LONDON – Twenty-three pharma companies are joining forces in the AMR Action Fund and have raised $1 billion in new money for the clinical development of antibiotic drugs addressing the most resistant bacteria. Working with philanthropic backers, the fund aims to bring two to four new antibiotics through to approval by 2030.
Targeted therapy offers an opportunity for personalized medicine that's specific for a patient's tumor, but the hyper-focused treatment creates possibilities for cells to mutate and become resistant to the therapy.
As organisms adapt to their environment, adaptations that serve them in their current environment can become liabilities if that environment changes. The control of traits that are an asset in one situation and a liability by the same gene is called antagonistic pleiotropy. In the March 16, 2020, online issue of Nature Genetics, researchers reported a method to systematically identify mutations that conferred antagonistic pleiotropy – in the form of resistance to one drug, but heightened sensitivity to another – in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells.
BEIJING – While repurposing drugs may be a quick solution to an epidemic like COVID-19 that has a limited research window, it’s just luck as to whether an already available drug candidate exists for newly emergent diseases. Experts say it’s more realistic to develop better drugs instead of attempting to repurpose old ones.
BEIJING – While repurposing drugs may be a quick solution to an epidemic like COVID-19 that has a limited research window, it’s just luck as to whether an already available drug candidate exists for newly emergent diseases. Experts say it’s more realistic to develop better drugs instead of attempting to repurpose old ones.
A new web-based tool allowing rapid in silico prediction of the ability of candidate antibiotics to accumulate in Gram-negative bacteria should enable subsequent prioritization of new compounds for synthesis and further evaluation, U.S. researchers reported Nov. 18, 2019, in Nature Microbiology.
LONDON – Pfizer Inc. is taking further steps to distinguish its third-generation anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitor, Lorbrena, from the rest of the field, funding a pan-European trial that will use liquid biopsies to track the resistance profile of non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC).
WASHINGTON – Hot on the heels of July's FDA approval of Recarbrio (imipenem, cilastatin and relebactam) in complicated urinary tract infections (cUTIs), Merck & Co. Inc. rolled out pivotal phase III data at the Infectious Disease Society of America's IDWeek 2019 that could support expanding its label to another high-need group, people with hospital-acquired or ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (HABP/VABP).
Since being diagnosed with cancer a few months ago, I have been in an unwanted crash course on the patient perspective of everything I’ve been writing about biopharma for the past several years. It’s an eye-opener. Genetic testing, lack of research, unmet medical need, off-label use, drug shortages, adverse events, informed consent, clinical trial data that don’t represent real-world practice, drug-drug interactions, co-morbidities, labeling precautions, reimbursement, data-sharing vs. privacy issues. ... Up until now, these were all topics I wrote about or discussed with my colleagues during our news meetings. Now, they’re personal. They impact my daily life and could...
This isn’t exactly “funny” – nothing about cancer is – but during the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago I couldn’t help noticing the multitude of hand-sanitizer vending devices posted around McCormick Place. They seemed … odd there. “Scrub some alcohol gel on your hands, so you don’t catch cold! Oh, cancer? Not a lot we can do about that. We’re working on it.” So they are. The number of abstracts submitted and attendees set records this year. I’m not always assigned to cover ASCO, but I’ve done my share, and 2014’s meeting seemed uncommonly active. Of...
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