Related Topics
Education and Training
Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry News From Medical News Today
Pharmaceutical Industry Donations About Even To Democrats, Republicans, After Years Of Favoring GOP
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 05:00:00 -0700
Campaign contributions by pharmaceutical firms to Democrats and Republicans are about equal in 2008, after the industry donated about twice as many funds to the GOP over "most of the last decade," according to campaign finance reports, the New York Times reports.
BioMérieux Receives Prestigious Frost & Sullivan 2008 North American Market Leadership Award For Pharmaceutical Microbiology
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 -0700
bioMérieux (Paris:BIM), a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, is proud to announce that it is the recipient of the Frost & Sullivan 2008 North American Market Leadership Award for Pharmaceutical Microbiology. bioMérieux received an overall score of 10.13 out of a possible 12.00 points, the highest overall Frost & Sullivan Competitive Metrics Score in the U.S. Rapid Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Microbiology Tests Market.
Medical Students Nationwide Remove Conflicts Of Interest - 5th Annual National PharmFree Week Underway, USA
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 -0700
Medical students across the country are celebrating the 5th Annual National PharmFree Week, "Promoting Evidence-Based Practice, Preserving Pharmaceutical Innovation," which allows them to educate themselves and their colleagues about reclaiming the ethics of medicine by removing conflicts of interest and restoring the patient-physician relationship.
SiDMAP Launches A Metabolomics Service For Early Detection Of Drug-Induced Liver And Kidney Toxicity
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 -0700
SiDMAP, LLC, announced that it has expanded its SiDTox™ services to enable rapid and specific detection of drug-induced organ toxicity. Using its proprietary metabolomics technology platform, SiDMAP is able to monitor changes in vital metabolite fluxes in response to drug treatment to quickly determine organ toxicity before structural or morphological damage occurs. With recent advances in drug discovery, large numbers of potential new drugs have been identified.
Drug Information Association's 3rd Annual Conference On Drug Discovery And Clinical Development In India
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:00:00 -0700
The Drug Information Association (DIA) will host the 3rd Annual
TB Alliance Enters Collaboration With Sanofi-Aventis To Fight Tuberculosis - Aim To Accelerate Development Of Drugs Against Tuberculosis
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:00:00 -0700
The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) and sanofi-aventis announced today that they have entered into a collaboration agreement to accelerate the discovery, development and clinical use of drugs against tuberculosis (TB). The TB Alliance is a not-for-profit, product development partnership, whose goal is the development of new TB drugs.
The Seattle Times: Biotech
News on biotechnology pharmaceutical from BioPortfolio.com
Concert Pharmaceuticals to Present at First Annual Boston Biotech R&D Conference
Reuters:
2008 BioFlorida Annual Conference Features Distinguished National Speakers at Florida's Largest Bioscience For
Genetic Engineering News:
Ground Zero Pharmaceuticals Announces Expansion of Regulatory and Product Development Consulting Services
Nashville Business Journal:
The Economist: Biotechnology
Medicine: Shooting down cancer
Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:04:00 -0000
A theory linking the scourge to stem cells may offer new ways of treating this most terrifying of diseasesEVERY age is afraid of plagues. For the most part, such plagues have been infections. The rich world, though, has brought infectious disease under control and, AIDS aside, the memory dims with every generation. Instead, the fear of disease has transferred itself to cancer. How to prevent it, and how to treat it if prevention has failed, fills the health pages of the newspapers. How this or that celebrity won or lost his or her battle with it seems to fill much of the rest.The military metaphor is not confined to newspapers. It is 37 years since Richard Nixon, then America’s president, declared war on the disease. During that time, the prognosis for cancer patients has got a lot better. Scientists have refined old therapies and found new ones. Moreover, governments have waged a relentless public-health campaign against the biggest cause of cancer—the smoking of tobacco. The war, however, has never looked close to being won. Scan the horizon and there is no sign of a cure. ...
Cancer stem cells: The root of all evil?
Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:04:00 -0000
Cancer may be caused by stem cells gone bad. If that proves to be correct, it should revolutionise treatmentMUCH of medical research is a hard slog for small reward. But, just occasionally, a finding revolutionises the field and cracks open a whole range of diseases. The discovery in the 19th century that many illnesses are caused by bacteria was one such. The unravelling of Mendelian genetics was another. It now seems likely that medical science is on the brink of a finding of equal significance. The underlying biology of that scourge of modern humanity, cancer, looks as though it is about to yield its main secret. If it does, it is possible that the headline-writer’s cliche, “a cure for cancer”, will come true over the years, just as the antibiotics that followed from the discovery of bacteria swept away previously lethal infectious diseases. The discovery—or, rather, the hypothesis that is now being tested—is that cancers grow from stem cells in the way that healthy organs do. A stem cell is one that, when it divides, produces two unequal daughters. One remains a stem cell while the other multiplies into the sorts of cells required by its organ. This matters for cancer because, at the moment, all the cells of a tumour are seen as more or less equivalent. Therapies designed to kill them do not distinguish between them. Success is defined as eliminating as many of them as possible, so those therapies have been refined to do just that. However, if all that the therapies are doing is killing the descendants of the non-stem-cell daughters, the problem has not been eliminated. Instead of attacking the many, you have to attack the few. That means aiming at the stem cells themselves. ...
Pharmaceuticals: Convergence or conflict?
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:36 -0000
Drug giants’ recent attempts to buy big biotech firms have provoked a backlashDALLIANCES between conventional pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms are nothing new. Big Pharma, eager to refill its emptying drug pipelines, has in recent years looked hopefully to biotech’s upstarts. The drugs giants have pursued all sorts of tie-ups, from alliances to licensing deals to outright purchases of a few smallish companies. But mindful of the sharp cultural differences between the two sorts of firms, they have generally avoided big acquisitions.Until now, that is. In recent weeks Roche, a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant, has made a surprise $44 billion bid for the 44% of Genentech, the world’s biggest biotech firm by stockmarket value, that it does not already own; and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), an American drugs company, has offered $4.5 billion for the 83% of ImClone, an American biotech firm, that it does not already control. These attempts came on the heels of earlier deals in which AstraZeneca, a British drugs giant, bought MedImmune for $15.6 billion, and Takeda of Japan paid $8.8 billion for Millennium. ...
