/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derekb.lowe@gmail.com 2013-05-15T13:51:40-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/05/15/and_the_award_for_clinical_futility_goes_to_.php I was talking with someone the other day about the most difficult targets and therapeutic areas we knew, and that brought up the question: which of these has had the greatest number of clinical failures? Sepsis was my nomination: I... 76418@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2013-05-15T13:51:40-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/05/02/aveo_gets_bad_news_on_tivozanib.php The kinase inhibitor tivozanib (for renal cell carcinoma) was shot down this morning at an FDA committee hearing. There are going to be a lot of arguments about this decision, because feelings have been running high on both sides of... 76386@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2013-05-02T11:18:39-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/04/22/cancer_back_to_nofone.php From Nature comes this news of an effort to go back to oncology clinical trials and look at the outliers: the people who actually showed great responses to otherwise failed drugs. By all rights, Gerald Batist’s patient should have died... 76358@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2013-04-22T10:37:20-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/27/a_therapy_named_after_you.php Back last fall I wrote about Prof. Magnus Essand and his oncoloytic virus research. He's gotten a good amount of press coverage, and has been trying all sorts of approaches to get further work funded. But here's one that I... 76308@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2013-03-27T11:11:43-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/26/the_wyethelan_insider_trading_case_resolves.php You may remember this insider trading scandal from last year, involving a lead investigator for Wyeth/Elan's trials of bapineuzumab for Alzheimer's. Here's the sequel. The hedge fund involved has agreed to pay $600 million dollars to settle the charges, although... 76304@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2013-03-26T06:56:53-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/22/good_news_in_oncology_more_immune_therapy_for_leukemia.php I've written a couple of times about the work at the University of Pennsylvania on modified T-cell therapy for leukemia (CLL). Now comes word that a different version of this approach seems to be working at Sloan-Kettering. Recurrent B-cell acute... 76296@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Biological News 2013-03-22T07:06:43-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/22/good_news_in_oncology_oncolytic_virus_therapy.php The last few days have brought some good news on some unusual approaches to cancer therapy. First off was Amgen's report that they'd seen positive results in advanced melanoma using a modified HSV treatment. This is technology that they brought... 76295@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2013-03-22T06:12:17-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/21/neurosearchs_decline.php If you looked at the timelines of a clinical trial, you'll notice that there's often a surprisingly long gap between when the trial actually ends and when the results of it are ready to announce. If you've ever been involved... 76290@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2013-03-21T11:23:07-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/04/von_eschenbach_takes_another_whack_at_phase_iii_trials.php Here's a new editorial on clinical trials and drug development by Tomas Philipson and Andy von Eschenbach (former head of the FDA). It continues his earlier theme of scaling back Phase III trials (which I commented on here). These Phase... 76250@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2013-03-04T08:06:48-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/02/15/abt199_clinical_trial_suspended_updated.php Abbott - whoops, pardon me, I mean AbbVie, damn that name - has been developing ABT-199, a selective Bcl-2-targeted oncology compound for CLL. Unlike some earlier shots in this area (ABT-263, navitoclax), it appeared to spare platelet function, and was... 76215@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2013-02-15T08:05:23-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/02/07/ducts_down_with_useless_clinical_trial_acronyms.php I'm not the first person to complain about these things, of course. Even by 2003, there were sixteen different clinical trials in the literature with the acronym HEART. It appears that the cardiovascular field picked up the acronym bug early,... 76196@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2013-02-07T08:15:20-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/02/05/not_working_out_so_well_at_merck.php Here's a rather grim analysis from the AP of Merck's current status. The company's stock was recently downgraded by two analysts after last Friday's earnings call didn't go very well (links added by me below): Future sales of Vytorin, a... 76190@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2013-02-05T11:04:01-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/01/31/mipomersen_approved_bonus_antisense_roundup_included.php So Isis and their partner Sanofi have received FDA approval for mipomersen (branded as Kynamro). Late last year, the European Medicines Agency turned them down, which has people wondering about the drug's future, but here they are, albeit with a... 76178@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2013-01-31T07:58:25-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/01/25/cetp_alzheimers_monty_hall_and_roulette_and_goats.php CETP, now there's a drug target that has incinerated a lot of money over the years. Here's a roundup of compounds I posted on back last summer, with links to their brutal development histories. I wondered here about what's going... 76163@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2013-01-25T07:58:20-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/01/21/that_many_compounds_in_development_really.php So PhRMA has a press release out on the state of drug research, but it's a little hard to believe. This part, especially: The report, developed by the Analysis Group and supported by PhRMA, reveals that more than 5,000 new... 76151@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Drug Development 2013-01-21T09:13:46-05:00