Feature Channels: Pharmaceuticals

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For the past 70 years, the best indicator of life expectancy for a patient with glioblastoma — the most common and the most aggressive brain cancer — has simply been age at diagnosis. Now, an international team of scientists has experimentally validated a predictor that is not only more accurate but also more clinically relevant: a pattern of co-occurring changes in DNA abundance levels, or copy numbers, at hundreds of thousands of sites across the whole tumor genome.

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A clinical trial led by Mount Sinai researchers has showed for the first time that combining chemotherapy and immunotherapy can slow down metastatic bladder cancer. The trial also showed that immunotherapy alone may be an option for a subset of patients with metastatic bladder cancer if their tumor expresses a high level of a protein called PD-L1 according to the study, published in The Lancet in May.

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Is personalized medicine cost-effective? Researchers have answered that question for one medical treatment, genotype-guided antiplatelet therapy for acute coronary syndrome patients with PCI. Their study uses pharmacogenomics and economic analysis of real-world clinical data.

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Research and experts on the symptoms and spread of COVID-19, impact on global trade and financial markets, public health response, search for an effective treatment, and more

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The AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) has initiated a clinical trial to evaluate whether the drug combination hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin can prevent hospitalization and death from COVID-19.

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Using supercomputers, scientists have developed for the first time a way to screen drugs through their chemical structures for induced arrhythmias.

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A small study in Greece found that the clinically approved anti-inflammatory drug anakinra, used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, improved respiratory function in patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

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Researchers found that co-administering dephostatin and colistin in mice with a lethal Salmonella infection significantly prolonged animal survival and used a lower concentration of colistin than is normally required for treatment, thereby reducing its toxic effect.

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For the first time in over a decade, scientists have identified a first-line treatment that significantly improves survival for people with hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer.

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Orange, Calif., May 13, 2020 — UCI Health will initiate a clinical study of a drug to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients who face a high mortality rate because of acute inflammation that fills their lungs with fluid, a grave condition that even mechanical ventilation cannot improve. Aviptadil, which has a 20-year history of use in human clinical trials for lung ailments, will be employed in a phase 2b/3 clinical study of COVID-19 patients suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome, a primary cause of coronavirus-induced death, said Dr.

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To counter drug resistance Penn State engineers have developed a new approach for predicting which mutation has expanded the most in a population and should be targeted to design the most effective new drug.

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A two-drug immunotherapy combination first proposed by a Roswell Park team as an approach for treating cancer will soon be available to cancer patients with COVID-19 through a clinical trial at the Buffalo, N.Y., cancer center.

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With the pandemic disrupting our everyday lives, routine errands have become challenging for seniors and others who run a high-risk of developing a serious COVID-19 infection. But there's one routine they should not let lapse: refilling medications.

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Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute is pleased to announce that Sumit Chanda, Ph.D., has received a $10.2 million, four-year grant from the Department of Defense to develop and advance broad-spectrum antivirals for respiratory diseases. The award aims to provide U.S. military forces and the nation with safe, effective and innovative therapies that combat multiple types of respiratory viruses.

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Four of six critically ill COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients significantly improved after receiving an experimental therapeutic designed to reduce inflammation, a major cause of death from this disease, according to a case series published by Cedars-Sinai and Capricor Therapeutics. The four patients got well enough to be discharged from the hospital.

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Today, the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) released the 2020 Guideline for the Management of Gout.

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A monthly roundup of research briefs showcasing recent scientific advances led by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center faculty.

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FACULTY Q&AANN ARBOR–In late April, the federal government announced Operation Warp Speed, an aggressive COVID-19 vaccine development program that aims to have at least 300 million doses of vaccine available in the United States by January. Jason Pogue, clinical professor of pharmacy, discusses the feasibility of this aggressive timetable.

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Clinical leaders from the University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center, College of Medicine and College of Pharmacy have launched a clinical trial for experimental therapies to treat patients infected with COVID-19.

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A new discovery in mice shows the innate immune system has "memory," previously thought to be a unique feature of the adaptive immune system. Blocking this memory prevented transplanted organs from being rejected, providing a way to more specific drugs that could lengthen organ transplant survival.

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A Texas A&M AgriLife Research team has good news for patients with copper-deficiency disorders, especially young children diagnosed with Menkes disease.

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Olanzapine, a generic drug used to treat nervous, emotional and mental conditions, also may help patients with advanced cancer successfully manage nausea and vomiting unrelated to chemotherapy. These are the findings of a study published Thursday, May 7 in JAMA Oncology.

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During these difficult times, the Society of Toxicology’s official journal, Toxicological Sciences, remains a source for leading research in toxicology, including in the areas of biomarkers, carcinogenesis, and organ-specific toxicology.

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Remdesivir might shorten duration of symptoms in severely ill patients

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As interest in the application of plasma medicine — the use of low-temperature plasma (LTP) created by an electrical discharge to address medical problems — continues to grow, so does the need for research advancements proving its capabilities and potential impacts on the health care industry. Across the world, many research groups are investigating plasma medicine for applications including cancer treatment and the accelerated healing of chronic wounds, among others.

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A recent survey from the George Washington University suggests that patients do not take social media into consideration when looking for a dermatologist and recommend that practitioners should use social media as a tool in engaging and educating patients.

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Repurposing existing medicines focused on known drug targets is likely to offer a more rapid hope of tackling COVID-19 than developing and manufacturing a vaccine, argue an international team of scientists in the British Journal of Pharmacology today.

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A new study suggests that treating a breastfeeding parent with a common diabetes drug may provide male offspring lifelong protection against diabetes and obesity. The study is published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism. It was chosen as an APSselect article for May.

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Adding yoga to your regularly prescribed migraine treatment may be better than medication alone, according to a study published in the May 6, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The new research suggests yoga may help people with migraines have headaches that happen less often, don’t last as long and are less painful. EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2020 Media Contacts: Renee Tessman, [email protected], (612) 928-6137 M.A. Rosko, [email protected], (612) 928-6169 For Better Migraine Treatment, Try Adding Some Downward Dogs MINNEAPOLIS - Adding yoga to your regularly prescribed migraine treatment may be better than medication alone, according to a study published in the May 6, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The new research suggests yoga may help people with migraines have headaches that happen less often, don’t last as long and are less pain

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Research could change standard of care protocols to prevent clotting associated with coronavirus

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In order to effectively address intractable challenges like cancer, researchers, drug developers, and clinicians need to be able to see how a potential therapeutic works within a living system, ideally in real time. That type of vision and insight is being made possible by engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A new $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) underscores the influence of Rensselaer researchers in this area, as they continue to develop new and innovative bioimaging techniques that also harness the power of machine learning methods.

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New clinical trial opened at Jefferson for novel COVID-19 treatment in 10 days.

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Researchers at Beaumont Health have begun enrolling patients in a new clinical study aimed at treating COVID-19 patients with two common drugs.

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AMP has published consensus, evidence-based recommendations to aid in the design, validation and interpretation of clinical genotyping tests for the prediction of warfarin response. The manuscript, “Recommendations for Clinical Warfarin Sensitivity Genotyping Allele Selection: A Joint Recommendation of the Association for Molecular Pathology and College of American Pathologists,” was released online ahead of publication in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.

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University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) professor of biological science Dr. Jerome Baudry is collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to use HPE’s Cray Sentinel supercomputer to search for natural products that are effective against the COVID-19 virus.

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Following the recent Coronavirus outbreak, almost three million people have been infected worldwide, whereas the death toll has already passed the 200,000 mark, according to official reports.

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AMP has submitted a formal response in support of the Citizen Petition from Hyman, Phelps & McNamara, P.C. on behalf of the Coalition to Preserve Access to Pharmacogenomics (PGx) Information. The response builds on AMP’s PGx Best Practices Statement and includes a series of recommendations that will rectify recent FDA actions, which have suppressed important patient safety information.

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A research team has discovered a molecular mechanism that helps Herpes simplex virus (HSV1) evade the innate immune system and infect the brain causing a rare disease with high mortality. The study from Aarhus University, University of Oxford, and University of Gothenburg, led by first author Chiranjeevi Bodda in Søren Paludan’s lab, will be published May 8 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM).

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UCLA researchers found that adding a drug once commonly used to treat schizophrenia to traditional radiation therapy helped improve overall survival in mice with glioblastoma, one of the deadliest and most difficult-to-treat brain tumors.

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Through serendipity, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health considerably reduced the toxicity of a potential antibiotic against the most feared drug-resistant bacteria, while also improving its stability in fighting infections.

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New research led by the University of South Australia has found that smokers who receive the medication varenicline tartrate combined with Quitline counselling following a period of hospitalisation due to a tobacco-related illness are six times more likely to quit smoking than those who attempt to stop without support.

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UCLA is one of seven sites participating in a clinical trial investigating whether hydroxychloroquine, a commonly used anti-malarial and autoimmune drug, can prevent infection with COVID-19.

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UC San Diego scientists have launched a clinical trial to investigate whether a drug approved for treating high blood pressure might also reduce the severity of COVID-19 infections, lowering rates for intensive care unit admissions, the use of mechanical ventilators and all-cause mortality.

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Health care workers at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System, or UI Health, are participating in a national registry of frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The HERO Registry seeks to engage health care workers, understand their experiences and track health outcomes — from COVID-19 infection to stress and burnout.

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A study explored racial inequalities in death from liver cancer before and after the introduction of lifesaving drugs for hepatitis C. Results showed that from 1979 to 1998, racial inequalities in mortality from liver cancer in the U.S. were declining. But, from 1998 to 2016, of the 16,770 deaths from liver cancer among blacks, the excess relative to whites increased from 27.8 percent to 45.4 percent. Concurrently, racial inequalities in death decreased for major risk factors for liver cancer, such as alcohol and diabetes.

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Rates of alcohol use disorder (AUD) have risen in the US in recent years. A small number of pharmacotherapies (drug treatments) are available for AUD, but there is an urgent need for more treatments to be evaluated. Increasingly, novel medications, as well as behavioral interventions, are tested in laboratory-based studies, where the impact on participants’ alcohol consumption can be directly assessed. However, it is not known if drinking in the laboratory setting accurately reflects individuals’ real-life drinking behavior and therefore if study findings hold true in the real-world. A new report in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research by researchers from the NIAAA-supported Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism at Yale University addresses this issue, by examining the extent to which individuals’ drinking in a laboratory setting correlates with their (self-reported) alcohol use in the lead-up to the study.

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Using an ultra-thin and sharp needle tipped with a single carbon monoxide molecule frozen to minus 266 degrees centigrade, researchers from the University of Warwick and Cardiff identified and mapped the location of every molecular bond on the surface of a material

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Strategies that treat households in the broad vicinity of a recent malaria case with anti-malarial drugs, insecticides, or both could significantly reduce malaria in low-transmission settings.