The Ministry of Unification will pay for the treatment of the North Korean soldier who got intensive treatment at Ajou University Hospital in November after he was shot while defecting to South Korea through the Joint Security Area (JSA).The total cost of medical treatment will be around 65 million won ($60,000), the ministry said.The unification ministry will foot 25 million won, and
Genexine will begin clinical trials for its investigational cancer drug HyLeukin with I-MAB Biopharma to develop and sell the drug in China and neighboring countries, the company said.I-MAB will pay a total of $548 million, which includes a $12 million upfront payment, for the rights to develop and sell HyLeukin in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, Genexine said.Genexine will also re
Koreans are now more open to donating organs or tissues than a year ago, a survey by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) showed Wednesday.Around 67 percent said they were willing to become a tissue or organ donor, indicating a 25.7 percentage point increase from last year, according to findings of the KCDC survey on 1,000 adults. The leading reason for no
Yonsei University’s Severance Hospital has successfully implanted a mechanical heart pump into a child with a rare heart disease for the first time in Korea, the hospital said Tuesday.The operation marks the country’s first biventricular assist device (BiVAD) implantation on a child with idiopathic cardiomyopathy, according to Yonsei. Idiopathic cardiomyopathy is a disease wherein the hear
The research arm of Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) will install Medidata’s cloud platform to enhance clinical trial capabilities, the platform developer said Friday.SNUH's Medical Research Collaborating Center, (MRRC) which supports infrastructure for large-scale, international clinical trials, will use Medidata Rave, the cornerstone of Medidata Clinical Cloud, to comprehensivel
Drinking remained a popular pastime in Korea this year, and Koreans in their 20s and 30s drank mixed liquor, called poktanju, the most, a consumption survey by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety showed Thursday.Consumption of somaek, a combination of beer and soju, increased most notably in 30-year somethings by 11.6 percent from last year and by 5.6 percent for those in their 20s.Th
Peptide drug developer C-TRI said Thursday it would begin a large-scale clinical trial in partnership with healthcare consulting firm Synex for its spinal cord cerebellar degeneration treatment, Citrelin.The Korean pharmaceutical said it aims to start the trials next month. The goal is to gain insurance coverage by 2020 with study results, the company said.The study will be conducted o
Korean pharmaceutical Handok said Thursday it signed an exclusive sales agreement with Actelion Pharmaceuticals Korea to sell its pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) drug, Uptravi (selexipag) in the local market. PAH is a rare, progressed disorder caused by high blood pressure in the lung. Symptoms of pulmonary hypertension include dyspnea, fainting, chest pain, and edema, among o
Thyroid cancer is no longer the most commonly occurring cancer in Korea, and the 5-year relative survival rate was the same or slightly better than people who did not have it, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Thursday.The number of newly-diagnosed cancer patients fell to 214,701 in 2015, a 1.9 percent drop from a year earlier, statistics from the health ministry showed. The cancer incid
Cataract surgery is the most commonly performed surgery in Korea, with men getting it earlier than women, data compiled by Kim’s Eye Hospital showed Thursday.The National Health Insurance Service says around 360,000 people underwent cataract surgery in Korea in 2016 alone, making it the most performed surgery covered by insurance. Cataract is a vision-impairing condition caused by clouding of
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Wednesday launched a probe into 57 nonprofit organizations of conglomerates, including Celltrion, SK Group, LG Group, and CJ Group, to determine whether the nonprofits are part of a management ploy.Korean conglomerates are well-known to be run by families that employ complex, intertwined cross-shareholding as a means of expanding management control. Their no
New research says ovarian cancer patients should get postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy (POAC) earlier than later – proving those who got POAC within 42 days after completing neoadjuvant chemotherapy lived longer.Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) refers to medicines administered before surgery while POAC refers to those given after surgery.No guidelines exist regarding when to get POAC after
Electric blankets warm you in winter and save on your power bills. Are they safe, too? Unfortunately no, a recent study says, especially if you are pregnant. Electric blankets and many other environmental sources such as power lines, wireless devices and networks generate extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields, called non-ionizing radiation.High exposure to non-ionizing r
Doctors can now predict Alzheimer’s for patients with mild cognitive impairment with a 75 percent accuracy using only neuropsychological tests, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.The KCDC said it developed a cost-effective model that predicts dementia onset in the next three years with results from neuropsychological tests, which are a series of tasks designed
Pfizer said Tuesday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave an early green light to use BOSULIF (bosutinib) to treat newly-diagnosed leukemia patients based on results that tout its efficacy.BOSULIF can now be used to treat newly diagnosed patients with chronic phase Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myelogenous leukemia (Ph+ CML). The FDA first approved the drug in 2012 to
Exelixis has won the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s expanded approval to use its cancer drug CABOMETYX on previously untreated kidney cancer patients, the company said Tuesday.“Today’s approval of CABOMETYX is a true win for patients in the U.S. with advanced renal cell carcinoma who now have a new first-line treatment option,” CEO Michael M. Morrissey said.The U.S. regulatory agency
Allergan and Gedeon Richter are one step closer to getting an expanded FDA approval for cariprazine to treat bipolar disorder, having proved efficacy in a phase 3 study, Richter said Monday.Cariprazine, approved and marketed as Vraylar to treat schizophrenia, met primary efficacy endpoints in a pivotal phase 3 study in 488 patients with bipolar I disorder, Richter said.Data evaluated on th
AstraZeneca is trying hard to make its tyrosine kinase inhibitor Tagrisso a first-line therapy for lung cancer, and has moved one step closer to doing so in the U.S., the company said.AstraZeneca said Monday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepted its supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) to use Tagrisso as a first-line therapy for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer
Three of the four newborns that died at Ewha Womans University Medical Center’s intensive care unit on Saturday had a bacterial infection, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said Tuesday.KCDC said blood cultures of the babies taken before death revealed an antibiotic-resistant strain of Citrobacter freundii in an interim update. The detected bacteria belong to the gram
Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) said Monday it would cooperate with Chinese private equity funds firm CITIC PE and its hospitals to train Chinese medical staff and vitalize hospital operations.The Korean hospital and CITIC PE signed a strategic partnership agreement at the equity firm’s headquarters in Beijing Wednesday, SNUH said. Minister of Health and Welfare Park Neung-hoo and CI