Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
Certain medications listed on the PBS are available only for specific therapeutic indications or to patients meeting specific criteria where the PBAC has deemed that the cost-benefit analysis is favourable only in those indications/patients. These are noted as "restricted benefits" on the Schedule. Medicare Australia places the onus of policing restricted benefits on the prescribers themselves and the pharmacists dispensing (unless the listing is also 'Authority Required'). For example, the COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib is listed on the PBS as a restricted benefit for the symptomatic treatment of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Prescribers using celecoxib for other indications are expected to indicate "non-PBS" on the prescription, and/or the pharmacist dispensing the celecoxib should charge the patient the full cost.
Rebecca Abergel
Abergel’s BioActinide Research group conducts a variety of different experiments in the field of coordination chemistry, analytical chemistry, photophysics, biological chemistry, health physics, pharmacology, molecular biology, and cell biology. More specifically, her recent interests have focused on the coordination behavior of lanthanides and actinides. Her group is especially active in developing therapeutics to treat people who have been exposed to radionuclides or atoms that contain excess nuclear charge. These radionuclides can include plutonium, americium, curium, uranium, plutonium, and neptunium. Recent work by the BioActinide Research group has involved synthesis of different actinide chelating agents that could be used to selectively bind radionuclides in the human body in order to safely remove them.
Currently, the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat radionuclide contamination is diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) (Figure 1). DTPA has shown some promise is treating plutonium poisoning, but this treatment is specific only to plutonium. Furthermore, DTPA must be administered intravenously, which is an issue due to the extremely time-sensitive nature of radiation poisoning. In the quest of finding a more versatile and easily administered treatment for radiation poisoning, Abergel sees potential in developing new classes of therapeutics.