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Imagine you had a drug that dramatically improved the symptoms or signs of a disease in 70% of the patients who take it, but carried the...
Meh-dicine
The holy grail of the pharma industry is FDA approval, but the final clue may be positive top-line (Phase III) results. However, it is...
Dr. Knowlittle
This one comes out of the past, but it is about a fear as old as time . . . or at least as old as Merck, namely that testing in animals...
Clot twist
Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in. We in the business obsess over the “valley of death” and the drug development...
It's been a hard day's development
Pharma small molecule discovery has continued its longtime inexorable decline noted some time ago in this paper. There is little doubt...
Prediction looks to the future
It’s long been known that better early prediction of drug-like compound properties overcomes costly drug attrition later. But prediction...
Reading cancer's résumé
Thinking about battling cancer without understanding its tissue of origin would be like hiring someone without knowing about their...
No holds–barred!
Clinical holds are lost battles in the war against drug attrition. The process of drug development critically revolves around the FDA’s...
Thymus up: the hidden powers of HCAC7
Some autoimmune diseases, like lupus, affect multiple tissues, but some, like inflammatory bowel disease, affect only specific types. A...
Could GeneCentrix's Historeceptomics Profiler have saved millions for Roche and PTC Therapeutics
Roche and PTC’s Spinal Muscular Atrophy clinical drug trials were waylaid by an unexpected tissue specific effect. After the trial had...