/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net 2009-11-19T07:29:41-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/11/19/plavix_vs_effient.php The InVivo Blog has a good article on a controversy in the blood-thinning market. Plavix (clopidogrel) has a very strong share of that, of course, but since Effient (prasugrel) was finally approved, Lilly and Dai-Ichii are looking to take as... 74150@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2009-11-19T07:29:41-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/11/16/zetia_takes_another_torpedo.php Over the weekend, the results in a small cardiovascular trial came out that compared Merck's Zetia (ezetimibe/simvastatin) (correction - ezetimibe alone) against Abbott's Niaspan (time-release niacin). Niacin's an underappreciated therapy in the field - it has tolerability problems, mainly irritating... 74143@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2009-11-16T07:51:58-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/11/12/massaging_the_data_for_neurontin.php There's a disturbing article out at the New England Journal of Medicine on studies conducted on Neurontin (gabapentin) for various unapproved indications. Parke-Davis (and later Pfizer) looked at a wide range of possible indications for the drug - migraine, neuropathic... 74139@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ The Central Nervous System 2009-11-12T11:13:42-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/10/02/placebos_can_work_the_other_way_too.php There's been a lot of valuable research into the placebo effect in recent years. That has interest in and of itself, and it also has a practical side. Understanding how people feel better on their own could tell us more... 74084@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2009-10-02T07:46:37-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/24/arzoxifene_not_the_road_to_big_profits.php Eli Lilly announced some bad news last week when they dropped arzoxifene, a once-promising osteoporosis treatment (and successor to Evista (raloxifene), which has been one of the company's big successes). If this drug had been found ten or fifteen years... 74035@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ "Me Too" Drugs 2009-08-24T07:13:48-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/04/wasted_money_wasted_time.php Now, while we've been talking about how much basic research is done in industry, or how much clinical research gets done in academia, here's something that might bear on the discussion. Too much of what looks like useful clinical research... 73999@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2009-08-04T06:50:28-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/07/20/amyloid_in_trouble.php Here's an interesting look at the current state of the Alzheimer's field from Bloomberg. The current big hope is Wyeth (and Elan)'s bapineuzumab, which I last wrote about here. That was after the companies reported what had to be considered... 73986@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2009-07-20T20:58:02-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/23/medarex_ipilimumab_prostate_cancer_and_reality.php What's really going on with Medarex and ipilimumab? The company made news over the weekend with a press release from the Mayo Clinic, detailed what appears to be a substantial response in two prostate cancer patients. But the more you... 73947@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Toxicology 2009-06-23T07:32:22-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/09/avastins_numbers.php Here's a fascinating (and alarming) look at the clinical data from the recent trial of Avastin (bevacizumab) in adjuvant colorectal cancer (that is, post-surgical therapy). This was an issue in the recent Roche/Genentech takeover, since it could significantly enlarge the... 73919@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2009-06-09T06:35:19-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/08/rolofylline_hits_the_skids.php There is no good way to spin a Phase III failure. By then you've made it past the main reasons for a drug to wipe out (PK and total mechanistic failure). A breakdown at this stage is a more subtle... 73917@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2009-06-08T06:33:19-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/04/cafepharma_will_now_approach_the_bench.php Here's an interesting situation for you: according to IguanaBio, a shareholder lawsuit over the failed Vytorin ENHANCE clinical trial (that's caused Schering-Plough and Merck so much grief) is going to use posts on CafePharma as evidence. That will be worth... 73912@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2009-06-04T10:06:40-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/01/akt_and_mek_but_not_pdq.php Well, the ASCO meeting has been roaring along, with dozens of press releases coming out. (Go to Google News and type that acronym in if you want to get the full experience). They range from the pretty-interesting to the despair-inducing,... 73905@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-06-01T07:22:51-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/05/22/arena_lorcaserin_and_the_fda.php I’ve been getting a lot of objections to my opinion on Arena’s obesity candidate lorcaserin. Specifically, the first level of the dispute seems to be whether or not the recent clinical trial results met the FDA’s criteria for efficacy or... 73891@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2009-05-22T07:58:07-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/05/14/surrogate_markers_are_awful_but_theyre_ours.php And while we're on the subject of clinical trials, and the headaches associated with them, this is a neat little article over at Slate on the subject. Darshak Sanghavi from UMass does a good job of explaining the surrogate-endpoints problem... 73869@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Clinical Trials 2009-05-14T07:21:16-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/05/14/goldman_sachs_out_of_the_drug_funding_business_already.php Late last year, I wrote about a possible new way to fund drug discovery, a private-equity model that seemed to be in the works at Goldman Sachs. The driving force behind the idea seemed to be Jon Symonds, former CFO... 73868@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-05-14T07:15:18-05:00