients.

Without any prompting, Dr. Lau immediately suggested that we begin a monthly screening program. She offered to take a big role in making this happen - it'll be a collaboration between her, Harvard med APAMSA, and Team HBV at Harvard. Collaboration at it's best, no?

Again, see Francis' blog for more details =)

 Next time, I won't be so shy about taking pictures.