Science and Enterprise

Tag: pharmaceuticals

  • Trial Shows Synthetic Cannabinoid Effective on Nerve Pain

    Researchers at University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada find the drug nabilone, prescribed to treat nausea in chemotherapy patients, helps treat diabetic neuropathy, or nerve pain. The findings of Cory Toth and colleagues at Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute are reported in the October issue of the journal Pain (paid subscription required). Diabetic neuropathy results from…

  • Life Sciences Can Generate Start-Ups, With a Little Help

    A case study of innovation in the life sciences in San Francisco shows academic researchers, with the right kind of support, can generate a high number of start-up companies producing new products for the marketplace. The study focuses on the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) and its entrepreneurial programs, which appears in this week’s…

  • More Americans Get Blood Pressure Under Control by 2010

    A larger percentage of Americans with hypertension had their blood pressure under control by the end of 2010 than in 2001, a gain attributed to higher use of multiple drugs to treat the condition. The findings from the study conducted by National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and…

  • FDA Approves Drug to Treat Seizures in Epilepsy Patients

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug perampanel, given in tablet form to treat partial onset seizures in patients with epilepsy ages 12 years and older. Perampanel is marketed under the brand name Fycompa by Eisai Inc. of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, and headquartered in Tokyo. Epilepsy is a brain disorder characterized seizures…

  • Q3 Venture Funding Drops, Science Sectors Hit Hard

    Venture capital (VC) funding for U.S. companies dropped sharply in the third quarter of 2012, with the amount of money invested declining by about a third and number of deals down by almost 10 percent compared to 2011. For the year to date, says Dow Jones VentureSource, a financial industry research service, VC funding totaled…

  • Trial to Test Branded vs. Generic Anti-Rejection Drugs

    Researchers at University of Cincinnati will lead a clinical trial testing a brand-name drug to reduce rejection of transplants against generic versions. The $2.7 million study, funded by the Food and Drug Administration, includes colleagues from University of Colorado and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The trial will test the drug tacrolimus, an immunosuppressant compound…

  • Antibiotic Found Effective On Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

    Researchers in the U.S. and Korea found the antibiotic linezolid largely effective in treating patients with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, who had not responded to previous treatments. The findings of the team led by Clifton Barry of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and Sang-Nae Cho at…

  • Drug Developer BioCryst to Acquire Presidio Pharmaceuticals

    BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Durham, North Carolina and Presidio Pharmaceuticals Inc. in San Francisco agreed to a merger of the biopharmaceutical companies. The deal in which BioCryst acquires Presidio is an all-stock transaction valued at $101 million. The merger will combine two clinical stage drug development operations that the companies say will focus on infectious…

  • Key Molecular Factors Uncovered Behind Tick-Borne Bacteria

    Medical researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, with colleagues from Yale University and University of California in Davis, identified pathways and processes used by bacteria responsible for some tick-transmitted diseases to infect humans and animals. The team led by VCU’s Jason Carlyon published its findings in the November issue of the journal Infection and…

  • GlaxoSmithKline to Open its Clinical Trial Data

    The global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline based in London will make available detailed data from its clinical trials for testing new drugs. The company will also make available 200 compounds from its library with potential for inhibiting tuberculosis and double the funding for its Open Lab project in Spain. GlaxoSmithKline will create a system that makes…