http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aaDcdZY_hvg4&refer=us

– ViroPharma Inc. lost more than half its value in Nasdaq trading after experimental drug maribavir failed in tests on patients receiving bone-marrow transplants.

The Exton, Pennsylvania, company fell by $6.47, or 53 percent, $5.74 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. That’s the biggest drop since March 2002.

The advanced maribavir trials found no significant reduction in cytomegalovirus, part of a group that includes chicken pox and genital herpes, in patients six months after getting their marrow transplant. The virus can be deadly in people with HIV, cancer, transplanted organs or others whose immune systems are weakened.

“We are extremely disappointed by the outcome of this pivotal study,” Vincent J. Milano, ViroPharma’s chief executive officer, said in the statement. “We just received these data and there are far more questions than answers. We still have a significant amount of work to do to fully understand this outcome and its impact on the overall program.”

Alex To, an analyst at Natixis Bleichroeder Inc. in New York, dropped the 12-month target price for ViroPharma to $11 a share from $15, a figure given as recently as last week. Rachel L. McMinn at Cowen & Co. in San Francisco lowered ViroPharma to $6.06 from $11.86. Thomas Wei at Piper Jaffray & Co. in New York cut the price to $9 from $17.

ViroPharma’s two marketed products are Vancocin, a form of the antibiotic vancomycin, and Cinryze, to prevent attacks of swelling in patients with a rare condition called hereditary angioedema. Cinryze was acquired in October through the purchase of Lev Pharmaceuticals Inc. Vancocin may face generic competition this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kurt Heine in New York at kheine1@bloomberg.net.

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/health/stories/2009/02/09/face_transplant.html

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE

Associated Press

Monday, February 09, 2009

She can eat pizza. And hamburgers. She can smell perfume, drink coffee from a cup, and purse her lips as if to blow a kiss.

Except that one lip is hers, and the other is from a dead woman. She is the nation’s first face transplant patient, and on Thursday night, she went home from a Cleveland hospital.

From Times of India

CHENNAI: It was a red letter day for doctors at the department of surgical gastroenterology of Government Stanley Medical College Hospital. In a marathon 13-hour-surgery, the doctors did their first liver transplant in the government sector in the state on a 40-year-old woman suffering from end-stage liver disease. The transplant was facilitated by the consent of parents of 19-year-old Karthik, who was pronounced brain dead at Kumaran Hospital on Poonamallee High Road, following a road accident.

After Karthik was pronounced brain dead by a neurologist at 3 pm on Wednesday, his parents agreed to sign the papers for his organ donation. The central organ registry at the Government General Hospital was contacted. The registry networked with several hospitals. While the heart went to Frontier Lifeline, the kidneys were shared by a government hospital and Kumaran Hospital. The liver was taken to Stanley and the eyes went to Shankara Nethralaya.

The central organ registry has so far coordinated nearly a dozen transplants since August 2008. “We see a marked improvement in awareness. Parents of the brain dead are now willing to sign the form. In most cases, we don’t even have to explain things in detail. They have been reading about cadaver transplants in the media for sometime now,” said a senior doctor at GH.

The doctors at Stanley were visibly happy. “We are elated. The surgery was long. But it was our first. It was successful. The patient is now on immunosuppressants and is doing well,” said Dr R Surendran, head of surgical gastroenterology, who led the transplant. “In a few days, there will be an exclusive ward to keep patients pronounced brain dead. As a government hospital,we get a lot of accident victims, who are pronounced brain dead. So in the next three months, the number of transplants is likely to triple,” he said.

The donation, according to the registry, has given a new lease of life to at least seven patients. “Till now, a majority of the transplants have been successful and all patients are doing well,” said a doctor attached to the registry.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/01/stories/2009020158060300.htm

Staff Reporter

— Photo: M.Vedhan

Well done: Health Minister M.R.K. Panneerselvam interacting with the team of doctors that performed a liver transplant at Government Stanley Hospital, on Saturday. Principal Secretary Health V.K.Subburaj (right), is in the picture.

More employees to be recruited

https://www.penandscale.com/india-transplant/pat-for-stanley-doctors/

Stanley records a first in liver transplant

www.thehindu.com/2009/01/30/stories/2009013060840100.htm

 

Stanley records a first in liver transplant

Ramya Kannan

 

— Photo: V. Ganesan

PROUD MOMENT: Dr. Surendran and his team of surgeons who successfully performed the liver transplantation at the Government Stanley Hospital in Chennai on Thursday.

CHENNAI: South India’s first successful liver transplant in the public sector was performed at the Government Stanley Hospital’s Centre for Surgical Gastroenterology and Liver Transplantation, here, on Thursday. The recipient, a 40-year-old woman with cirrhosis of the liver, was operated upon early Thursday morning and was said to be doing well after surgery.

Led by S. Surendran, head, Surgical Gastroenterology, a large team comprising nearly 40 people, helped perform the nearly 12-hour-long surgery.

The donated liver came from 19-year-old Karthik, who was declared brain dead after a road accident. Kumaran Hospital, where he was admitted, informed the Tamil Nadu Organ Registry and the transplant coordinator about the availability of organs, including the liver. The availability of a matching recipient at Stanley Hospital and the fact that the team was finally ready to perform its first transplantation seem fortuitous.

“For us, it is a dream come true,” says Dr. Surendran. He explains that a decade ago, an attempt was made at liver transplantation, but it was premature and unsuccessful.

Health Secretary V.K. Subburaj, lauding the team, said, “It is a historic day for us. We have been waiting for this day for a long while.”

Stanley Dean J. Mohanasundaram said this achievement would encourage more people to enrol with the organ liver registry at the hospital.

Yet another liver surgery was done in Tamil Nadu on Thursday at the Christian Medical College, Vellore. The Tamil Nadu registry coordinated with its Karnataka counterpart to procure the organ from Manipal Hospital, Bangalore.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/004200901251351.htm

Chennai (PTI): Creating history, a three-year-old brain dead girl ended up saving three lives including that of a 21-month-old boy with timely transplant of her organs through a well-coordinated effort by doctors.

The case was also historic for another reason as the 21-month-old heart patient ended up as the youngest recipient of a donor organ in the country.

The donor, three-year-old Tamanna, had met with a road accident in Bangalore on January 20 and was declared brain dead, and her father, who was injured, signed the papers for donating his daughter’s organs from the hospital bed.

The boy, hailing from Ahmedabad, suffering from heart ailment was in ‘bad shape’. His name was put on the Heart Registry and his parents had decided to go home when the call came from Bangalore, Dr K M Cherian, Director, Frontline Hospital at Mogappair here, told PTI.

“We formed two teams to do this whole process. One team went to Bangalore (by flight) to harvest the heart from the girl and came back to Chennai and another team transplanted the heart on the boy in the hospital here”, Dr Cherian said.

The recipient had a new heart in a procedure which lasted just two hours and 42 minutes. That was the time it took for harvesting, transporting and transplantation, he said. A team of nine doctors performed the heart transplant.

He said while inter-state transplantation had become common now, what was important in the case was that the father of the girl agreed to donate the organs.

“The operation was performed at 0500 hrs on Thursday”, he said.

Tamanna and her parents Renilson and Nisha, both hailing from Kerala, were driving back home on Tuesday last when their car collided with a truck.

Renilson sustained multiple fractures and was recovering from surgery in Manipal Hospital. However, his wife died on the spot and his daughter was declared brain dead.

The donor had the universal blood group ‘O’ positive, which made things easier for the surgeons, Cherian said.

Tamanna’s liver was also brought to Chennai for transplant on a two-and-a-half-year old child at the Chettinad Hospital, while a 60-year-old man received her kidneys at the Manipal Hospital.

“The entire operation would not have been possible but for the cooperation of the Chennai police and co-ordination between the transplant teams of both hospitals”, Cherian said.

Sunil Kumar, Additional Commissioner (Traffic) said steps were taken to keep the road free so that the donor’s heart reached the hospital from the airport as quickly as possible.

“It took just 13 minutes to reach the hospital from Airport” (a distance of 25 km), he added.

Organ Transplant FAQ

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http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/25/stories/2008102554950500.htm

Ramya Kannan and R. Ilangovan

K. Radhakrishan

SALEM/CHENNAI: A second cadaver donation in Tamil Nadu within the space of a month took place on Friday.
K. Radhakrishnan, who was declared brain dead on Friday morning, was rushed to Chennai in a fully-equipped ambulance from the hospital in Salem where he was admitted. He was brought to Dr. Cherian’s Frontier Lifeline Hospital, wired to life-support systems and his organs were removed by surgeons at the hospital.
The family members of Radhakrishnan, 42, decided to donate his organs after he was declared brain dead. Radhakrishnan suffered head injuries during a road accident near Salem a couple of days ago.
Apparently, they were inspired by the gesture of the Ashokans who donated their 16-year old son Hithendran’s organs after the boy was declared brain dead on September 23.
Co-incidentally, Radhakrishnan and his wife Latha, like the Ashokans, are both medical professionals- while he was an operation theatre assistant in Kamala Hospital, Salem, she worked as a staff nurse in the same hospital. K. K. Rajagopal, a critical medicine expert of Kamala Hospital, who motivated Latha and other relatives to donate Radhakrishnan’s organs since he was ‘brain dead,’ told The Hindu that their best efforts to revive him had failed. “His brain, we found today, was dead,” he said.
After obtaining the ‘go-ahead’ from Latha, Dr. Rajagopal contacted Dr. Ashokan for guidance on how to proceed with the cadaver donation. He tried to call several hospitals in Chennai but found them reluctant to take up the case as the distance between Chennai and Salem was about 6 hours by road.
They struck it lucky with Frontier Lifeline in Mogappair. Dr. K.M.Cherian advised Dr. Rajagopal and his team to rush the patient to Chennai in a fully-equipped ambulance with Radhakrishnan immediately.
As with Hithendran’s case where Additional Commissioner Traffic Sunil Kumar facilitated free flow of traffic in the city so that the heart reached the recipient well before time, Salem City Police Commissioner N. Chenbaharaman also alerted the police stations on the way to provide security and ensure free passage for the ambulance carrying Radhakrishnan to Chennai.
While Radhakrishnan’s heart was used for a patient at Frontier Lifeline, his liver and one kidney went to Apollo Hospitals and one kidney was given to the government hospital.