/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derekb.lowe@gmail.com 2013-05-06T06:44:29-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/05/06/the_medical_periodic_table.php Here's the latest "medical periodic table", courtesy of this useful review in Chemical Communications. Element symbols in white are known to be essential in man. The ones with a blue background are found in the structures of known drugs, the... 76390@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Odd Elements in Drugs 2013-05-06T06:44:29-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/04/30/is_glyphosate_poisoning_everyone.php I've had a few people send along this article, on the possible toxicological effects of the herbicide glyphosate, wondering what I make of it as a medicinal chemist. It's getting a lot of play in some venues, particularly the news-from-Mother-Nature... 76378@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ The Scientific Literature 2013-04-30T06:57:46-05:00 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/2013/03/19/affymax_in_trouble.php Affymax has had a long history, and it's rarely been dull. The company was founded in 1988, back in the very earliest flush of the Combichem era, and in its early years it (along with Pharmacopeia) was what people thought... 76285@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2013-03-19T07:15:02-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/14/thallium_poisoning_again.php I agree with something Chemjobber said about this case - there's clearly a lot more to it than we know. Last fall, a student at the University of Southampton in the UK was poisoned with arsenic and thallium. According to... 76277@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ The Dark Side 2013-03-14T07:39:16-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/11/suing_a_generic_drug_maker_when_and_how.php The great majority of prescriptions in this country are for generic drugs. And generic drugs are cheaper in the US than they are in Europe or many other areas - they're a large and important part of health care. And... 76268@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Regulatory Affairs 2013-03-11T07:02:00-05:00 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/2013/01/23/eating_a_whole_bunch_of_random_compounds.php Reader Andy Breuninger, from completely outside the biopharma business, sends along what I think is an interesting question, and one that bears on a number of issues: A question has been bugging me that I hope you might answer. My... 76157@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Drug Assays 2013-01-23T11:12:20-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/12/21/mercks_tredaptive_comes_to_a_halt.php Merck's Tredaptive (formerly Cordaptive) has had a long and troubled history. It's a combination of niacin and Laropiprant, which is there to try to reduce the cardiovascular (flushing) side effects of large niacin doses, which otherwise seem to do a... 76094@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2012-12-21T09:36:34-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/11/02/sudden_onset_of_promiscuity.php That title should bring in the hits. But don't get your hopes up! This is medicinal chemistry, after all. "Can't you just put the group in your molecule that does such-and-such?" Medicinal chemists sometimes hear variations of that question from... 75978@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Drug Assays 2012-11-02T07:20:41-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/09/06/accelerated_approval_and_its_discontents.php This may sound a little odd coming from someone in the drug industry, but I have a lot of sympathy for the FDA. I'm not saying that I always agree with them, or that I think that they're doing exactly... 75849@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Regulatory Affairs 2012-09-06T07:07:01-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/06/29/the_cetp_rogues_gallery.php Has there ever been a less structurally appealing class of drugs than the cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) inhibitors? Just look at that bunch. From left to right, that's Pfizer's torcetrapib (which famously was the first to crash and burn... 75732@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2012-06-29T08:24:33-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/06/25/a_kinase_inhibitor_learns_something_new.php Here's another reminder that we don't know what a lot of existing drugs are doing on the side. This paper reports that the kinase inhibitor Nexavar (sorafenib) is actually a pretty good ligand at 5-HT (serotinergic) receptors, which is not... 75720@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Toxicology 2012-06-25T09:37:35-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/06/13/live_by_the_bricks_die_by_the_bricks.php I wanted to highlight a couple of recent examples from the literature to show what happens (all too often) when you start to optimize med-chem compounds. The earlier phases of a project tend to drive on potency and selectivity, and... 75699@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2012-06-13T07:13:58-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/06/12/predicting_toxicology.php One of the major worries during a clinical trial is toxicity, naturally. There are thousands of reasons a compound might cause problem, and you can be sure that we don't have a good handle on most of them. We screen... 75696@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Toxicology 2012-06-12T06:24:51-05:00