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.
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
This article at Stat by Rebecca Robbins really caught me eye. It describes clinical trials where the participants are being asked to pay thousands of dollars just to join the trial. There seems to have been an increase in this sort of thing lately, and I’ll be completely clear: I think that’s a terrible idea… Read More
The Wall Street Journal published a provocative article the other day, entitled “Don’t Understand Moronic Bromides?” about the proliferation over the years of acronyms in science.(Note the old-fashioned usage of “bromide” derived from the early sleeping pills). And while it’s a cranky piece, it’s not wrong. Read More
The Washington Post made quite a splash with this story about Pfizer, Enbrel (etanercept), and Alzheimer’s disease. There’s already been a lot of comment about it yesterday on Twitter and in some other venues, but I thought it might be useful to try to sum things up in an easily accessible place. Here we go: Read More
The FAAH (fatty acid amide hydrolase) enzyme system has provided a number of headlines over the years. FAAH itself is involved in the brain’s endocannabinoid system – it clears neurotransmitters like anandamide – and a number of other biologically important hydroxyethylamide and acyltaurines. So the potential for inhibitors of it… Read More
Well, there it is. Biogen and Eisai have announced just this morning that they’re halting Phase III trials of aducanumab, their anti-amyloid antibody, after the monitoring committee judged that further treatment would be futile. I’m not going to do some sort of victory dance, because (once again) this is bad news for Alzheimer’s… Read More
