/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net 2008-07-31T07:13:56-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/31/rember_for_alzheimers_methylene_blues_comeback.php Today we take up the extremely interesting story of Rember, hailed in this week’s press as a potential wonder drug for Alzheimer’s. There are a lot of unusual features to this one. To take the most obvious first, the Phase... 73478@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-07-31T07:13:56-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/30/bapineuzumab_good_for_anything_or_not.php Note: I'm still working my way through the information on the much-hyped TauRx drug, Rember - a post on that is coming. Here's more from the same Alzheimer's meeting, though: Elan and Wyeth unveiled the data on their widely anticipated... 73476@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-07-30T07:20:06-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/23/patents_stopping_an_alzheimers_wonder_drug.php A longtime reader sent along a very interesting example that’s being used in a new book. The Gridlock Economy by Columbia economist Michael Heller is getting some good press, including this interview over at the Wall Street Journal>’s Law Blog.... 73458@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Patents and IP 2008-07-23T07:34:03-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/30/another_alzheimers_compound_goes_down.php I was mentioning the gamma secretase enzyme around here just the other day as a longstanding target for Alzheimer's therapy. I remember the periodduring the 1990s when the enzyme hadn't been identified yet, and frankly, it was a lot easier... 73403@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-06-30T07:25:12-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/17/protecting_amyloids_parent.php Let’s start from first principles: most drugs mess something up. More elegantly, most drugs inhibit some enzyme’s activity or block some receptor’s binding site. Proteins are generally pretty well optimized at what they do, so it’s a lot easier to... 73373@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-06-17T07:11:14-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/13/elan_tries_again.php The long-running saga of Elan's attempt to come up with a vaccine for Alzheimer's disease continues. There have been bold attempts, setbacks, rethinks, more setbacks, and now they're starting up again. Dosing of the latest version of their vaccine against... 73365@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-06-13T07:44:12-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/05/13/in_which_i_hate_a_wonder_drug.php Schering-Plough has had its share of troubles over the years, but the company has also seen itself saved by some pretty unlikely compounds. Vytorin (ezetimibe) is the example I’ve spoken about here, and if the drug doesn’t seem like a... 73293@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-05-13T07:32:55-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/05/06/alzheimers_a_report_from_the_front.php Several recent papers in Neurology offer some interesting ideas on Alzheimer's disease. The one that's getting some headlines today suggests that long-term use of ibuprofen has a protective effect against the disease. Actually, the authors looked at all sorts of... 73279@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-05-06T07:20:42-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/28/apoe4_test_or_not.php Science has coverage of a diagnostic test for the APOE gene that’s coming into the market. For about $400, you can find out what form of the protein you have. The problem is, the main thing this test is good... 73129@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-02-28T09:43:23-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/11/fast_plaques_in_a_slow_disease.php One of the first projects I ever worked on when I started in industry was targeting Alzheimer's disease. Things could have easily worked out to find me still targeting Alzheimer's disease, nearly twenty years later, because the standard of care... 73103@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2008-02-11T08:48:52-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/10/15/checking_the_numbers_on_the_alzheimers_test.php The news of a possible diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease is very interesting, although there’s always room to wonder about the utility of a diagnosis of a disease for which there is little effective therapy. The sample size for this... 72780@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Biological News 2007-10-15T20:30:14-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/05/17/betasecretase_not_so_fast.php (My apologies for no update today - it's been hectic around here, for reasons that I hope to be able to reveal soon). Some of the first work I did in the industry was on Alzheimer's disease. It's hard stuff... 72316@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2007-05-17T20:06:35-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/04/02/failure_not_your_friend_but_definitely_your_companion.php Here's something that you don't see discussed very often, but it's worth some thought: what kind of personality do you need to have to do drug discovery research? Clearly, any conclusions are going to carry over well to other fields,... 72184@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Who Discovers and Why 2007-04-02T20:26:54-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2005/04/14/how_good_is_aricept_anyway.php Pfizer and Eisai picked up some headlines on the news that their Alzheimer's drug, Aricept (donezipil) showed some effectiveness in delaying the onset of Alzheimer's. That used to be my field of work, although I've got no competing interest in... 11189@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2005-04-14T20:51:38-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2005/01/23/a_trial_too_far.php So Johnson and Johnson is the latest company to try to broaden their market for a drug and run into cardiovascular side effects. Their Alzheimer's drug Reminyl (galantamine), makes some money, but is hardly a blockbuster. It's a natural product... 11133@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Toxicology 2005-01-23T20:38:52-05:00