Drugs News and Research

RSS

First Edition: April 15, 2014

Today's headlines include reports about the Congressional Budget Office's latest estimate of the costs for expanding health insurance.

15 Apr 2014

Kineta, RLB Holdings form joint venture to address unmet medical needs

Kineta, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the development of immune-modulating drugs for critical diseases, and RLB Holdings, an investment fund founded by Ray and Lydia Bartoszek, have formed a joint venture, Kineta RLB, LLC, which will commercialize promising, high-value compounds in selective disease areas with unmet medical needs.

15 Apr 2014

Sanofi Korea launches gut health product, Probi Digestis

Probi has signed a distribution and supply agreement with Sanofi. Following this the Consumer Healthcare division of Sanofi Korea is making a major launch of Probi´s gut health product, Probi Digestis starting in April 2014. Probi has already delivered products and received substantial orders for the coming quarters.

15 Apr 2014

Viewpoints: Sebelius withstood attacks, but wasn't 'warrior' for law; Burwell offers GOP chance to focus on law's problems

Kathleen Sebelius was known for her patience and cool under savage attack by Republicans, who treated her as a stand-in for the health law. She sat through hearings calmly reciting talking points while they fumed and fulminated for their audience. But that turned out to be one of her biggest liabilities ... What the health law needed in its first years was a cheerful, populist warrior who could laugh at the truly ridiculous distortions and lies Republicans invented about it, and roar back with the truth. Instead, she came across as a mild technocrat. She never emerged from the defensive crouch she assumed after the law's calamitous debut (David Firestone, 4/11).

15 Apr 2014

Researchers identify new Chinese herbal medicine that inhibits hepatitis C virus activity

Data from a late-breaking abstract presented at the International Liver CongressTM 2014 identifies a new compound, SBEL1, that has the ability to inhibit hepatitis C virus (HCV) activity in cells at several points in the virus' lifecycle.

15 Apr 2014

Teenagers who have little hope for future may commit more serious offenses

In a UT Dallas study involving serious youth offenders, the answer to one open-ended question predicted the teenagers' offending patterns for the next seven years: "How long do you think you'll live?"

15 Apr 2014

Vivolux receives FDA clearance to proceed with phase I/II clinical trial of VLX600

Vivolux AB, a drug discovery company specialized in cancer treatment, announced today that the FDA has granted clearance to proceed with VLX600 into the clinical phase I/II. VLX600 is one of the company's promising projects, and which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

15 Apr 2014

Drugs used to treat osteoporosis appear to prevent cell membrane repair

A class of drugs widely used to treat osteoporosis appears to impede a cell's ability to repair a protective outer membrane that helps determine what enters and exits, researchers report.

15 Apr 2014

Study shows 25 percent of Colorado foster kids on psychotropic drugs

The rate is 12 times greater than for other children on government insurance, a new study in Colorado finds.

15 Apr 2014

High cost of potent hepatitis drug presents challenges across the U.S.

Sovaldi, the hepatitis C treatment drug, is considered a breakthrough for patients with the disease. However, since, it won federal approval in December, lawmakers, insurers and patient advocates have begun an all-out revolt over it's high price point of $1,000 a daily pill or $84,000 over 12 weeks of treatment.

15 Apr 2014

DesignMedix receives $3 million NIH grant to develop new anti-malarial drug

DesignMedix, Inc., a biotech startup with ties to Portland State University, received a grant for almost $3 million from the National Institutes of Health to continue development and manufacture of a new anti-malarial drug.

15 Apr 2014

Domain Therapeutics receives grant to support development of mGluR3 PAM for Parkinson’s disease

Domain Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the research and development of new drug candidates targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), today announces the receipt of a second grant of 230 000 dollars (USD) from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to support its metabotropic glutamate receptor type III (mGluR3) positive allosteric modulators (PAM) program.

15 Apr 2014

Experts create new definition for epilepsy

An expert task force has created a new definition for epilepsy that refines the scope of patients diagnosed with this brain disease. The study published in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy, provides a greater level of detail to diagnose epilepsy by including individuals with two unprovoked seizures, and those with one unprovoked seizure and other factors that increase risk of seizure recurrence.

15 Apr 2014

Researchers investigate role of microRNAs in breast cancer cells

Metastasis — the spreading of cancer cells from a primary tumor site to other parts of the body — generally leads to poorer outcomes for patients, so oncologists and researchers are constantly seeking new ways to detect and thwart this malicious process.

15 Apr 2014

Medicare doctor payment data reveals much about health system

The trove of data has the potential to reveal faults in drug pricing, potential fraud and could help regulators and consumers track medical spending -- but could take years to sort out.

15 Apr 2014

Nanotechnology unlocks new pathways for targeted drug delivery

Significant advances have been made in chemotherapy over the past decade, but targeting drugs to cancer cells while avoiding healthy tissues continues to be a major challenge.

15 Apr 2014

Variability in SBP portends cognitive decline

Findings from the Ohasama study reveal an association between variability in home systolic blood pressure and cognitive decline.

14 Apr 2014

ICB International develops tracer for imaging alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's disease

On March 4, 2014, ICB International, Inc., ("ICBI"), announced the development of a tracer for imaging alpha-synuclein (a-Syn) in Parkinson's-like mice at the Keystone Symposium for Parkinson disease (PD) in Keystone,Colorado.

11 Apr 2014

Tau Therapeutics presents data of T-type calcium channel inhibitors in treatment of pancreatic cancer

Tau Therapeutics LLC announced today that its academic collaborator, University of Virginia Professor Todd Bauer, MD, presented data at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the premier cancer research event held in San Diego, California from April 5-9.

11 Apr 2014

Findings pave way for potential therapy to combat H1N1 flu virus

Flu epidemics cause up to half a million deaths worldwide each year, and emerging strains continually threaten to spread to humans and cause even deadlier pandemics. A study by McGill University professor Maziar Divangahi published by Cell Press on April 10 in the journal Immunity reveals that a drug that inhibits a molecule called prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) increases survival rates in mice infected with a lethal dose of the H1N1 flu virus.

11 Apr 2014