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EU ruling on breast drug Herceptin will end 'post code lottery' in Britain

The European Union has approved the use of the breast cancer drug Herceptin for use in patients with an early stage of the aggressive HER2-positive type of breast cancer.

24 May 2006

Arthritis drug wins approval for use in children with Crohn's disease

The Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. has given approval for the drug Remicade for use in children with active Crohn's disease(CD), a chronic and debilitating condition.

21 May 2006

Plan B - Lancet has a go at the FDA

A well known international medical journal has called on the acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach to adopt an independent stance and follow the best judgment of it's expert staff and scientific advisers, even when that means incurring the wrath of patients' groups, industry, Congress, and even the White House.

21 May 2006

New drug for Parkinson's gets FDA approval

The Food and Health Administration in the U.S. has granted approval for a new drug to treat patients with Parkinson's disease.

21 May 2006

New antibiotic works against superbugs

A new antibiotic with the ability to fight drug-resistant superbugs has been developed by researchers at drug company Merck's research laboratories in New Jersey.

21 May 2006

FDA gives tentative approval to new generic AIDS drug

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced the tentative approval of generic abacavir sulfate tablets manufactured by Aurobindo Pharma LTD. of Hyderabad, India.

18 May 2006

FDA approves Azilect for the treatment of Parkinson's

The Food and Drug Administration today approved Azilect (rasagiline), a new molecular entity, for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

17 May 2006

Vaccine against cervical cancer on track for FDA approval

According to the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. an experimental vaccine which prevents cervical cancer appears to be effective and has no major safety concerns.

17 May 2006

OK from the FDA for synthetic marijuana drug

Despite saying quite recently that it does not support the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given marketing approval for a drug which is a synthetic version of the active ingredient in marijuana.

17 May 2006

FDA warns of suicide risk with Paxil

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S., has notified healthcare professionals in the States and the UK that the antidepressant Paxil produced by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), appears to raise the risk of suicide in young adults.

15 May 2006

Chantix new quit smoking drug approved

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given approval for the sale of the first smoking cessation drug in almost ten years.

11 May 2006

Abortion pill in trouble again

Clostridium sordellii is a rare germ that has killed four women who took the abortion pill RU-486 and has also been implicated in the deaths of at least 11 other women following childbirth or miscarriage.

11 May 2006

Lilly to extend patient assistance programs for Medicare patients

Eli Lilly and Company has announced that it will be extending its existing patient assistance program, LillyAnswers, through the end of this year to qualifying patients currently participating in the program, to help bridge the gap in coverage for people who need Lilly medicines, but are not yet enrolled in Medicare Part D.

11 May 2006

Lilly submits Cymbalta NDA for generalized anxiety disorder

Eli Lilly and Company has announced the recent submission of a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Cymbalta (duloxetine HCl) for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.

10 May 2006

Advocacy group has win in terminally ill fight for access to experimental drugs

The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) and the advocacy group Abigail Alliance, have been successful in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

3 May 2006

Current US drug safety system is moving toward a delay in drug approval

In the May 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Brian L. Strom, MD, MPH, Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, analyzes the limitations of the current system of drug-safety monitoring and proposes a solution that addresses overly aggressive early marketing practices

3 May 2006

New drug to treat rare Pompe disease gets FDA approval

The Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. has given approval for the first drug to treat a rare, debilitating muscle disease that can kill infants within a year.

1 May 2006

New method could predict individual patient responses to drug treatments

Scientists from Imperial College London and Pfizer have developed a new method that could predict individual patient responses to drug treatments. The authors anticipate that the development will advance biomedical research further towards development of personalised medicines.

28 Apr 2006

New technique to speed discovery of drug targets in chemical genetics

Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have developed a new technique to speed discovery of drug targets in chemical genetics. Fox Chase researcher Jeffrey R. Peterson, Ph.D., and his colleagues describe a new way to swiftly find the proteins targeted by small molecule inhibitors during high-throughput screening (HTS) experiments. The new work offers a critical solution to a common stumbling block in this booming field of drug discovery.

26 Apr 2006

New drug may revolutionize how chronic iron overload is treated in chronic anemia patients

Those with severe chronic anemias need frequent blood transfusions to remain healthy, but such frequent transfusions can cause a potentially deadly buildup of iron in the body, leading to heart and liver failure. The traditional treatment to remove excess iron is so onerous that many patients choose to forgo it, putting their own lives at risk. The results of an international study on deferasirox, a new drug that may revolutionize the way chronic iron overload is treated, will be published in the May 1, 2006, issue of Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology.

26 Apr 2006