Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.
This is a big day for clinical trial data, and unfortunately it didn’t get off to a very good start. Everyone is waiting for more data on Biogen’s Alzheimers program later today, but another anticipated trial has already read out. Sage Therapeutics made quite a few headlines in 2017 and 2018 when their trials of… Read More
I wrote yesterday about the surprise decision by the Chinese regulators to allow a new Alzheimer’s drug on the market. That drug (GV-971) was developed by Green Valley Pharmaceuticals, a company (and a drug, for that matter) that frankly I had never heard of. But other people have heard of both, and they’ve been contacting… Read More
Edit: tomorrow’s post will be on this subject too, with some information that I’ve been learning today. . . Today brought the rather surprising news that the Chinese government’s National Medical Product Administration (NMPA) has approved a new Alzheimer’s drug. What’s more, it’s an unusual (and unexpected) mecha… Read More
When last heard from, Biogen and Eisai’s aducanumab (another amyloid-targeting antibody for Alzheimer’s) had failed in Phase III and the whole effort was being terminated. Then came Tuesday. Biogen then startled everyone by announcing that a review of the clinical data had convinced them that the drug had actually worked – or at l… Read More
There were some headlines the other day about the “first AI-discovered drug”, so that should send us to the work in question to see what’s going on. The company in question is called Deep Genomics, and here’s what its founder has to say: “Making drugs has traditionally been a gambling game. Big Pharma is throwing… Read More
There are a lot of clinical trial designs out there. But one thing that a lot of them have in common is that they are designed right from the start to run under certain set conditions and to enroll a set number of people (or at least to meet certain thresholds before that enrollment is… Read More
One of the reasons that people in or near this business can write such gaudy press releases is that it has so many moving parts. That lets everyone claim that the part that they’re addressing is Crucial. Think of a car: the wheels are indeed key to mobility, but so is the engine. As is… Read More
I wanted to note something today that won’t make many headlines outside of biopharma, but it’s just the sort of story that I wish more people knew about. Let’s start with this: there’s a terrible disease called IPF, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Anyone with any medical background knows to beware the word “idiopathic&# Read More
I wrote here about a paper from Cold Spring Harbor labs that invalidated MELK as a cancer target. That was straightforward enough: knocking it out via CRISPR across a whole range of cancer cell lines had no effect on their growth at all, so it’s kind of hard to make the case that it’s an… Read More
There was a mention yesterday in the comments section about a clinical trial that was stopped early due to efficacy. I’ve never been involved with a project that this has happened to myself – pretty much the opposite, for the most part! – but it does happen, and is generally cause for celebration. Although not… Read More
