/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net 2008-07-22T08:08:24-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/22/vytorin_another_round_of_nasty_results.php Merck took the unusual step of delaying its earnings release yesterday until after the close of the market. A report on another clinical study of Vytorin (ezetimibe), their drug with Schering-Plough, was coming out, so they put the numbers on... 73455@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-07-22T08:08:24-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/24/prasugrel_come_back_this_fall.php This week was supposed to reveal the FDA's decision on Dai-Ichii Sankyo and Eli Lilly's anticlotting drug prasugrel. That one's in the same chemical class as Plavix (clopidogrel), and works by the same mechanism. Since Plavix did about eight billion... 73393@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-06-24T07:26:38-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/05/merck_vioxx_seventeen_and_three.php You may or may not have noticed, but slowly and quietly, Merck has been getting many of the large Vioxx judgments against it overturned on appeal. These cases made huge headlines when they were first tried, but the articles that... 73351@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-06-05T07:29:17-05:00 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/2008/04/29/cordaptive_q_and_a.php So why is Merck's stock dropping - again? The FDA just unexpectedly handed them a "not approvable" letter for their latest drug, Cordaptive. Actually, we should stop calling it that, since they also told the company that they're not going... 73261@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-04-29T07:18:27-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/04/04/another_cholesterol_medication_goes_down_or_does_it.php This is turning into Cardiovascular Week around the blog, I have to say, and not in a good way. The latest news is the failure of a drug candidate from Takeda, TAK-475 (lapaquistat). They were in the lead in the... 73211@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-04-04T07:53:39-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/04/03/whose_guess_is_better.php I was having a discussion the other day about which therapeutic areas have the best predictive assays. That is, what diseases can you be reasonably sure of treating before your drug candidate gets into (costly) human trials? As we went... 73209@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Animal Testing 2008-04-03T07:19:01-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/04/02/vytorin_numbers.php Thanks to a tip from “Jack Friday” of the Pharmagossip blog, I’ve read this paper which appeared in Atherosclerosis this past summer. A large multi-center team put a lot of work into studying the Vytorin combination (ezetimibe and simvastain, the... 73206@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-04-02T07:51:25-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/04/01/vytorin_its_a_pity.php Ezetimibe, known as Zetia and as the key component of Vytorin, was invented by friends and colleagues of mine. It was the first drug I ever saw discovered after I joined the drug industry. The initial discovery of the whole... 73200@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-04-01T07:17:35-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/03/13/pfizer_vs_the_nejm_a_legal_showdown.php Today (March 13) at 3 PM EST, there's a hearing scheduled on a legal motion that could change the way scientific results are published in this country. Pfizer is being sued over injuries that plaintiffs believe came from their use... 73155@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ The Scientific Literature 2008-03-13T07:28:42-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/03/04/off_target_which_target_did_you_mean.php Here's a snapshot for you, to illustrate how little we know about what many of our compounds can do. I was browsing the latest issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology, which is one of many perfectly respectable journals in... 73135@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-03-04T08:14:55-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/08/a_look_under_the_hood.php There’s an excellent article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery that summarizes the state of the HDL-raising drug world. It will also serve as an illustration, which can be repeated across therapeutic areas, of What We Don’t Know, and How Much... 73100@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-02-08T08:47:27-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/01/14/vytorin_holed_under_the_waterline.php Merck and Schering-Plough have released the data on a study of genetically high-LDL patients taking a statin alone (Zocor, simvastatin) or the combination of the statin and Schering-Plough's cholesterol absorption inhibitor (Vytorin, simvastatin and ezetimibe). Vytorin has a good share... 73023@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-01-14T16:06:33-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/09/02/renin_wherefore_art_thou_renin.php I notice that the first marketed renin inhibitor seems to be doing fairly well. That's an interesting phrase, "first marketed renin inhibitor". . . This is a good example of what drug discovery can be like. Renin is a fine... 72661@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2007-09-02T21:24:09-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/06/11/rimonabant_out_in_the_light.php The FDA briefing documents for Wednesday's discussion of Accomplia / Zimulti (rimonabant) have been posted, and they're an interesting read indeed. As everyone in the industry knows, this drug was once looked on as the next potential record-breaker, and writing... 72384@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2007-06-11T09:37:27-05:00