/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derekb.lowe@gmail.com 2011-11-30T13:29:38-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/30/lipitor_expiration_day.php As one of Garrison Keillor's characters says (in WLT), "I always knew the end would come. And here it is, the end". Lipitor (atorvastatin) goes off patent today, and I can recommend this overview by Matthew Herper at Forbes. Will... 75299@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-11-30T13:29:38-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/22/regeneron_finally_makes_it_to_the_market.php I've been doing drug research since 1989 myself, which means that I'm fairly experienced. But Regeneron started in this business a year or two before I did, and they're just now getting their first major drug, Eylea (aflibercept) onto the... 75288@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ The Central Nervous System 2011-11-22T08:00:54-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/18/pushing_onwards_with_cetp_the_big_money_and_the_big_risks.php Remember torcetrapib? Pfizer always will. The late Phase III failure of that CETP inhibitor wiped out their chances for an even bigger HDL-raising follow-up to LDL-lowering Lipitor, the world's biggest drug, and changed the future of the company in ways... 75282@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-11-18T09:13:55-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/15/geron_stemcell_pioneers_drop_stem_cells.php Are stem cells overhyped? That topic has come up around here several times. But there have been headlines and more headlines, and breathless reports of advances, some of which might be working out, and many of which are never heard... 75273@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Press Coverage 2011-11-15T08:54:51-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/14/anticoagulants_one_after_another.php Back earlier this year, when some bad results had come out about Merck's thrombin receptor antagonist, I wrote ". . .another result like this one, and vorapaxar could be completely sunk". Well, perhaps it is. Merck has unveiled the results... 75271@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-11-14T07:36:53-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/07/22/a_few_more_victories_like_this_and_we_will_be_undone.php AstraZeneca has a lot of problems these days, so you'd think that approval of their new anticoagulant Brilinta would be reason for the company to celebrate. Not much, though - see this post at InVivoBlog for more. A lot of... 75094@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-07-22T11:47:03-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/09/cardiac_hope_and_cardiac_hype.php There have been quite a few headlines over the last few days like this one: "A New Drug Makes Hearts Repair Themselves". Unfortunately, that's not quite true. Not yet. It's this paper in Nature that's getting the attention, and it... 75036@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-06-09T10:26:41-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/05/27/niacins_unexpected_flop.php Let's add to the uncertainty about whether we understand cardiovascular disease, OK? The NIH has been conducting a large statin-plus-niacin trial, which is definitely a combination worth looking at. The statin will lower your LDL, and niacin will raise your... 75018@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-05-27T11:01:22-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/05/18/fenofibrate_good_for_much.php Abbott has some difficult times ahead with their fenofibrate franchise. That's TriCor, and its newer formulation, TriLipix. Fenofibrate, as I've mentioned here before, is an oddity among drugs. It was discovered way before anyone had a mechanism of action, and... 75002@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-05-18T12:37:00-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/05/10/phase_ii_failures.php We know what clinical trial success rates have been like for the last twenty years or so (hint: not so good). Are things turning around, or not? This Nature Reviews Drug Discovery piece takes a look at the 2008-2010 data.... 74989@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2011-05-10T06:20:12-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/20/mercks_vorapaxar_bleeding_indeed.php So, as had been suspected, the reason that Merck's thrombin antagonist vorapaxar ran into clinical trouble was excessive bleeding. This is always the first thing to suspect when an anticoagulant has difficulty in human trials. It's really a delicate balance,... 74831@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2011-01-20T08:54:59-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/13/mercks_thrombin_antagonist_in_trouble.php Very bad news today for Merck (and the Schering-Plough people therein). Their thrombin receptor antagonist vorapaxar (formerly SCH 530348) has run into trouble. A review board monitoring the compound's clinical trials has suddenly halted two of them. All we know... 74825@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2011-01-13T12:18:40-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/11/19/mercks_cetp_compound_still_alive_but_the_big_fun_awaits.php Four years after the torcetrapib disaster, Merck has released some new clinical trial data on their own CETP inhibitor, anacetrapib. It's doing what it's supposed to, when added to a statin regimen: decrease LDL even more, and strongly raise HDL.... 74765@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2010-11-19T10:42:02-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/10/21/apotexs_plavix_adventure_four_years_later.php Remember the Plavix Confusion of 2006? That's when Canadian generic company Apotex managed to jump onto the market for a few weeks with its own version of the BMS/Sanofi-Aventis blockbuster. It was always a bit unclear whether they had the... 74724@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2010-10-21T06:57:31-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/07/13/avandia_was_the_evidence_buried.php The New York Times has added to the arguments over Avandia (rosiglitazone) this morning, with an above-the-fold front page item on when its cardiovascular risks were first discovered. According to leaked documents, that may have been as early as the... 74580@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Toxicology 2010-07-13T08:32:31-05:00