/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derekb.lowe@gmail.com 2013-03-22T11:39:21-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/22/trouble_for_a_whole_class_of_diabetes_drugs.php The FDA has been turning its attention to some potential problems with therapies that target the incretin pathways. That includes the DPP-IV inhibitors, such as Januvia (sitagliptin) and GLP-1 peptide drugs like Byetta and Victoza. There had been reports (and... 76280@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2013-03-22T11:39:21-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/02/20/a_new_old_diabetes_and_obesity_drug_candidate.php Obesity is a therapeutic area that has broken a lot of hearts (and wallets) over the years. A scroll back through this category will show some of the wreckage, and there's plenty more out there. But hope does that springing-eternal... 76223@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2013-02-20T09:37:14-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/02/01/so_how_does_one_grow_betacells.php The short answer is "by looking for compounds that grow beta cells". That's the subject of this paper, a collaboration between Peter Schulz's group, the Novartis GNF. Schultz's group has already published on cell-based phenotypic screens in this area, where... 76185@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2013-02-01T08:18:18-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/01/17/more_on_metformin_and_cancer_and_alzheimers.php Metformin: what a weird compound it is. Very small, very polar, the sort of thing you'd probably cross off your list of screening hits. But it's been taken by untold millions of diabetics (and made untold billions of dollars in... 76144@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2013-01-17T09:52:51-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/01/15/is_obesity_an_infectious_disease.php Like many people, I have a weakness for "We've had it all wrong!" explanations. Here's another one, or part of one: is obesity an infectious disease? During our clinical studies, we found that Enterobacter, a genus of opportunistic, endotoxin-producing pathogens,... 76138@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2013-01-15T07:57:51-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/10/23/huge_but_effective.php Of the physical properties that make up the "Rule of Five" (and similar schemes), the one that I think is easiest to breach is molecular weight. I'm not saying that it's a good idea to breeze past 500 daltons with... 75953@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2012-10-23T06:21:17-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/10/17/zafgens_epoxide_adventure.php Zafgen is a startup in the Boston area that's working on a novel weight-loss drug called beloranib. Their initial idea was that they were inhibiting angiogenesis in adipose tissue, through inhibition of methionine aminopeptidase-2. But closer study showed that while... 75937@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2012-10-17T06:38:19-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/10/05/the_return_of_cb1.php CB1 ligands were all the rage a few years ago, headlined by Sanofi's rimonabant. These looked like the best shot at the obesity market in a long time, if you were of an optimistic frame of mind. But the entire... 75911@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2012-10-05T06:14:25-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/08/29/caloric_restriction_flops.php Nature is out today with a paper on the results of a calorie-restriction study that began in 1987. This one took place with rhesus monkeys at the National Institute of Aging, and I'll skip right to the big result: no... 75839@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Aging and Lifespan 2012-08-29T13:17:50-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/24/an_oral_insulin_pill.php Bloomberg has an article on Novo Nordisk and their huge ongoing effort to come up with an orally available form of insulin. That's been a dream for a long time now, but it's always been thought to be very close... 75658@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2012-05-24T07:11:00-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/18/strangely_good_results_in_diabetes_and_cardiovascular_disease.php I've read a couple of medical papers recently that show how tricky it is to draw conclusions on what patients would be best helped by a specific therapy. Many of you will have seen the paper in The Lancet on... 75645@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2012-05-18T06:55:16-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/10/arena_and_lorcaserin_back_at_the_fda.php For those of you following Arena Pharmaceuticals and their long-running efforts to get lorcaserin approved by the FDA, there's a committee hearing on that matter today. Adam Feuerstein is live-blogging the event here. The big issues, now with fresh data:... 75630@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2012-05-10T07:39:49-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/dapagliflozin_goes_down_for_the_last_time.php To no one's surprise, the FDA has rejected dapagliflozin, an SGLT2 inhibitor for diabetes. The advisory panel voted it down back during the summer, and the agency has asked AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb to provide more safety data. As it... 75388@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2012-01-19T12:47:04-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/12/22/more_from_hua_a_change_of_business_plans.php You may remember the mention of Hua Pharmaceuticals here back in August, and the follow-up with details from the company. They're trying to in-license drugs from other companies and get them approved as quickly as possible in China. The original... 75344@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Diabetes and Obesity 2011-12-22T10:24:00-05:00 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