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.
The molecular biology/chemical biology tools we have now are quite something, and have opened up whole areas of research that previously wouldn’t have been feasible. But as a chemist, I’m glad to say that there’s often still nothing like a small molecule. That’s one of the things I take away from this recent paper in… Read More
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a very good writer, but one of his most famous lines is about as wrong as it can be. It’s actually a cliché to point out the complete wrongheadedness of “There are no second acts in American lives”, such are the huge number of counterexamples. And that goes for biopharma, too. I’ve written… Read More
For the last few years, it has been impossible to escape talk of the microbiome – the associated bacteria (and other organisms) that live in and on the human body. Overall, this attention has been a good thing, since it’s made people aware of just how bacteria-laden we are (not that everyone finds that a… Read More
You’ll likely have seen the news that GSK is partnering with Verily (a Google startup) to launch a company called Galvani. This will investigate devices that directly modify nerve transmission, which is something that I don’t think any large drug company has ever put money into – certainly not the $700 million that GSK has… Read More
To go along with that recent CETP trial news, here’s another one for the “We don’t know much about human lipid handing” file. A dietary study originally done back in the 1960s and 1970s has been (almost literally) resurrected, with data pulled out of yellowing stacks of paper, old cardboard boxes, and ancient-format computer… Read More
The Wall Street Journal has a good post-mortem of Sanofi’s inhaled insulin experience with Mannkind. I was puzzled by that deal when it was announced, because I’d had a long history of being puzzled by Mannkind and their product (not to mention by their investors, who are a breed apart). Well, they were, anyway – Read More
You may well remember Amgen’s statement in 2012 about how many academic papers they were having trouble reproducing. Not everyone has taken it seriously, since they didn’t provide specific details, just an overall count. (On the other hand, a lot of people inside the drug industry just nodded their heads, having had similar – and… Read More
It’s been a wild ride for Zafgen and those following the company, and things are nowhere near over. Back in December, it became clear that two patients had died in their clinical trial of beloranib against Prader-Willi syndrome, which was clearly very bad news. But this month, the company released the rest of the data… Read More
Back in October, I said that Mannkind (MNKD) “looks doomed”. To be honest, you could have said that about them and their inhaled-insulin drug Afrezza for many years, with a good chance of being right – I said it back in 2008, for example. And it’s not that I’m some sort of prophet. I mean… Read More
Zafgen went through a very rough patch back in October when it turned out that a patient in their key Phase III trial in Prader-Willi syndrome died. P-W patients have severe health problems and shortened lifespan, but the question was naturally whether the company’s investigational drug beloranib was a factor. The seemingly slow disclosure of… Read More
