Latest Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical and Healthcare News

The NIH Aims To Develop Drugs That Big Pharma Discarded

This morning, the National Institutes of  awarded $12.7 million to nine academic groups to test potential medicines for diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and schizophrenia that drug companies had abandoned be...

Supreme Court Tells FTC And Drug Industry To Go To War

The Supreme Court just issued its ruling in Federal Trade Commission v. , a case that could have far-reaching effects on the pharmaceutical industry. The ruling can be found here. The case deals with what has colloquially become known as a pay-to-del...

The Best- And Worst-Performing Biotech Stocks June 7 To June 14

These are the best and worst-performing medical and biotech stocks from June 7 to June 14, 2013. This screen includes biotechnology and medical companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq or the American Stock Exchange that had market...

Tort Hell: Pfizer And A Lawsuit Over An Injury From A Generic

The Alabama Supreme Court granted a rehearing for Pfizer, which wants to overturn a ruling that it can be sued by a man who claimed he was injured by a generic version of its Reglan heartburn medicine, because the brand-name drugmaker purportedly fai...

Lilly Scraps An Alzheimer’s Drug; What Does It Mean For Merck?

Lilly scrapped an Alzheimer's treatment that is in the BACE inhbitor class over a liver safety issue, raising questions whether drugs being developed by others, such as Merck, will meet the same fate.

Supreme Court Gets Decision Right, Science Wrong, on Gene Patents

The Supreme Court got some very basic facts of biology wrong in today's decision about gene patents. They got the decision right, in this writer's opinion, but it's worrisome that the facts are so garbled.

For 23andMe, The Real Value Could Be In Its Data

On Tuesday, 23andMe, the personal genetics company backed by billionaire and billionaire , announced that Andy Page, a long-time board member for the company, would become its president. Page will report to 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki, w...

Long-Term Care Commission Names Chernof Chair, Will Meet On June 27

The Congressional Long-Term Care Commission has selected SCAN Foundation president Bruce A. Chernof as its chair and Mark Warshawsky, director of retirement research at the consulting firm Towers Watson, as Vice Chair. The panel will hold its first...

eHarmony Claims Scientific Evidence that Its Matchmaking Works

A new report in PNAS says that couples who marry after meeting online are more satisfied. The study was sponsored by eHarmony and the lead authors are eHarmony consultants and former employees. Bias, perhaps?

eHarmony Finds a Perfect Match in a Scientific Journal

A new report in PNAS says that couples who marry after meeting online are more satisfied. The study was sponsored by eHarmony and the lead authors are eHarmony consultants and former employees. Bias, perhaps?

The Best- And Worst-Performing Biotech Stocks, May 31 To June 7

These are the best and worst-performing medical and biotech stocks from May 31 to June 7, 2013. This screen includes biotechnology and medical companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq or the American Stock Exchange that had market...

No, This Is Not How The Human Face Might Look In 100,000 Years

Update: Alan Kwan has responded to this post. I’ve added his letter at the bottom. My colleague Parmy Olson has an interesting post up about one artist’s vision of what humanity will look liked in 100,000 years. Apparently, we’re al...

Avandia Vote Ends An Era Of Drug Safety Scandals

Avandia, once the most-used diabetes pill on the planet, was all but finished. After concerns emerged that it might cause heart attacks, the Food and Drug Administration in 2010 put severe restrictions on Avandia, forcing doctors and patients to regi...

Will Avandia Return? A Live Blog Of Today’s FDA Advisory Committee

A panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration is deliberating whether to lift restrictions that have caused the diabetes drug Avandia, made by , to go from being the most-used diabetes pill to a product used by only 3,000 patients. They cou...

FDA Avandia Panel: A Twitter-Based Review

An FDA advisory panel is currently meeting to analyst a re-analysis of a clinical trial of the GlaxoSmithKline drug Avandia. For a summary of why this is important, read my piece from last night. This is a summary of what happened, culled from my twe...

The Human Microbiome Gets A Big Pharma Investment

There’s a moment for any new biotechnology that’s critically important: when it moves from being an area of academic interest to one that companies are founded upon. And then there is a next step: when the Big Pharma money arrives for the...

Battleground FDA: How Tomorrow’s Avandia Panel Could Help Shape The Future Of Diabetes

Avandia, once the best-selling diabetes pill on the planet, is now given only to a few thousand Americans. In much of the rest of the world it has been pulled from the market because of analyses that showed it might increase the risk of heart attacks...

Congressional Long-Term Care Panel Will Finally Meet, But Odds For Success Are Worsening

The Congressional long-term care commission will finally hold its first meeting in late June. However, the panel must conclude its meetings in the fall and commission members are increasingly pessimistic they will reach agreement on any substantial...

FDA Commissioner Hints At New Diagnostic Test Regulations

The Food and Drug Administration will take new steps to enforce regulations against certain kinds of diagnostic tests, including some used for personalized medicine, to which it previously took a laissez-faire attitude. The announcement was made in a...

Merck Rushes Forward In Race To Market Cell Death Cancer Drugs

In a potentially bold move, says that in the third quarter of this year it will start a study that would test its much watched experimental cancer drug in non-small cell lung cancer, in addition to studies it hopes to use for approval in lung cancer....

How Vinegar Could Save 73,000 Women A Year From Cancer

Almost two decades ago, a doctor named Surendra S. Shastri was put in charge of preventative oncology at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India. One of his biggest jobs: to figure out how to cut the toll from cervical cancer, which kills 200,000 wom...

Wives of Men With HPV Throat Tumors Need Not Worry About Catching HPV

A small study presented here at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology has some good news for couples facing head-and-neck cancer caused by the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus. HPV is best known for causing cervic...

Five Promising Cancer Drug Results

A quick run-down of studies presented this morning at a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, the biggest gathering of U.S. cancer doctors. Pazopanib, a GlaxoSmithKline pill approved for kidney cancer,...

Will Hepatitis C Become A New Battleground Between Pharma And Poor Nations?

Will the new crop of hepatitis C treatments form the next battleground between the pharmaceutical industry, poor nations and patient advocates? A new report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former Federal Reserve Chairman Pau...

Another Day, Another Warning Letter For Hospira, But Will The FDA Issue A Consent Decree?

The FDA continues to issue warning letters and inspection reports to Hospira for manufacturing violations. Will a consent decree ever appear? Opinion is divided but the mounting evidence suggests the FDA is balancing a need to maintain availability o...