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Should The FDA Have Moved Faster On Meridia?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

After months of waiting, the final and complete results from a study about the Meridia diet pill are now available in The New England Journal of Medicine and the findings are as bad as what was suggested by the preliminary data released last November. The SCOUT study, which was financed by Abbott Labs, the company that sells the pill, shows Meridia raised heart attack and stroke risk in patients with pre-existing heart disease ( read the abstract ). The study examined nearly 10,000 people 55 and older with pre-existing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes or both, who were given Meridia or a placebo.

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Lilly’s Statin – Yes, It Is 2010

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Aficionados will remember that Warner-Lambert nearly killed Lipitor along the way because they felt that the statin market was too crowded. Well, now Lipitor’s patent is going to finally expire next year, which will make it even harder for anyone to turn a buck on anything higher-priced. So Eli Lilly is, yes, bringing a statin of their own to market.

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Raising Your HDL – Through the Brain?

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

For a long time now, people have been searching for a way to raise HDL levels (the so-called “good cholesterol”). Statins will lower your LDL, while raising HDL just a pinch, but no one has a good, robust way to do it. (Niacin is probably the closest thing , but not everyone can take it)

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Pfizer Halts a Trial Early – On Good News

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Pfizer was able to announce some good news today – their trial of Inspra (eplerenone) for patients with a particular combination of heart failure symptoms. The trial was halted early, but (for once) because the endpoints were reached so early that it would have been unethical to continue the placebo arm.

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Tricor’s Troubles

Monday, March 15th, 2010

It’s easy to lose sight of what a drug is supposed to do.

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Remember Apo-A1 Milano? Pfizer Does.

Monday, January 4th, 2010

The folks over at the In Vivo Blog will soon be announcing their “Deal of the Year” in the biotech/pharma sector (you can scroll back over there to see the various nominees). But they could just as well run the competition in reverse, and award some retroactive Bad Deal statues based on what’s been happening recently.

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Mipomersen – It Still Works

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Isis Pharmaceuticals has had a long, tough history developing antisense-based therapeutics. I’ve lost count of the number of promising candidates they’ve had (and promising deals they’ve signed). But the latest one seems to be progressing: mipomersen , designed to block production of the ApoB lipoprotein

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Farewell to ACAT, and to Lots of Time and Money, Too

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Back when I joined the first drug company I ever worked for, the group in the lab next door was working on an enzyme called ACAT, acyl CoA:cholesterol acyltranferase. It’s the main producer of cholesterol esters in cells, and is especially known to be active in the production of foam cells in atherosclerosis. It had already been a drug target for some years before I first heard about it, and has remained one.

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Change4life TV commercial

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Click on image to view the commercial 60 active minutes, just one of the ways to change for life (change4life). Search ‘change4life’ or call 0300 123 4567 Agency: M&C Saatchi 2009

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