In the Pipeline

July 7, 2017
MTH1: From Hot Topic to Devalidation?

10:46 am

Here’s an argument that’s been going on inside the oncology drug development world over the last few years: is the enzyme MTH1 a great cancer target or a complete waste of time? MTH1, also known as NUDT1, degrades phosphates of 8-oxoguanine, an oxidized form of the regular guanine that cells know and love. That enzymatic… Read More
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July 6, 2017
Does An Insurance Company Really Want to Develop New Therapies?

10:45 am

Via David Shaywitz on Twitter, I’ve been seeing comments from the insurance company startup Clover Health that raised my eyebrows a bit. The misalignment between existing health insurers and their customers is that insurers view customers in terms of annual income instead of customer lifetime value. This is where (Vivek) Garipalli believes Cl… Read More
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- Business and Markets
- Regulatory Affairs
July 5, 2017
Enantioselectivity With Microwaves

11:25 am

This new paper is a very interesting approach to chiral separation, and I would like to go into detail about how it works. Unfortunately, section 2 of the Supplementary material goes into detail, and it’s titled “Three-level optical Bloch equations”, and I can just about follow it until I get to the part that says “The… Read More
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- Analytical Chemistry
July 4, 2017
Happy Fourth of July

11:58 am

Some 4th of July thoughts, reprinted from a few years ago, and still (as ever) relevant: This, at least, I have observed in forty-five years: that there are men who search for it [truth], whatever it is, wherever it may lie, patiently, honestly, with due humility, and that there are other men who battle endlessly… Read More
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- Current Events
July 3, 2017
Cryptic Natural Products Appearing

9:17 am

I last wrote about “cryptic natural products” here – this is the idea that there must be a great many interesting compounds produced by microorganisms that we have not seen yet. It’s for sure that there are many biosynthetic-looking gene clusters found in these species that don’t seem to be turned on most of the… Read More
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- Drug Assays
- Natural Products
June 30, 2017
How to Know When a New Target is Really a New Target

10:35 am

This is an excellent article, and the title is self-recommending: “Common Pitfalls in Preclinical Cancer Target Validation”. The abstract speaketh the truth: An alarming number of papers from laboratories nominating new cancer drug targets contain findings that cannot be reproduced by others or are simply not robust enough to justify dr… Read More
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June 29, 2017
The Merck Malware Attack

10:08 am

As everyone will have seen, the last few days have brought news of yet another “ransomware” attack, this time from a piece of malware known most often as Petya. One unit of the (huge) container shipping company Maersk is known to have been affected, as is a branch of the French bank BNP Paribas, but I bring… Read More
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- Current Events
June 28, 2017
Parkinson’s As An Autoimmune Disease: More Evidence

9:59 am

For many complex diseases, you’ll find that there are a couple of hypotheses floating around them that are hard to prove and hard to disprove: one is that they’re actually caused by some (as yet unrecognized) infectious agent, and the other is that that they’re actually an autoimmune/inflammatory disorder. You can also recognize t… Read More
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- Biological News
- The Central Nervous System
June 27, 2017
Hold On, Merck’s CETP Inhibitor Actually Works?

9:21 am

Well, maybe. I have to admit that my first reaction was disbelief. Merck has come out this morning with a statement that its long-running outcomes trial with anacetrapib, their cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) inhibitor, had positive results. Specifically, they say that the trial. . . . . .met its primary endpoint, significantly reducing m… Read More
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- Cardiovascular Disease
- Clinical Trials
June 26, 2017
A Heroin Vaccine?

10:31 am

Drug addiction is a terrible public health problem, and a terrible personal problem for anyone facing it. Giving addicts a better chance to break the drug-taking cycle would be a great benefit, but that’s been an elusive goal. There’s a possible biochemical solution that’s been proposed for years, though, that is recently getting… Read More
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- Biological News
- Clinical Trials

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By Derek Lowe

July 7, 2017

MTH1: From Hot Topic to Devalidation?

July 6, 2017

Does An Insurance Company Really Want to Develop New Therapies?

July 5, 2017

Enantioselectivity With Microwaves

July 4, 2017

Happy Fourth of July

July 3, 2017

Cryptic Natural Products Appearing

June 30, 2017

How to Know When a New Target is Really a New Target

June 29, 2017

The Merck Malware Attack

June 28, 2017

Parkinson’s As An Autoimmune Disease: More Evidence

June 27, 2017

Hold On, Merck’s CETP Inhibitor Actually Works?

June 26, 2017

A Heroin Vaccine?

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