COVID-19 has unleashed a logistical conundrum for pharma lab leaders: How do you keep momentum in therapeutics development, when, like all workplaces, most labs have had to either restrict use or close altogether? The answer lies, at least in part, in…
Novartis’ Lung Cancer Drug Gets European Approval
Novartis announced that the European Commission has approved Zykadia (ceritinib) to treat adult patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) previously treated with crizotinib. The approval of Zykadia in the European Union (EU) provides patients with…
3 Ways Technology is Changing the Face of Drug Discovery & Development
While personalized medicine has been a goal for some time, there have been several obstacles. Although there has been an explosion in genomic data, the corresponding clinical utility for this data has been slow to be validated. Data from tissue images,…
Tumor Micro-Environment: Rough for Nanoparticle Cancer Drugs
Nanoparticle drugs—tiny containers packed with medicine and with the potential to be shipped straight to tumors—were thought to be a possible silver bullet against cancer. However new cancer drugs based on nanoparticles have not improved overall survival rates for cancer patients…
Targeting Brain Cancer Cells With a Wound-Healing Drug
At the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, three scientists are planning to create a virus capable of destroying brain cancer. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it isn’t hypothetical – the researchers were recently awarded a grant from…
FDA Endorses First Low Cost Biotech Drug
Federal health experts have unanimously endorsed a Novartis drug which is expected to become the first lower-cost copy of a biotech drug to reach the U.S. market. A panel of Food and Drug Administration experts ruled that the company’s version of…
Researchers Find Alternate Drug Therapy Lowers Antibodies
Findings of a three-year clinical trial led by University of Cincinnati (UC) transplant researchers suggest that a novel pre-operative drug therapy reduces antibodies in kidney patients with greater success than with traditional methods, with the potential to increase the patients’ candidacy…
Researchers Map Paths to Cancer Drug Resistance
A team of researchers led by Duke Cancer Institute has identified key events that prompt certain cancer cells to develop cancer drug resistance to otherwise lethal therapies. By mapping the specific steps that cells of melanoma, breast cancer, and a blood…
Drug Blocks Key Signal in Cancer Growth and Drug Resistance
An experimental cancer drug may block an important driver for the survival, growth and spread of cancer cells. The first clinical trial of an experimental drug, called pictilisib, found the safety profile to be manageable in cancer patients at doses that…
High Vancomycin Doses Fuel Risk of Kidney Damage in Children
Results of a small Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study show that hospitalized children given high-dose IV infusions of the antibiotic vancomycin to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections face an increased risk for kidney damage — an often reversible but sometimes serious complication….