View this email in your browser<http://mailchi.mp/statnews/tk-574185?e=4aad33fd68> [STAT]<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=3c0975146f&e=4aad33fd68> Monday, June 12, 2017 [Morning Rounds by Megan Thielking] Sponsored by [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8609630ae206654824f897b6/images/79ab7df3-9f1e-4f62-89d0-dbc587b0f481.png] Welcome back from the weekend, everyone! Here's what you need to know about health and medicine this morning. Trump names the next National Cancer Institute director President Trump has announced he’ll appoint Dr. Norman Sharpless, a physician and cancer researcher, to run the National Cancer Institute. Sharpless currently runs the cancer center at the University of North Carolina. He’s studied the connection between aging and cancer and co-founded G1 Therapeutics, a biopharma company working on small-molecule cancer treatments. Many in the health and science community are excited about the pick, saying Sharpless has the right blend of research, clinical, and administrative experience for the role. But he’ll take over at a potentially tumultuous time for the institute — the president has proposed cutting the National Cancer Institute’s $5.4 billion budget by 19 percent next year. Senate scrambles to get a draft health bill done After weeks of back and forth, GOP leaders in the Senate are hoping to get a draft health care bill to the Congressional Budget Office this week. Republicans are still divided on a handful of big issues, including how to handle phasing out the Medicaid expansion offered under the ACA. The health bill passed by the House would cut off all federal funding for Medicaid expansion, while Senate leaders have suggested<http://statnews.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=997b50ad60&e=4aad33fd68> they’d like to phase it out over three years. But some moderate senators would rather stretch that out over seven years, giving states more time to adjust. Scientists want to make root canals less unpleasant [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8609630ae206654824f897b6/images/cc8dcb1c-c0c7-419c-ac39-eac63280da05.jpg] no word yet on whether the root canals can make teeth glow in the dark. (OHSU / Kristyna Wentz-Graff) Dental researchers are looking to take a bite out of the notorious unpleasantries of root canals. Dentists doing a root canal will take out the infected part of a tooth, fill it with synthetic material, and then cap it with a crown. That saves the tooth, but effectively kills its blood and nerve supply, leaving teeth vulnerable to fractures or other dental troubles. Now, restorative dentistry researchers are working to create <http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=c3307a7ea2&e=4aad33fd68> artificial blood vessels that can be used to bring a dead tooth back to life. They placed a 3-D printed mold inside the hollowed-out cores of extracted human teeth and injected dental pulp cells. Then they pulled out the mold and filled those spaces with endothelial cells plucked from the lining of blood vessels. After a week, those cells had grown into artificial blood vessels and the cells around them were able to produce dentin, the calcified tissue covered by tooth enamel. Researchers are hopeful that the technique could one day be used for root canals that help teeth stay functional. Sponsor content by Bristol-Myers Squibb When melanoma spreads to the brain, what’s next? New data for I-O therapy presented at ASCO Melanoma spreads to the brain in 40-60 percent of patients. Once it has spread, it is notoriously difficult to treat, with patients living an average of only three months. Data presented for the first time at the ASCO Annual Meeting reveal what may be possible for I-O therapies that help the immune system fight cancer. Learn about the latest data<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=2a48b5d90b&e=4aad33fd68> in metastatic melanoma related to metastases in the brain. Inside STAT<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=e061fd2376&e=4aad33fd68>: A CRISPR pioneer's new approach Jennifer Doudna, the University of California Berkeley biochemist who co-led a breakthrough 2012 study<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=d4d3b755f9&e=4aad33fd68> of CRISPR-Cas9, has a habit of being scientifically cautious. She’s repeatedly emphasized the hurdles to using the technology to edit human genomes. That reticence to overpromise might have worked against UC in its fight to win key CRISPR patents. The U.S. patent office ruling released in February relied heavily on those cautious statements — including that scientists “weren’t sure” if CRISPR would work in animal cells — to determine that the Broad Institute deserved the patents. But in her new book on gene editing, coming out this week, Doudna doesn’t hold back. STAT’s Sharon Begley has an inside look here<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=cdc791c208&e=4aad33fd68>. Asian women less likely to get follow-up cancer tests Asian women are less likely to receive the standard follow-up care for an abnormal mammogram than white women, researchers report in a new paper out this morning. It’s recommended that women who have an abnormal mammogram receive further tests to check for breast cancer. To analyze how often that happens, researchers examined<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=3cc7ddbe2a&e=4aad33fd68> data from more than 50,000 women in the San Francisco area who had mammograms done that turned up abnormal results. They found that just 57 percent of Asian women received follow-up diagnostic imaging one month later, compared to 77 percent of white women. And among women who did undergo additional imaging, white women had those tests done sooner: 15 days after their mammogram results, compared to 32 days later for Vietnamese women and 28 days later for Filipina women. The doctors who penned the new paper are calling for further research into what’s driving those disparities. These diseases are tied to an increased risk of suicide Certain chronic health conditions are tied to an increased risk of suicide, according to a new analysis to be published in CMAJ<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=c7068a6c9e&e=4aad33fd68>. Behavioral health researchers dug into the medical data of more than 2,600 individuals who died by suicide, and compared those findings to more than 267,000 control individuals. They found more than a dozen conditions that were associated with a higher risk of suicide, including cancer, Parkinson's disease, sleep disorders, and stroke. Individuals with a traumatic brain injury were at the highest risk; the researchers estimate those patients are nine times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. Those findings point to specific populations that would benefit from targeted interventions, the study's authors say. What to read around the web today § Seizing on the opioid crisis, a drug maker lobbies hard for its product. New York Times<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=f3b8d24820&e=4aad33fd68> § We were the first paramedics at the Pulse nightclub massacre. The Trace<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=15e06efd2f&e=4aad33fd68> § Hospital sued over alleged secret taping of patient calls. Houston Chronicle<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=88965c37ff&e=4aad33fd68> More reads from STAT § The challenges of providing unbiased care<http://statnews.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=f972b71421&e=4aad33fd68> to biased or racist patients. § Cutting the NIH budget<http://statnews.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=91d6c586a3&e=4aad33fd68> is bad for health and business. The latest from STAT Plus § Cindy Wu: Crowdfunding research so that anyone can be a scientist<http://statnews.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=24dde410db&e=4aad33fd68>. § Gilead’s HIV prevention pill is going generic. How far will Teva drop the price<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=36bba8a204&e=4aad33fd68>? Thanks for reading! More tomorrow, [Megan] [Facebook]<http://statnews.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=bcd47a2986&e=4aad33fd68> [Twitter]<http://statnews.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=6a8ecf8421&e=4aad33fd68> [STAT]<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=bc67ddf05e&e=4aad33fd68>