Drug repositioning

What are benefits of drug repurposing and why do clinical drug trials so often fail? Diana Spencer summarises the key messages from the ‘Drug Repurposing: Challenges and Opportunities’ Symposium held at the 19th World Congress of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology (WCP) 2023. The Drug Repurposing symposium at WCP 2023 was chaired by Oscar Della Pasqua, Chair […]

Widely-used anti-inflammatory drugs make tumours more responsive to treatments which boost the anti-cancer function of the immune system, according to early research by the University of Manchester, funded by Cancer Research UK. The proof-of-concept study on the combination of immunotherapy with anti-inflammatory drugs – used to manage pain and reduce inflammation in diseases like arthritis […]

New research from UHN’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (PMCC) shows statins, commonly prescribed to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, may also protect the heart from damaging side-effects of early breast cancer treatment. Published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an observational study found women already taking statins […]

Genetic evidence is second only to clinical trials as a way to tell which treatments will be effective in a disease. Existing drugs that target the actions of the genes reveal which drugs should be repurposed to treat COVID-19 in clinical trials, experts say. Genes involved in two molecular processes – antiviral immunity and lung […]

New research has shown that the antidepressant sertraline helps to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. The substance acts on a metabolic addiction that allows different types of cancer to grow. This is shown by a study on cell cultures and lab animals performed by various research labs of KU Leuven. Their findings were published […]

Empagliflozin, a recently developed diabetes drug, can effectively treat and reverse heart failure in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Its clinical trial showed that this medication can improve the heart’s size, shape, and function, leading to better exercise capacity and quality of life, […]

University of South Australia cancer researcher, Dr Nirmal Robinson, working with a team in Naples, has found evidence in animal models that the beta-blocker Propranolol helps suppress the spread of cancer in the lung which has an inflammatory profile very similar to COVID-19. The scientists have presented their findings in a paper published in Frontiers […]

A double-blind clinical trial, will investigate if a drug used to treat nausea in chemotherapy patients, could alleviate hallucinations in people with Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s UK, the largest charitable funder of Parkinson’s research in Europe, is partnering with UCL, and investing £1 million in a pioneering Phase II clinical trial to explore if the drug ondansetron […]

By Ibis Sanchez-Serrano and Rathnam Chaguturu Mitigation of COVID-19 pandemic requires a combination of effective epidemiological policies and the discovery/development of powerful drugs against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes this disease. This article examines the major initiatives being explored at the public policy level to contain the spread of COVID-19 […]

By Dr Steve Arlington and John Wise As part of its mission to help members anticipate and prepare for changes in the pharmaceutical industry, The Pistoia Alliance has developed a research paper which sets out to consider what the life science, biopharma R&D and healthcare ecosystem might look like in 2030, in particular how the […]

Integrated Platform Drug Discovery and Development Companies – Part 2: Comparative analysis By Dr Stephen Naylor and Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr Spring 2019 Large pharmaceutical companies have struggled to efficiently implement tools, technologies and platforms into their drug discovery and development (DDD) programmes. More recently there have been attempts by small-to-medium sized pharmaceutical companies […]

Systems Pharmacology: When multi-targeting is advantageous By Dr Kirkwood A. Pritchard Jr, Dr Dustin P. Martin and Dr Stephen Naylor The safety and efficacy of therapeutic drugs still requires improvement. In part this is due to the promiscuity of individual drugs, which on average can interact with an estimated 6-28 other off-target moieties. However, the […]

Disruptive Approaches To Accelerate Drug Discovery and Development (Part 2) By Dr Anton Fliri, et al. Part 2: Emergent intelligence, a new paradigm for drug discovery. (You can read part 1 of disruptive approaches to accelerate drug discovery and development linked here.) The staggering clinical trial failure rate of experimental drugs indicates that despite huge […]

Precision Medicine Drugs – Pleonasm or Reality? Dr Urban Kiernan and Dr Stephen Naylor The complexity and uniqueness of human metabolism and physiology in the past decade has been highlighted and dissected. Arguments have been made to suggest that our lack of understanding about human individuality has led to the limited efficacy and safety of […]

Artificial Intelligence & Biopharma R&D IT By The PRISME Forum This article discusses issues around artificial intelligence & Biopharma R&D IT, and outlines how AI can be a potentially transformative technology for the biopharmaceutical and healthcare industries. “…R&D productivity remains an ongoing concern. Artificial Intelligence and the accompanying analytics are now so advanced that these […]

By Dr A Roy, Prof B Patwardhan and Dr R Chaguturu Modern drug discovery approaches take too long, are too expensive, have too many clinical failures and uncertain outcomes. There are many reasons for this unsustainable business model, but primarily, the approaches are not comprehensively holistic. Secondly, none of the pharmaceutical companies openly share the […]