Glaxo buying Reliant – GlaxoSmithKline Plc has agreed to buy privately held heart drug specialist Reliant Pharmaceuticals for $1.65 billion in cash, in a move to boost its flagging drug sales in the United States…more
J&J says good-bye to $440 mil – Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday its fourth-quarter results would include a special after-tax, noncash charge of $440 million from a write-down related to a decline in sales of acute heart failure drug Natrecor…more
Fountain of youth? – Scientists at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. say they have created a drug that mimics the ingredient in red wine linked to longevity and the cell structures that power endurance athletes like cycling champion Lance Armstrong. The new molecule is 1,000 times more potent than the wine derivative, resveratrol, and could lead to solutions for diseases of aging, including cancer and diabetes, according to authors of a study in today’s issue of the journal Nature…more
Abbott‘s Xience stent showing good side effect profile and efficacy…gets FDA panel green light – Abbott Laboratories Inc won a U.S. advisory panel’s support on Thursday for an experimental drug-coated stent for heart patients. A committee of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted 9-1 to recommend approval of the device, called Xience. The FDA usually follows panel recommendations…more
On the Oncology front…
Novartis gets EU approval for Tasigna – Novartis AG (NVS) Wednesday said that Tasigna, a potential follow-up to Gleevec, the Swiss drugmaker’s second best-selling drug, won European Union approval for the treatment of a certain form of leukemia. Novartis, based in Basel, said Tasigna is a new targeted cancer drug for patients with a form of the life-threatening blood cancer chronic myeloid leukemia, who are resistant or intolerant to treatment with Gleevec. Novartis expects Tasigna to eventually replace Gleevec and plans to test its efficacy and safety in patients who haven’t yet been treated with Gleevec…more
Celgene‘s Revlimid combined with dexamethasone effective for multiple myeloma – A combination drug regimen that includes a derivative of thalidomide extended survival, as well as the time it took for the disease to reappear, in patients with multiple myeloma…more
Freeze tumors, reduce pain – Freezing tumors may help relieve the extreme pain of cancer that has spread to the bone, which is often untouched by narcotics or radiation, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. This freezing process, called cryoablation, is often used to destroy kidney, prostate and other tumors, but researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found it eased cancer pain in 80 percent of patients in a small study, and the effect lasted for up to six months…more
It’s not drugs, but it’s fascinating – Vivek Rangnekar, a University of Kentucky College of Medicine professor of radiation medicine and a team of researchers say they have found a tumor-suppressor gene called “Par-4” in the prostate. The researchers discovered that the Par-4 gene kills cancer cells, even highly aggressive types, but not normal cells, according to a study published in the journal Cancer Research and funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health. Rangnekar’s study found that mice born with this gene do not develop tumors. They grow normally, have no defects and actually live a few months longer than the control animals…more
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