Drug Review: Ibrance

Condition: Estrogen Receptor (ER)-Positive, HER2-Negative Postmenopausal  Effectiveness: ★★★ Ease of Use: ★★★ Satisfactory Index: ★★★ Therapeautic drug, Ibrance (Chemical name: Palbociclib), recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in February 2015, is intended to be paired with the hormonal therapy medicine Femara (Chemical name: Letrozole) as a comprehensive treatment for locally advanced-stage or metastatic, hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative […]

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Drug Discovery in Academia

Over the past decade there has been increasing pressure on the pharmaceutical industry to increase economic efficiencies in drug discovery. This has been driven by several factors including the increased costs of R&D, lower productivity, patent expiration, generic competition and the increasing difficulty in bringing new chemical entities to market. The extraordinary investment requirements have […]

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Novel Genetic Vaccines

Edward Jenner’s work in developing the world’s first smallpox vaccine in the 1790s demonstrated that it was possible to protect the general population from major threats to public health, and vaccine development aimed at combating the major concerns of the day has continued ever since. There have been many successes, and vaccines are now available […]

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Next Generation Pharmacovigilance

In an environment where development costs have increased exponentially while filings and launches have dropped drastically, the pharmaceutical industry and drug regulators face numerous challenges in Pharmacovigilance (PV), patient safety and in addressing areas of unmet medical needs. This combination of issues not only adds unsustainable access restrictions and costs in the long term, but […]

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Metabolic Biomarker and Target Discovery in Obesity-Associated Comorbidities

Millions of adults are diagnosed as obese each year worldwide. Many of these people suffer from a disorder known as metabolic syndrome, which includes symptoms such as hypertension and elevated blood cholesterol. They are also at risk of developing additional diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes mellitus. Obesity may, in fact, be a major […]

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