Company Showcase : Novo Nordisk India

Novo Nordisk is headquartered in Denmark and the indian site is located in Bangalore. Novo Nordisk has pioneered the insulin pump and world leaders in diabetes area. For India they have aggressive growth plans (33% R&D for diabetes) and have a strong product portfolio for Indian market.



Careers visit
http://www.novonordisk.com/jobs/job_section/current_jobs.asp?slangid=uk&lCountry=325

ToxTools

ToxTools is a Statistical Software for Toxicological Risk Assessment.

Features of ToxTools:

• ToxTools is a complete solution for modeling and testing data from dose-response studies, and for estimating Benchmark Dose Levels (BMD's).

• It provides modern, sophisticated modeling and estimation algorithms for fitting dose response data as part of a state-of-the-art suite of graphical and numeric analysis tools for toxicological risk assessment.

• Availability of all standard dose response models (one-hit, logit, probit, Weibull and more).

• Linear, polynomial and power regression models for continuous outcomes.

• Dose response assessment of simultaneous and hierarchical multiple outcomes.

• Analysis of correlated data using generalized estimating equations (GEE).

• Trend and pairwise tests for binary or continuous outcomes.

• Exact tests of trend for both uncorrelated and correlated outcomes in small data sets.

• Single and multiple outcome risk estimation using Benchmark Dose methodology, with several methods for lower limit calculations.

• Simple dialogs for model specification, intelligent recall to modify previous runs and check sensitivity to modeling assumptions.

• Data summarization and exploratory graphics, tailored to the analysis of dose response data. Workbook-style interface for organization and comparison of results.

• Publication quality graphics. Powerful, Excel-like data editor with variable creation, transformation, and case subsetting.

A Disaster In The Making : The emergence of new forms of drug resistant bacteria will threaten patients worldwide

Research has shown that polluted rivers in India are flooded with bacteria that are resistant to many antibiotics.

Pollution is an omnipresent evil that modern day India confronts on a daily basis. And with rapid strides in industrialisation and lax government control we now face a pandemic of pollution affecting everything around us.Industrial effluents and chemicals often form the major portion of the lethal pollutants in our natural resources.

A new study by a group of Swedish scientists published in the recent version of PLoS ONE has shown how polluted rivers in India are flooded with bacteria with serious levels of drug resistance. In this particular example nearly 90 bulk drug manufacturing pharmaceutical companies were dumping the effluent/waste water from their factories into the waste water treatment plant in Patancheru, Hyderabad. Scientists have used a new method of DNA/genetic sequencing to show that bacteria present in this water are full of resistance genes that protect them from the currently available antibiotics.

Since the bacteria in the rivers are constantly exposed to moderate to high levels of antibiotics they develop a resistance by the modification of their genetic structure. Once the resistance genes are developed they are transmitted on small genetic cassettes or plasmids that can spread to other bacteria. Though some of the bacteria in the Indian rivers may not affect humans directly they can transfer their drug resistance genes to other harmful bacteria which can propagate these to humans. This will result in the emergence of new forms of bacteria like the recent discovery of New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 or NDM-1 (which was later renamed Plasmidencoding Carbapenem-resistant Metallobeta-Lactamase or PCM) which is resistant to most available antibiotics.

In combination with rampant misuse, self-medication and aggressive prescribing of antibiotics by the medical community we will continue to face the emergence of drug resistant bacteria that will threaten patients worldwide.