The telecommunications company Alcatel has signed a $300 million agreement with the University of Pittsburg Medical Center to provide a IP communication system between its 19 hospitals and 400 clinics. The project, which will kick off next year, will upgrade the hospital system’s wired and wireless data infrastructure, enterprise telephony system and other platforms to create a converged IP infrastructure. This will allow voice, data and video to travel on a single network. Alcatel, which has offices in Agoura Hills, and the hospital also agreed to create a joint venture to develop advanced communication technologies and applications for the healthcare industry.

The North Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce holds its special events cluster. 5:30 p.m. Chamber office 9401 Reseda Blvd., Ste 100 Northridge (818) 349-5676 nvrcc.com

In his nearly 30-year career in the entertainment field, Perry Husman has been a production assistant, transportation coordinator, an assistant director and producer. Add up all that experience and it may be little wonder that Warner Bros. Studios tapped Husman as its new vice president of studio operations. The chief function of the position will be to service clients shooting feature films, television shows, commercials or still assignments at the Warner Bros. lot. “I’ve seen every aspect of production close up,” Husman said. “Looking back it was invaluable experience for this job.” The Warner Bros. facilities in Burbank include the 110-acre main studio lot and the 32-acre Ranch. Husman will be responsible for 34 soundstages and numerous exterior sets, audience coordination, stage and back lot maintenance and special projects. With all that property under his supervision, Husman said he doesn’t find it a daunting task. Instead Husman views it as a challenge and a way to remain involved with production while not having to be present for every minute as he did as a line producer. The line producer, Husman explained, was one of the toughest jobs on a set as it involves “a lot of headaches as you are the guy that everybody comes to.” The career path leading to his new role at Warner Bros. started for Husman after graduating from college and finding himself as a production assistant on a television shoot in Utah. The ups and downs, twists and turns in his career had Husman working on feature films, including two entries in the “Friday the 13th” series, “Stigmata,” and “Species II,” and in television. His work as producer on “Cold Case” and “The Nine” made him familiar with the personalities and facilities at Warner Bros. Working off and on for a six year period on the Warner Bros. lot put him in touch with people that helped him get to where he is today, Husman said. His television and film career allowed Husman to travel the world and know the excitement of receiving a phone call saying that a pilot he shot had been picked up. The downside was the work schedule took away from time he could spend with his 7-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son. The studio operations position gives the opportunity to remain in entertainment and still have a family life, Husman said. “This is the right job at the right time and it was a blessing that it happened when it did,” Husman said. –Mark R. Madler BANKING Community West Bank has appointed four executives to manage its newly opened branch in Westlake Village. Don Macaulay was named senior vice president and regional business banking manager. Larry Lindsay and Mark Silvertrust were appointed regional vice presidents of commercial lending, and Dave Mellman was named vice president for business development and SBA lending. Dana Morris was named operations manager. CONSTRUCTION Colin Terras has been named vice president and district manager for the Glendale office of PCL Construction Services. He will oversee operations in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and Riverside counties. Terras, who has been with PCL since 1982, had been district manager in Los Angeles since 2003. ENTERTAINMENT David Coriat has been appointed to the independent Special Committee of Image Entertainment, Inc., a licensee, producer and distributor of home entertainment programming. Coriat is executive vice president and chief financial officer of Standard Broadcasting Corp. Ltd. The Special Committee was formed in the spring to review potential strategic opportunities in an effort to maximize stockholder value. The CW network announced the hiring of two new executives. Gaye Hirsch joins the network as Vice President, Current Programming. Hirsch will oversee day-to-day production and act as liaison between the network and producers on various CW primetime series. Hirsch joins the network from Cruise/Wagner Productions. Joanna Klein joins The CW as vice president, drama development. Klein will be involved with all aspects of developing new drama series. Previously, Klein served as vice president of development and current programming at Regency Television. HEALTH CARE Rabbi Kalman Winnick has been named as director of spiritual life at the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda. Winnick’s responsibilities include directing the rabbinical staff in religious services, memorial services, life-cycle events, and educational and holiday programs. Winnick previously worked at Vitas Innovative Hospice in Encino. Mission Community Hospital recently elected its officers and board of directors. They are: Justin “Jay” Aldrich, as chairman; Robert Rodine as vice chairman; James F. Walters as treasurer; Louise Oliver as secretary; and directors Maritza Artan, Bassam Bejjani, John Brasch, Piyush Jogani, William Josephson, Dianne Philibosian, Stanley Silver, James H. Stewart and Pancho Valenzuela. MANUFACTURING Bamboo, the pet division of North Hills-based Munchkin, Inc. has made two appointments. Amy Osete has been named as vice president of marketing. She will direct the brand’s strategic marketing and promotional efforts. Osete previously served as a brand manager with Munchkin. Jill Netzel has been named as brand manager for Bamboo. She will be responsible for marketing initiatives such as driving new product strategy, overseeing packaging and collateral development, managing advertising and online programs, and overall brand consistency. Netzel previously served as senior marketing manager at Pentel of America, Ltd., a manufacturer of writing supplies. Dan Goetz was named as president and chief executive officer of UltraViolet Device, Inc., a Valenica supplier to the HVACR market. Goetz has been with the company since its founding in 1992. He replaces Tom Veloz who died unexpectedly in September. PUBLIC SERVICE Cal State Northridge President Jolene Koester has been appointed to the Committee for Jobs and the Economy by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The committee has been charged with exploring ways to enhance the city’s job and economic climate. REAL ESTATE Allan Dalton has been promoted to president of Move Inc.’s real estate division. He is responsible for all Move Inc. businesses, including Realtor.com, new home and rental businesses, SeniorHousingNet.com, Top Producer Systems and The Enterprise. Stephen Feltner, president of Move’s new home division, and Maria Pietroforte, president of the rentals division, will report to Dalton. Dalton was formerly president and CEO of Realtor.com. Larry Kosmont, CEO and president of Kosmont Cos. in Encino, has been named commissioner for the industrial development authority of the city of Los Angeles. The commission administers the city’s industrial development and empowerment zone bond programs under the Community Development Department. The bonds help small to midrange industrial manufacturers. TECHNOLOGY Skip Kinford has been appointed as president of 5Square.com, a software provider for the automotive industry. In the role, Kinford sets company strategy and manages day-to-day operations, and leads all sales, support, product, marketing and financial activities. Before joining 5Square, Kinford was senior vice president of sales and marketing at On-Line Administrators, a supplier of data management to the automotive industry. Bruce Edwards joined the board of directors of Semtech Corp., a Camarillo-based supplier of analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. Edwards is executive chairman of Powerwave Technologies, Inc., a supplier to the wireless communications industry. Edwards will serve on the board’s audit committee and litigation committee. Scott Guthrie has been named as senior vice president, North American Sales and Distribution for video game publisher THQ, Inc. In his new role, Guthrie directs the company’s North American sales, retail marketing, sales planning and operations teams, which directly serve retailers. Guthrie has been a sales and operations consultant for THQ since January. Prior to that he was senior vice president of sales and distribution at Buena Vista Home Entertainment. TELECOMMUNICATIONS Jeremy Toback has been appointed as vice president of entertainment sales for Crisp Wireless. Toback will manage all partner and customer relations for mobile content management for media and entertainment accounts in the greater Los Angeles area. He will be based in Studio City. Toback previously was founder and president of Ajna Music, a boutique record label in the health and wellness market.

Used to be the term intellectual property conjured up a science nerd with a law degree holed up in a cubicle trying to determine whether an invention was, indeed, original. But in a digital age when information is currency and entire businesses can turn on a name or an idea, IP has gone mainstream. Nearly any lawyer involved in nearly any business now must have some IP expertise, and those who specialize in the practice can be found at just about any general practice law firm. “It’s gotten huge over the last 10 years, and it’s not just the Internet,” said Jason L. Hoffman, a partner at Nemecek & Cole in Sherman Oaks. “Certainly, the Internet has broadened intellectual properties and disputes and made intellectual property a forefront issue with everyone involved in litigation in general. And if you’re a transactional lawyer, you certainly have to be concerned with defining intellectual property with any agreement or sale.” In a knowledge based economy, it is intellectual assets that are most valuable. But it isn’t just the big headline-grabbing cases like Napster or the raids on counterfeit designer labels. With consumers and businesses using the Internet to locate goods and services, trademarking a name has taken on far greater significance. And in a business environment where even top-level executives move freely from one company to the next, safeguarding trade secrets has become critical for even the most low-tech of companies. Meanwhile, the acceleration of technological innovation has escalated the rush of patent applications. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, total patent applications rose almost 79 percent between 1990 and 2000 and 33 percent between 2000 and 2005 to 417,508 last year. Patent applications, once heavily weighted in the electronics and science fields, have been more recently fueled by the emergence of the biotech and software industries. “The legal industry is a service industry and the question, is what services do our clients want?” said Susan Barbieri Montgomery, chair, American Bar Association section of intellectual property law. “There are a number of important industries, biotech, software, entertainment, that are very dependent on intellectual property assets.” What began as a highly specialized practice dealing with patent registrations and protections has evolved into a specialty that covers everything from the relatively simple trademarking of names to the complex strategies behind licensing intellectual properties for a host of uses, many of which cannot easily be anticipated. Just ask the music industry, which never saw the potential effect of the Internet on the distribution of music. “When you structured a licensing agreement, you knew what the future use would be,” said Brett Garner, senior associate with Michelman & Robinson. “Nowadays, you can have a new media format a year from now, and if you don’t capture that in the licensing agreement, the client can lose out.” The emergence of the digital age, with its variety of new media from the Internet to movies played over cell phones has led to a second branch of intellectual property practice, differentiated as soft IP versus hard IP. “Hard IP tends to be more patent focused,” said Steve Sereboff, a partner at SoCal IP Law Group in Westlake Village. “Soft IP is more like entertainment law. You get a lot of IP attorneys who are really deal guys but because their expertise is dealing with IP transactions, license deals, production deals, they think of themselves as IP attorneys.” Patent law still represents a huge practice. Very large companies like IBM, which holds more than 3,000 patents and earns more than $1 billion licensing and selling them, according to published reports, and others are driving not just a business in patent transactions, but a rethinking of patent law to better facilitate the collaboration brought about by globalization, the Internet and other business dynamics. Softer growth But it is the softer applications of intellectual property law that have been the key to the growth at general practice firms that has occurred more recently. “A lot of the reason IP has become more important is based on the valuation of intellectual property,” said Garner. “Businesses get a worth from their IP. They can finance off of it. There are some companies whose names are worth more than their actual book value.” Michelman & Robinson’s IP practice has more than doubled from a two-attorney operation in 2001. SoCal IP, which works mostly with technology and emerging growth companies, launched as a solo practice somewhat more than four years ago and now employs five patent attorneys plus a patent agent. And Greenberg & Bass in Encino has just added two new attorneys to its IP practice. The Internet has placed added emphasis on intellectual property for even the smallest of companies. “If you want to find a restaurant, the first place you’re going to go is the Internet,” said Mishawn Nolan, partner, entertainment, intellectual property and new media practice at Greenberg & Bass. “If you haven’t protected your trademark, and there’s a bunch of other people with a similar name, that customer is not going to find you.” Using the Internet Happily for them, the rise of the Internet has also afforded inexpensive ways for small companies to protect their names, offering relatively low-cost trademark watch services. But other IP services such as work involving trade secrets and work related to the entertainment industry, has become particularly complex. Trade secrets, involving anything from an employee who resigns taking along a rolodex of client contacts to the classic case over the employee who went to a rival firm taking the recipe for the famous “nooks and crannies” in Thomas’ English Muffins, can be far more complex requiring litigation that runs into the millions of dollars. But most of what takes the time of IP attorneys these days is entertainment law, with its myriad of criss-crossing deals over licensing images and products and the divvying up of intellectual assets among those involved in productions. “When I was in law school in the mid-1990s, entertainment law and intellectual property were two separate areas,” said Nolan. “It’s almost impossible to have an entertainment or IP practice where the two don’t overlap anymore. In smaller firms, IP and entertainment have completely merged.”

Santa Clarita is one of 23 new enterprise zones designated by the state, clearing the way for businesses in the city to receive tax breaks and other incentives to spur growth for the next 15 years. Starting next year, most businesses in Santa Clarita will be able to earn more than $30,000 in tax credits for each employee hired and receive tax credits of up to $20 million for purchasing machinery and parts. The zone will apply to most of Santa Clarita zoned as industrial and commercial. California has 42 enterprise zones, each expiring on a revolving basis. Twenty-three became available this year, which were bided for by hundreds of cities over the past year. Of those, the state and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger selected six new enterprise zones in Los Angeles County Hollywood, South Gate, Long Beach, Pasadena, Compton and Santa Clarita. None are in the Valley; an existing enterprise zone in the northeastern portion of the Valley was not renewed by the state.

“Inspired by the Past. Focused on the Future” reads the motto on the website of Panavision Inc., the stalwart camera system and accessories provider. As the future of filmmaking involves the use of digital cameras, it would only make sense for the Woodland Hills-based company to focus on expanding its camera offerings. In early October, Panavision acquired Plus 8 Digital, one of the largest digital camera rental companies in North America, with offices in five cities, including Burbank. Panavision President and CEO Bob Beitcher said that the Plus 8 Digital acquisition gives the company a broader range of inventory and entry into market segments it had been targeting. “Plus 8 is a terrific fit for us,” Beitcher said. Jim Mathers, president and co-founder of the Studio City industry group Digital Cinema Society, said the deal allows Panavision, which has always been able to get the lower-end of the market, to expand its client base. “Panavision now has the high-end of the market tied up,” Mathers said. Both companies have offices in Toronto and New York, and Panavision also has a Burbank sales location of its Lee Filters USA division. The privately-held Panavision is evaluating the integration of Plus 8 and no decision has been made about what to do about multiple facilities in the same city. The company will focus on providing the same level of service that Plus 8 had under its founder and owner, Marker Karahadian, and his staff in pioneering new camera systems, Beitcher said. Karahadian takes an executive spot at Panavision. Plus 8 was founded in 1988 and rents the Panasonic Varicam, the Carl Zeiss HD Digiprime and the Viper, developed by Grass Valley, a division of Thomson. At the Woodland Hill’s offices of Dalsa Digital Cinema, a competing camera rental firm, the move by Panavision is seen as a validation of that company’s strategy, said Vice President John Coghill. A key part of the Dalsa strategy is to have the right camera for the right job and the company has at its disposal Sony, Panasonic and Grass Valley standard and high definition cameras as well as the Origin 4K camera developed by Dalsa. Coghill said Panavision acquired Plus 8 to mimic that type of availability. “This is their way of copying that strategy,” he said. A distinction between Panavision and Dalsa, founded in 1980 and headquartered in Canada, is that Dalsa has the in-house expertise to develop its own product while Panavision partners with Sony to make its cameras, including its Genesis high-def camera. Panavision, however, has the longevity in the entertainment industry and the name recognition. The company has provided film cameras to Hollywood for 50 years. Peer recognition of its contributions to the industry has come in the form of the Scientific or Technical Award, Technical Achievement Award, and Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Academy Award of Merit from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The business that Panavision entered in 1954 is not the same as in 2006. While 35 mm film isn’t going away soon even in the digital age, the film-less cameras provided by Plus 8 and Dalsa are the way of the long-term future. “Panavision had a run for the money where they used to be totally dominant and they are not as dominant as they used to be,” said Marty Shindler, an Encino-based management consultant on business issues for creative and technology companies. “They have a great brand name.” Panavision entered the digital market just over six years ago by modifying a Sony camera for use by George Lucas in “Episode II” of the “Star Wars” films. Lucas shot “Episode III” in the popular sci-fi franchise with Plus 8 cameras. The use of digital cameras in a film with many visual effects can be a time saver, since the filmmaker doesn’t have to take film, digitize it and then add in the effects. “Having digital files from the start you are already a couple of steps ahead of the game,” Shindler said. Digital cameras have been employed infrequently in feature films, this summer’s “Superman Returns” and “Miami Vice” being recent examples. Television, however, is where digital and high definition cameras are used most often and Panavision jumped in to make the transition from film.

Eight years after it opened in a former department store, the first Wal-Mart in Los Angeles the 142,000-square-foot outlet at 8333 Van Nuys Blvd. in Panorama City has received a massive makeover. Over the past four months, crews have added a new color scheme, new products and new departments to the two-story structure. “Everything from floors to ceilings to new paint to wider aisles,” said Joel Barrios, the Panorama City Wal-Mart’s manager, a day before the grand re-opening Nov. 3. Barrios explained that the remodel, which happened while the store remained open, dealt with both aesthetics and technology. Workers introduced additional signage in both English and Spanish, remodeled the restrooms and redesigned the store’s color palate, which now features mellower earth tones. While the store’s square footage remains the same, its layout was reconfigured to make way for a new apparel department and expanded electronics, housewares and grocery departments. New flooring was installed. Lighting was improved. On the technology side, the latest self-check scanners were added, along with a new wireless department known as the “Connection Center.” The changes turned what was dark and cramped into an open and bright space enough to receive accolades from both the store’s 350 employees and its daily customers even before it officially re-opened, Barrios said. “They just stop right in their tracks,” he said. “It gives them a better shopping experience. They just love it.” As part of the upgrades, Wal-Mart is donating $7,500 to area organizations including Rotary International and North Hollywood-based Computech for Humanity. The Panorama City rollout is part of an overall push by the Bentonville, Ark., discount retailer to improve 1,800 of its stores, said spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien. The store No. 2568 for Wal-Mart opened in 1998 at Macerich’s Panorama Mall in what had been a The Broadway department store that closed two years earlier. It was then the only multilevel store in the company’s roster and one of its first efforts to introduce the Wal-Mart nameplate in an urban surrounding. Until the 1990s, the chain built stores mostly in rural or suburban areas. Today, Wal-Mart operates five outlets within Los Angeles city limits.

The San Fernando Valley experienced continued job growth in 2005 but will likely face a slowdown in coming years, according to a nearly 50-page report made public by the CSUN San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center. The study was released at the Valley Industry and Commerce Association’s annual Business Forecast Conference Oct. 26 at the Sheraton Universal Hotel and examined a wide-ranging list of factors affecting the region’s economy. Among the most striking findings: the Valley’s health sector continues to struggle as operating costs outstrip revenues; transportation issues remain a hurdle for growth; and the manufacturing industry has lost jobs at a rate of 2 percent a year in 2004 and 2005. The conditions show that the Valley economy will soften in 2008, although remain solid compared to other areas, said Dan Blake, who headed the study and reported its findings. “Even though we’re slowing down, we still forecast we’re going to do better than L.A. and California,” Blake said. One indication is job growth, which grew by 16,400 people or 1.9 percent between 2004 and 2005, ahead of the area’s average job growth rate of 1.2 percent. That growth should continue to increase, although at a more modest clip around 1.5 percent a year, or 10,000 jobs in 2007 and 2008, the report said. The sector to experience the largest growth was professional, scientific and technical skills, which saw a 9.3 percent increase over the two years to 47,084 positions. The sector includes legal services, accounting, architects, design, research and scientific professionals. The construction industry also showed a 6.8 percent increase from 2004 to 2005, tallying 37,256 positions. That growth could end, however, as the housing spree of the past few years lessens. “It’s been a proud recipient of the real estate boom,” Blake said of construction jobs. One sign the boom has went bust: notices of default are on the rise. “We see them going up,” Blake said. “This is a sign of distress.” Jack Kyser, chief economist and senior vice president of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said the changing real estate climate raises questions about how local governments will grapple with the sudden void of new dollars that had been coming from housing projects. Other concerns include improving infrastructure and addressing the dearth of available, build-able land. Kyser said the relative health of the Valley closely mirrors that of the region’s: strong but slowing. “Most major industries are in growth mode,” Kyser said, “but there are signs of a slowdown.”

In the three-story, Tudor-style building on Olive Avenue in Burbank, there remain some furnishings left from the days when the offices served as the headquarters of Dick Clark Productions and now are home to New Wave Entertainment. For instance, there is a fireplace on an upper level. Clark’s former office is immediately to the right after one enters through the main doors. And on the first floor is the bar, complete with brass rail transported from England. Though lacking the essentials to make any bar complete, i.e., bottles of liquor, there is however, track lighting, a large flat panel television screen on one wall, and a New Wave employee sitting in front of a computer monitor working on a commercial for the syndicated version of the medical show, “Scrubs.” “We’ve brought it into the 21st century but have honored what it was and who worked here before us,” said senior creative director Gary Lister, of the bar area. Growth and consolidation led New Wave to take over the space once occupied by the production company of the self-styled world’s oldest teenager. The company began its move in May and five months later the print creative services, marketing, accounting and human resources departments have settled in. “Being here you feel you are part of larger team,” said Danielle LaFortune, vice president of print creative services, the division of New Wave responsible for posters, advertising, billboards, home video packaging for feature films and television shows. Prior to the move the division had been located in a storefront, a five minute walk away from the main New Wave building in the 2600 block of Olive Avenue. The availability of the Dick Clark building allowed New Wave to bring the print, creative services and marketing departments under one roof. The building was in slight disrepair before the company began renovations to alter what company cofounder Alan Baral described as a “maze-like” space plan. The second floor, where the marketing department now works, was most changed, with cubicles and offices removed to open up the space. The windows allow plenty of natural light that gets drawn into the center of the room. “The windows are the best thing for being creative,” said Scott Williams, a vice president and creative director. “Knowing there is an outside world is inspiration enough.” Both Lister and Williams said that prior to the renovations and before Clark’s production company had moved out, the walls were covered with memorabilia Clark collected over his nearly 50-year career. “It was like a collector’s paradise,” Williams said. “It was the history of his life on the walls.” Uncovering Uncle Walt The first major biography on Walt Disney in decades hit bookstores on Oct. 31. Author Neal Gabler researched his 800-page behemoth for seven years, including time at the archives of The Walt Disney Co. in Burbank. “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination,” however, was not authorized by the Disney company nor did it review the manuscript before publication. “The opinions are his,” said Howard Green, a spokesman for Disney Studios. “Nobody tried to change him or sway him.” Green calls the book amazing and described Gabler as an amazing writer and first-rate researcher who set out to take a fair and balanced look at the man who created one of the great icons of 20th Century pop culture in Mickey Mouse and the theme park when he opened Disneyland in 1955. “He did an 80-page chapter on the making of ‘Snow White’ that’s a real page turner,” Green said. “It takes you through the whole drama of the creation of that movie and you worry they are not going to make the deadline.” Gabler’s past books include “An Empire of Their Own,” a history of Hollywood focusing on the Jewish studio heads; and a 1994 best selling biography of newspaper columnist, radio host and actor Walter Winchell. Disney has been the subject of prior biographies, but Green said the time was right for a new one that puts Disney in his place in the cultural history in America and his role in the entertainment. Gabler’s premise that Walt Disney and Pablo Picasso are the two great creative geniuses of the 20th century is a great observation, Green said. The author was given free reign of the corporate archives, worked with archivist Dave Smith and his team and painstakingly read the documents Disney left behind following his death in 1966. “There have been an awful lot of books on Walt. Some of them inaccurate and some of them downright scandalous,” Green said. “This book tries to give the true story and the best account yet of Walt’s life.” Post-production awards More than 200 entertainment industry professionals turned out Nov. 1 for the first ever Hollywood Post Alliance Awards at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. The awards honored creative and technical excellence in post-production work in four categories: color correction, audio, compositing, and editing. During opening remarks, Alliance President and master of ceremonies Leon Silverman said that post-production professionals are too seldom recognized for their work in helping to create the magic of Hollywood. Northridge resident and industry veteran Emery Cohen received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Advancing Post-Production. During his long career, Cohen served in executive positions with Glen Glenn Sound, Compact Video Services, Pacific Video, and Laser Pacific Media Corp. His creation of the Electronic Laboratory while at Pacific Video led it to becoming the preferred post-production workflow system used in television and motion pictures. “At best, I’ve been someone with an idea who could muster a team,” Cohen said. “I’m someone who could almost always muster the resources to make a good idea come true.” Staff Reporter Mark R. Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or at [email protected] .

Drug maker Amgen reported “encouraging results” from its Phase II trial of the experimental cancer drug AMG-706, which treats a type of gastrointestinal cancer. The Thousand Oaks company tested the product on 138 patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors who stopped responding to Gleevec, a drug by Novartis. The study found that 24 percent of patients had symptoms level out and 3 percent has their tumors shrink.