Source: Telesur English

HAVANA, Cuba, May 11 (acn) The final results of the efficacy confirmation study of the Cuban vaccine CIMAvax-EGF in advanced lung cancer will be presented at the 5th International Workshop on the subject next Tuesday and Wednesday in this city.

Based in the Convention Palace of Havana, the event, sponsored by CIMAB SA, Cuban Biopharmaceutical Company dedicated to the development and commercialization of drugs for the treatment of malignant tumors, aims to discuss new therapeutic indications and combinations of the compound.

Among other things, it will be discussed the implementation of the vaccine -created by scientists at the Center of Molecular Immunology (CIM by its Spanish acronym) – in the primary health care, its overall safety profile, and post-record experiences in other countries, the call to the scientific forum refers.

Considered a novel approach capable of generating antibodies on the patient against epidermal growth factor (EGF), CIMAvax-EGF is the first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer registered.

The antibodies generated by this against EGF inhibit EGF activation and stop the proliferation of tumor cells.
Consequently the progression of the disease is controlled, survival increases and significantly improves quality of life in treated patients, the statement said.

Since 2012, cancer is the leading cause of death in Cuba, according to the 2014 Health Statistics Yearbook; lung cancer ranks the highest mortality rates in the country, both in women and men.

CIM experts assert that the event is an excellent opportunity for discussion on lessons learned in the field of science and evaluate new strategies and their implementation in medical practice, new indications and therapeutic combinations.

Recently, CIM and the Roswell Park Institute against Cancer, in New York, signed an agreement to export to the United States this therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer, so clinical trials will soon begin.

CIMAVax-EGF, created in 2011 after 15 years of research, with patent rights worldwide, is registered in Cuba and Peru.

Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, among other countries, are in the process for its registration, and some like the UK and Australia have conducted clinical trials with it, as announced at that meeting between the two sides.

Our right to be Marxist-Leninists
In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution expresses his profound admiration for the heroic soviet people who provided an enormous service to humanity

Author: Fidel Castro Ruz | internet@granma.cu

may 8, 2015 12:05:40

The 70th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War will be commemorated the day after tomorrow, May 9. Given the time difference, while I write these lines, the soldiers and officials of the Army of the Russian Federation, full of pride, will be parading through Moscow’s Red Square with their characteristic quick, military steps.

Lenin was a brilliant revolutionary strategist who did not hesitate in assuming the ideas of Marx and implementing them in an immense and only partly industrialized country, whose proletariat party became the most radical and courageous on the planet in the wake of the greatest slaughter that capitalism had caused in the world, where for the first time tanks, automatic weapons, aviation and poison gases made an appearance in wars, and even a legendary cannon capable of launching a heavy projectile more than 100 kilometers made its presence felt in the bloody conflict.

From that carnage emerged the League of Nations, an institution that should have preserved peace but which did not even manage to stop the rapid advance of colonialism in Africa, a great part of Asia, Oceana, the Caribbean, Canada and a contemptuous neo-colonialism in Latin America. Barely 20 years later, another atrocious world war broke out in Europe, the preamble to which was the Spanish Civil War, beginning in 1936.

After the crushing defeat of the Nazis, world nations placed their hopes in the United Nations, which strives to generate cooperation in order to put an end to aggressions and wars, such that countries can preserve the peace, development and peaceful cooperation of the big and small, rich or poor States of the world. Millions of scientists could, among other tasks, increase the chances of the survival of the human species, with billions of people already threatened by food and water shortages within a short period of time. We are already 7.3 billion people on the planet. In 1800 there were only 978 million; this figure rose to 6.07 billion in 2000; and according to conservative estimates by the year 2050 there will be 10 billion.

Of course, scarcely is the arrival to Western Europe of boats full of migrants mentioned, traveling in any object that floats; a river of African migrants, from the continent colonized by the Europeans over hundreds of years. 23 years ago, in a United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development I stated: “An important biological species is in danger of disappearing given the rapid and progressive destruction of its natural life-sustaining conditions. I did not know at that time, how close we were to this.

In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, I wish to put on record our profound admiration for the heroic Soviet people, who provided humankind an enormous service. Today we are seeing the solid alliance between the people of the Russian Federation and the State with the fastest growing economy in the world: The People’s Republic of China; both countries, with their close cooperation, modern science and powerful armies and brave soldiers constitute a powerful shield of world peace and security, so that the life of our species may be preserved.

Physical and mental health, and the spirit of solidarity are norms which must prevail, or the future of humankind, as we know it, will be lost forever. The 27 million Soviets who died in the Great Patriotic War, also did so for humanity and the right to think and be socialists, to be Marxist-Leninists, communists, and leave the dark ages behind.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 7, 2015
10:14 p.m.

HAVANA, Cuba, Apr 9 (acn) Things became heated at the Convention Center Vasco Nunez de Balboa in Panama City before the beginning of the Forum on Wednesday due to a strong protest of the Cuban delegation to the Forum of Civil Society of the 7th Summit of the Americas, the entry to which was denied to some twenty representatives of the island.

One of the representatives of civil society in Cuba that did not receive the document authorizing his participation in the meeting is Cuban writer and intellectual Abel Prieto, to whom entry to the venue was denied minutes before the inauguration of the Forum.

Prieto stated: many of us even received the confirmation by mail for our participation and we have no idea why they have not told us whether this is intentional or if it is a bureaucratic process.

We do not want to question the willingness of the Panamanian government, he pointed out, but the organizers, the Network of Human Rights which assumed responsibility for organizing the meeting left out many important representatives of the Cuban civil society and received a group of unpresentable people that receives funding from the CIA, linked to terrorists, he underlined.

We will denounce this type of treatment Prieto stressed, and reaffirm that we refuse to dialogue with that false civil society and, as a delegation, we demand that the terrorists and mercenaries are expelled.

And added the Cuban intellectual: How are we going to talk about a dialogue between the Americas if terrorists are in this space?; how do organizers want a serious, transparent and dignified, civilized conversation between the Americas if those who protect these terrorists are being registered in the Summit’s Forums?

For his part, Yoerky Sanchez, representative of the Association of Cuban Journalists, said that while some twenty delegates from the Cuban civil society were denied entry to the opening of the forum, mercenaries paid by imperial powers were accredited to freely participate.

We do not understand why, if we are in a list of delegates accepted for the Forum, we were not given the credential that allows us to participate, said Sanchez.