Tag: pharmaceuticals
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Patent Awarded for Cancer Antibody Delivery Technology
2 April 2014. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded a patent for a technology that connects antibodies and cancer drugs to target and deliver treatments directly to tumor cells. Patent number 8,685,383 was awarded yesterday to nine inventors and assigned to Mersana Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Timothy Lowinger, Mersana’s chief…
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Injectable Hydrogel Developed to Prevent Heart Attack Damage
31 March 2014. Engineers and medical researchers at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia developed a polymer gel that in animal tests shows the ability to prevent some of the cardiac damage that can occur from a heart attack. The team led by biomedical engineering professor Jason Burdick, which includes members from University of South Carolina…
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Trial to Test Engineered DNA Therapy for Preeclampsia
31 March 2014. The biopharmaceutical company rEVO Biologics in Framingham, Massachusetts is starting a clinical trial of its drug ATryn to treat women in mid-pregnancy with preeclampsia. The company says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave its approval for the trial to begin. Preeclampsia is a life-threatening condition resulting from a sudden rise in…
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Challenge Seeks New Uses for Trial-Tested Drug Compounds
28 March 2014. A new challenge on InnoCentive asks the medical research community for additional uses for drug compounds previously tested in clinical trials by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The challenge has a prize of $15,000, and a deadline for submissions of 31 May 2014 (free registration required). InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowd-sourcing…
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Engineered Cardiac Tissue Helps Veins Return Blood to Heart
27 March 2014. A pharmacologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. developed a technique to produce heart muscle tissue from an individual’s stem cells that helps weak veins return blood back to the heart. The creator of the process, GWU medical school professor Narine Sarvazyan, discussed the technology in a recent online issue of…
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Drug Discovery Consortium Harnesses Sequencing, Big Data
27 March 2014. A collaboration among the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, European Bioinformatics Institute, and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute aims to tap the power of genomic sequencing combined with bioinformatics to boost the success rate of discovering safe and effective medicines. Financial details of the partnership creating the new Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation were not disclosed. The consortium…
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Biotech Group Issues Clinical Trial Data Sharing Guidelines
25 March 2014. Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) today released its principles for sharing data from clinical trials that encourage making more data available from clinical trials, but leave procedures for sharing up to the individual companies. The guidelines cover programs resulting in approved medicines, as well as those discontinued for safety or efficacy reasons, although…
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FDA Approves Celgene Psoriatic Arthritis Treatment
24 March 2014. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on 21 March approved the drug apremilast to treat adults with active cases of psoriatic arthritis. The drug is marketed as Otezla by the pharmaceutical company Celgene in Summit, New Jersey, that also reported results of clinical trials of Otezla to treat the related skin condition…
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Janssen, Univ. of Alberta Partner on Diabetes Research
19 March 2014. Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, a division of Johnson & Johnson, is joining with University of Alberta in Edmonton to fund research on diabetes with commercial potential. The $600,000 fund, with contributions from Janssen and matched by the government of Alberta and Alberta Diabetes Foundation, will support studies on type 1 and type 2…
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Bristol-Myers Squibb, Biotech in Cancer Drug Discovery Deal
17 March 2014. Bristol-Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical company in New York, and Five Prime Therapeutics in South San Francisco, California are collaborating in discovery of cancer immunotherapies. The deal can be worth as much as $350 million to Five Prime Therapeutics, in which Bristol-Myers Squibb will also get a 5 percent stake. Five Prime Therapeutics…