New Bird Flu Cases Rise in China, Three Deaths

China has found two more cases of a new strain of bird flu and one of the victims has died, state media said on Wednesday, bringing to nine the number of confirmed human infections from the previously unknown flu type.

A 38-year-old cook fell ill early last month while working in the province of Jiangsu, where five of the other cases were found. He died in hospital in Hangzhou city on March 27, the Xinhua news agency reported. Samples tested positive on Wednesday for the new bird flu strain, H7N9.

The second patient, also in Hangzhou, is a 67-year-old who is having treatment. Xinhua said no connection between the two cases had been discovered, and no one in close contact with either patient had developed any flu-like symptoms.

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The World Health Organization said it was "following the event closely" and was in contact with Chinese authorities, which it said were actively investigating the cases amid heightened disease surveillance.

Flu experts across the world are studying samples isolated from the patients to assess H7N9'S human pandemic potential.

Other strains of bird flu, such as H5N1, have been circulating for many years and can be transmitted from bird to bird, and bird to human, but not generally from human to human.

So far, this lack of human-to-human transmission also appears to be a feature of the H7N9 strain.

Of the seven other cases of the new strain, two have died, both in the business hub of Shanghai. The other five are in a critical condition in hospital in Nanjing. Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou are all close to each other in eastern China.

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China's Agriculture Ministry said it had yet to find any animals infected with H7N9, though added it was possible it had been brought to China by migratory birds.

The WHO says so far it has seen no evidence of human-to-human transmission, but there are questions about the source of the infection and about how it may be being transmitted to people.

"We still don't know the mode of transmission or host (of the virus)," said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl. "Those are the two most important pieces of information we would need. In order to control it, we need to know where it is coming from."

The WHO said in a statement it was also focusing its efforts on encouraging collaboration between researchers to ensure information and materials are available for scientists wanting to develop diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines.

No vaccine is currently available for H7N9 flu, but preliminary test results provided by the WHO Collaborating Centre in China suggest it is susceptible to the antiviral drugs Tamiflu, sold by the Swiss drugmaker Roche, and Relenza, sold by Britain's GlaxoSmithKline.

Chinese authorities dismissed speculation on some websites that the H7N9 outbreak may be related to more than 16,000 pig carcasses found dumped in rivers around Shanghai.

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Yin Ou, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Agricultural Committee, told reporters on Tuesday that the city had tested 34 dead pigs found in the city's Huangpu River for the H7N9 virus, but the tests had all come back negative.

China has a chequered record when it comes to tackling disease outbreaks, which some officials have previously sought to cover up. However, since the H7N9 cases have been identified, China has stepped up its alert level and said it is being transparent in dealing with them.

In 2003, authorities initially tried to cover up an epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged in China and killed about a 10th of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

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Cardinal Health CEO on China Biz & Female Execs

 Highlight transcript below to create clipTranscript:  Print  |  Email Go  Click text to jump within videoTue 19 Mar 13 | 01:41 PM ET Discussing health care in China, the promotion of female executives, and the state of his business, with Cardinal Health CEO George Barrett. "Health care in China has been a tremendous opportunity for our company," he says.

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China Is Getting Into The Patent Game For Alternative-Energy Cars

China is trying to get a leg up on the market for clean transportation by bulking up the rate it’s been filing patents. According to a recent report in Europe’s China Daily, China filed over 2,000 patents for alternative-energy cars in 2012, placing it just behind Japan and the United States, and dead even with Germany and South Korea:

With a worldwide push for sustainable, clean transportation, patents are vital to survival in the global new-energy vehicle industry, China Intellectual Property News reported.

China had filed more than 2,000 patent applications – 8 percent of the world total – for new-energy cars by the end of last year to share the third place with Germany and South Korea, according to the statistics from Thomson Reuters.

Japan ranks the first with nearly 9,000 patents, followed by the United States with 4,000, accounting for a respective 60 percent and 22 percent of the world total.

China has actually been in the patent game for sometime. In 2011, the country’s patent office received more applications — for all forms of invention, not just green technology — than any other nation. At the same time, very few Chinese investors seek to patent their ideas abroad — less than 5 percent between 2005 and 2009. Generally speaking, if an inventor has an idea of genuine merit, they’ll seek to patent it as many places as possible. Concentrating merely on China’s office could be an indication that other incentives are driving the patent, such as the chance to snatch up a government subsidy.

The race between various countries to accrue patents in alternative-energy also raises the possibility of “patent wars,” such as those that have riled the world of software. Companies and interests attempt to round up and hoard patents in order to corner sources of revenue. That is, of course, very profitable for them, but it also tends to dampen innovation in the relevant industry. The spread of patents forces companies and inventors to spend ever more time and money making sure every conceptual aspect of the technology they’re working on is in the legal clear, or is properly licensed. That drives up costs for the companies, for consumers, and slows down the creation of new products and technologies that can raise everyone’s well-being — like cars and other forms of transport powered by sustainable energy. It arguably even drives up inequality.

The problem is especially acute in the software world, where it’s especially difficult to organize who has the rights to what into a public and easily-searchable database. But in principle the inefficiencies and transaction costs that come with over-zealous competition for patents can afflict any industry, including green tech and green transportation.

In February of 2011, for example, Butamax Advanced Biofuels, a joint venture between BP and DuPont, sued another advanced biofuels company, Gevo, for infringing their patent on a process to produce microbial-based biofuel.

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Celsion rises after expanding China partnership

NEW YORK -- Shares of Celsion Corp. climbed Tuesday after the company expanded a drug development deal with a Chinese pharmaceutical company.

THE SPARK: Celsion said Zhejiang Hisun will have the option to seek marketing approval for Celsion's liver cancer drug ThermoDox in Hong Kong and Macau. The companies had already agreed to collaborate in China. Celsion will get $5 million upfront and said it could get "several hundred million U.S. dollars" from Hisun over the next decade. The Lawrenceville, N.J., company will support Hisun's work on the manufacturing of ThermoDox in China, and Hisun will make and distribute the drug in those markets.

THE BIG PICTURE: ThermoDox is a version of doxorubicin, an older chemotherapy drug. Celsion said ThermoDox is heat-activated and is designed to deliver bigger doses of the doxorubicin directly to tumors.

In May 2012 the companies announced a development agreement that only applied to China. Celsion agreed to supply the drug to Hisun, while Hisun would help secure marketing approval for ThermoDox.

Celsion does not have any approved drugs, but it expects to report results from a late-stage clinical trial of ThermoDox before the end of January.

Hisun will have an option to pay Celsion another $5 million in the next few months. That payment will give it the right to market ThermoDox in Hong Kong and Macau, and will be part of a total payment to Celsion worth $25 million. Celsion said it could get a total of $55 million in upfront and regulatory milestone payments over the next 18 months, and $45 million more if ThermoDox drug reaches sales targets. It will also receive royalty payments of more than 10 percent on sales in the region.

THE ANALYSIS: Roth Capital Partners analyst Joseph Pantginis said the deal is a major expansion of Celsion's previous agreement with Hisun, and said he is "impressed" with the new agreement. He said the partnership could help speed up marketing approval for ThermoDox. Pantginis maintained a "Buy" rating on Celsion shares, with a price target of $10.

SHARE ACTION: Shares of Celsion gained 75 cents, or 10.7 percent, to $7.75 in afternoon trading. The shares have quadrupled in value over the last year, as they closed at $1.69 on Jan. 23, 2012.

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China to cut prices of more than 400 drugs from February

HONG KONG, Jan 8 (Reuters) - China will cut prices of about 400 drugs for respiratory diseases, fever and pain by up to 20 percent from February, in a move to make medicines, including some products from Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis, more affordable.

It will be the fourth such price cut since 2011 and is part of reforms since the early 2000s to make healthcare cheaper and more accessible.

China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement on Tuesday the latest round of price cuts involved 20 broad classes of medicines and would include speciality drugs.

As the government cracks down on costs, more Chinese drugmakers are fighting thinning margins.

Sinopharm Group Co Ltd - China's largest drug distributor - and smaller rivals like Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd are expanding their distribution networks to get bigger slices of the market to offset increasing pressure on margins.

Faced with patents running out in the West, bigger foreign pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca , have hitched their futures largely to sales in developing markets including China, India, Eastern Europe and South America.

The average reduction in the latest round of price cuts will amount to 15 percent, although the cut will be as high as 20 percent for the most expensive drugs.

Earlier rounds of price cuts included antibiotics, anti-tumour, hormonal and blood-related medicines, and drugs for the circulatory, nervous, digestive and immune systems.

Health Minister Chen Zhu told a health conference on Monday that healthcare was still too expensive and there was still inadequate control over the improper use of drugs.

China, with an ageing population, is overhauling its health system and has made big strides since 2003. It now has a basic universal medical insurance system and heavily subsidises a growing list of essential drugs.

But many challenges remain in the country of 1.3 billion people, including a lack of state funding for hospitals, where drug sales, often at inflated prices, remain a major source of income.

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn and Donny Kwok; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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