LATEST NEWS

Relief for Dendreon on upcoming US Medicare coverage meeting on Provenge
02 September 2010

The US agency that runs Medicare – the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) - has scheduled a 17 November advisory panel meeting to consider on-label and off-label use of Dendreon's prostate cancer treatment Provenge (sipuleucel-T). ...

  Questions remain about Provenge, says NEJM editorial...
  Dendreon's Provenge becomes first therapeutic cancer vaccine...

More FDA warnings on GMP: Sun Pharma's NJ plant and Albany Molecular
01 September 2010

The US FDA has issued a warning letter to a wholly owned US unit of India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries in Cranbury, New Jersey, over good manufacturing practice (GMP) deviations at the plant. FDA inspectors made a number of observations, which ...

US delay for GSK/Valeant's novel antiepileptic Potiga
01 September 2010

GlaxoSmithKline and Valeant Pharmaceuticals have hit a three-month delay in achieving US approval for their novel antiepileptic Potiga (ezogabine). The US FDA has pushed back the PDUFA goal date for the NDA until 30 November while it reviews a risk ...

Genzyme snubs offer from Sanofi-Aventis
31 August 2010

After months of speculation Sanofi-Aventis, the French pharma major, at the weekend unveiled an all-cash $69.00 a share bid for Genzyme, which values the US biotech at about $18.5 billion. Not surprisingly, the Genzyme board unanimously rejected the ...

Pipeline progress at Oxford BioMedica as H1 losses reach £2.9 million
25 August 2010

Widening losses at Oxford BioMedica in the first half of 2010 were tempered by positive news on a number of the company's product development programmes. These included possibilities for accelerating clinical trials with ProSavin, the gene-based ...

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LATEST ANALYSIS

2010 Scrip 100 - Mixed fortunes on the R&D front
23 August 2010

Continued problems with anti-obesity drugs, more measures designed to improve R&D efficiency, and the approval of first-in-class therapeutics such as Amgen's Prolia and Dendreon's Provenge: the first ...

Liver cancer becomes more preventable and treatable
12 August 2010

New drugs to treat viral hepatitis infection, coupled with renewed interest from companies in developing therapies to treat liver cancer following Nexavar's approval, have improved prospects for both ...

2010 Scrip 100 - Changes pharma can believe in?
23 August 2010

Ian Schofield picks some of the most significant developments in the health policy and regulation circles in the first half of 2010 and explains their likely impacts on pharma. Barack Obama signed ...

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LATEST FEATURES

GW high on pipeline of cannabis extracts
23 August 2010

GW Pharma has enjoyed recent success with its cannabinoid extract product Sativex (nabiximols), which is now approved in the UK and Spain as an add-on therapy for spasticity in multiple sclerosis, ...

Face-to-Face: Trophos - The French firm that hooked Actelion
23 July 2010

Actelion this week acquired the option to buy private company Trophos, with the final decision dependent on the success of the French firm's lead product olesoxime, which is in Phase III development ...

Interview: Croatia's state insurer changes its role to raise efficiency
19 July 2010

Croatia's HZZO main responsibilities include setting drug prices, selecting reimbursable products and reimbursement. The institute uses France, Italy and Slovenia as reference countries for setting ...

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LATEST COMMENT

Value-based pricing: Who should set drug prices in the UK?
11 August 2010

While the UK's NHS and pharma sector ponder who may end up negotiating drug prices in light of a new white paper, health economists Stuart Carroll, Neil Hawkins and David A Scott contemplate four ...

GLP-1 receptor agonists vie for diabetes market share
13 July 2010

After enjoying almost five years of exclusivity, Lilly/Amylin's first-in-class antidiabetic GLP-1 receptor analogue Byetta (exenatide) has started to feel competition nipping at its heels. Asher ...

AstraZeneca judgement changes the rules for dominant companies
07 July 2010

On 1 July 2010 the EU General Court handed down its judgement in the long-running saga of AstraZeneca's proton pump inhibitor anti-ulcer product Losec (omeprazole). Although dealing with events that ...

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LATEST SCIENCE

Long-term treatment with infliximab in inflammatory bowel disease: safety and tolerability issues
01 September 2008

Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis represent the most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), clinical conditions affecting the small and/or large bowel. It is well known that IBD is an ...

Safety Pharmacology Society: 7th Annual Meeting
01 January 2008

Sir James Black, the 1988 recipient of the Nobel Prize for the invention of propranolol and cimetidine, opened the 2007 Safety Pharmacology (SP) Society annual meeting with a lecture on his ...

Optimizing the preclinical/clinical interface: an Informa Life Sciences conference
01 March 2007

The primary goal of this meeting was to propose strategies for expediting the Phase 0 drug research process for valuable drug candidate identification by taking full advantage of innovative ...

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