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.
We’ve had several releases of remdesivir data, and this was not exactly one of those controlled-release formulations. No, this was more in the “chaotic mess” category, with news items coming from several sources with partial information. I decided not to blog on it until the loud banging noises stopped, and I’m glad I did, s… Read More
It’s been looking for some time as if these coronavirus infections need a biphasic approach to therapy – an antiviral approach earlier on, and for those in serious trouble, perhaps a shift to immune modulation as the body’s reaction to the virus starts doing even more harm. That post goes into some detail on possible… Read More
Well, everyone was just dealing with the news that Gilead’s antiviral remdesivir had had two trials suspended in China, when Stat‘s Adam Feuerstein and Matthew Herper broke news last night about a trial here in the US. 125 patients had been recruited at the University of Chicago to receive daily doses of remdesivir, and the… Read More
Time for another look at the coronavirus vaccine front, since we have several recent news items. Word has come from GSK and Sanofi that they are going to collaborate on vaccine development, which brings together two of the more experienced large organizations in the field. It looks like Sanofi is bringing the spike protein and… Read More
I wrote here the other day on the recent recommendation that people taking either ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors or ARBs (angiotensin receptor blockers) should not alter their treatment regimens because of the coronavirus outbreak. Some background on the angiotensin system is here, and here’s an open-access review for those wh… Read More
One minor side effect of the pandemic is that perhaps more people will learn about what drug research and clinical trials can really be like. Today’s example: we have a clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine from Wuhan that has just published on a preprint server. What’s good is that this one is blinded, randomized, and controlled… Read More
Dr. Didier Raoult of Marseilles and his co-workers have published another preprint on clinical results with the chloroquine/azithromycin combination that their earlier work has made famous. And I still don’t know what to think of it. This is going to be a long post on the whole issue, so if you don’t feel like reading… Read More
Time to catch up with the latest clinical news in the field. The big story this morning is apparently some real data out of a controlled trial of chloroquine from China. There have been anecdotal reports, but to the best of my knowledge we have seen no actual numbers. These are not exactly from the… Read More
I’ve mentioned it in passing before, but it bears repeating: this is a really unusual moment in drug discovery. We have simultaneously more new modes of action for therapy coming on in the clinic than I can ever recall, and some older ones are getting reworked to join the action. This short overview is a… Read More
It’s our high failure rate in clinical trials that makes the drug industry what it is. And two of the biggest factors in that failure rate are picking the wrong targets/mechanisms, and unexpected toxicity. The first is clearly a failure of our understanding of human biology, and the only remedy I can see for that… Read More
