Industry news

Precision Medicine: Innovation That Could Transform Personalized Drug Therapy

Meghan Ross / Pharmacy Time

Precision medicine, an emerging approach to treating disease that focuses on tailoring drugs to a patient’s genes, environment, and lifestyle, is gaining traction among researchers and health care providers, sparking collaborative public and private efforts. The goal of precision medicine is to give health care providers tools to better understand the complex mechanisms of disease so they can select therapies that will work best in each patient, considering his or her health and conditions.

Population Health Management

Caroline Howard, PharmD / Pharmacy Times

As health care systems continue to experience pressure to improve their quality and outcomes while traditional reimbursement for services declines, it has become increasingly clear that new models for patient care delivery are needed. One such model is population health management (PHM). In this model, a clinical team oversees the medical management of a population to optimize preventive services, identify high-risk patients, and improve disease management. 

U.S.-Russia Innovation Corridor met Russian edtech start-ups

MarchMont Innovation News

Three education technology start-ups from Russia traveled to the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore regions on March 2-12 as part of the U.S.-Russia Innovation Corridor (USRIC) program,  announced  American Councils for International Education administering the initiative. 
 

Cross-border research collaboration to protect spacecraft from radiation

MarchMont Innovation News

In a joint Russo-Belarusian effort, scientists from Siberia’s Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) and the Minsk-based Belarusian State University are working on new radiation-resistant nanostructured coatings to protect spacecraft from radiation, TPU announced, citing Alexei Yakovlev, the director of the Siberian university’s Institute of High Technology Physics. 

Russia reached a record low infant mortality rate

ru-facts.com

Russia reached a record low infant mortality rate Maternal and infant mortality in Russia reached its lowest historical level, according to TASS referring to the Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova. According to her, the last year the level of maternal and infant mortality decreased by more than 21 percent. In 2014, the death rate among infants was 7.4 per thousand births (8.2 - 2013). The Minister noted that the figures in February even lower - 6,5.

Targeted mitochondrial attack destroys glioma cells in preclinical study

John Carroll / FierceBiotech

Zeroing in on an enzyme that is over-expressed in brain tumor cells, two investigators at Houston Methodist say they have developed a new treatment for gliomas that has cleared its preclinical testing and should be ready for human testing within the next one to two years.

25 March 2015

Marinus Pharmaceuticals' Ganaxolone Receives FDA Orphan Drug Designation in PCDH19 Female Epilepsy

Marinus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(Nasdaq:MRNS), a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of innovative neuropsychiatric therapeutics, today announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Orphan Drug Designation for ganaxolone, a synthetic analog of the endogenous neurosteroid allopregnanolone, for the treatment of protocadherin 19 gene (PCDH19) female epilepsy. 

SEC in the Modern Downstream Purification Process

By R. Christopher Manzari, J. Kevin O'Donnell / BioPharm International

Since the introduction of commercial chromatography resins approximately six decades ago, size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) has played a significant role in the purication of proteins, viruses, enzymes, nucleic acids, and other biomolecules. While SEC may have mostly been abandoned in monoclonal antibody (mAb) and other protein purifications, it is still commonly used in the purification of viruses and plasmids.

India threatens restrictions on China pharma imports

EJ Lane / FeircePharmaAsia

India's government has threatened to place restrictions on imports of nonessential items, including pharmaceuticals, from China if it does not ease some of its "protectionist tendencies" toward Indian products.

Which diseases are driving drug spending hikes? It's not just hep C

Carly Helfand / FiercePharma

Industry watchers well know that U.S. drug spending is rising--a lot. And they also know that it's likely to continue over the next few years if some major changes don't occur. But which medical conditions will be responsible for the swelling tide? Some of those may surprise you.