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30 October 2012 | By kdm communications limited
Tecan and TAP Biosystems, a leading supplier of innovative cell culture systems, have announced a co-marketing agreement to further expand the automated 3D cell culture capabilities of the Freedom EVO® liquid handling platform. Automation of TAP’s collagen-based RAFT™ cell culture system will allow scientists to quickly and conveniently create 3D…
22 October 2012 | By Bahija Jallal, Executive Vice President, Research & Development, MedImmune
The first biologic drug – infliximab (Remicade) – was launched in 1998 with initial sales of USD 500 million per annum. By 2010, Reuters’ top 10 drugs by sales included five biologics (Remicade, Enbrel, Humira, Avastin and Humira) generating around USD 34 billion in revenue, including USD 7.4 billion from…
3 September 2012 | By Pradeep Sharma and Katherine Fenner, Global DMPK, AstraZeneca R&D
Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models describe the different compartments (tissues) in the body linked via arterial and venous blood flow (Figure 1). The volume of each tissue and blood flows are available from literature data1-5 and PBPK models have been developed for many species including rat, mouse, dog, pig and…
3 September 2012 | By David Cook & James Milligan, AstraZeneca
Ensuring patient safety during clinical trials is of paramount consideration with stringent monitoring built into trials (and beyond) and the design and interpretation of safety outcomes subject to a large amount of regulation. As a result, it is rare for clinical trials to produce extreme adverse drug reactions but it…
3 September 2012 | By Vikash Sinha, Clinical Pharmacology Leader, Janssen Research and Development
One of the important goals in preclinical and early clinical drug development is to reduce attrition rates and to improve our ability to pick winners and drop potential loser drug candidates. By being able to efficiently translate preclinical data and observations into possible clinical outcomes, one can make the drug…
10 July 2012 | By Paul C. Guest, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge and Sabine Bahn Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge & Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus Medical Centre
Pharmaceutical companies are under increasing pressure to improve their efficiency and returns on drug discovery projects. This is a daunting task considering that the average drug costs approximately one billion US dollars to develop and takes around 12 years from initial discovery to reach the market1. In addition, approximately 70…
26 April 2012 | By Luigi La Vecchia, Director of the Preparations Laboratories, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research
In 2002, Novartis decided to create a new research centre in Cambridge, MA. This was accompanied by a significant increase in headcount in medicinal chemistry. Within two years, this resulted in a strongly increased demand for prep-scale synthesis which in turn led to priority issues and to prolonged turnaround times…
26 April 2012 | By Jayshree Mistry, Paul Lloyd, Kevin Oliver and Peter North, GlaxoSmithKline R&D and Duncan Judd, Awridian
This article describes the evolution of outsourcing within early drug discovery at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), specifically for chemistry services applied to developing a compound from the screening hit through lead optimisation. It will touch on different business models, factors to consider when selecting potential CROs, the benefits of outsourcing and CRO…
26 April 2012 | By Sofia M.A. Martins, João R.C. Trabuco, Gabriel A. Monteiro and Duarte Miguel Prazeres, Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon
G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are one of the most popular drug targets today. Almost one third of the approved drugs currently available rely on some kind of interaction with these receptors. The annual revenues are around USD 30 billion (109) and the fact that one quarter of the top US…
In this free to view Mass Spectrometry In-Depth Focus: Mass spectrometry in drug discovery - Proteomics, small molecules and metablomics; Quantification of membrane drug transporters and application in drug discovery and development; Mass spectrometry leaders roundtable...
28 February 2012 | By Peter R. Allegrini, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research
MRI is widely used for clinical diagnosis as well as in research areas such as preclinical drug discovery, clinical development and also in therapy monitoring. MRI allows non-invasive acquisition of tomographic images of soft tissue with high resolution and contrast. Furthermore, its ability to assess organ function in a broad…
13 December 2011 | By Andrew A. Parsons, Vice President Preclinical Drug Development, GlaxoSmithKline and Steve Street, Vice President, Head of Research Centres of Emphasis, Head of WRD Continuous Improvement, Pfizer and William Strohl, Vice President of Biologics Research, Centocor R&D, a division of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development and Eckhard von Keutz, Senior Vice President, Head Global Early Development, Bayer HealthCare
External economic pressures have been identified as the major driver for the pharmaceutical outsourcing market. Over and above the fiscal advantages of adopting this strategy, what other benefits and indeed risks do you see associated with this approach? Steve Street: We definitely began our out - sourcing efforts based on…
13 December 2011 | By Henri Xhaard, Head of Computational Drug Discovery Group, Centre for Drug Research, University of Helsinki
The central location of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) at the interface between the interior and exterior of cells, as well as their key role in signalling events, make GPCRs a prominent class of pharmaceutical targets. To date, approximately 40 per cent of known drugs are thought to act on GPCRs…
13 December 2011 | By Sheraz Gul, Vice President and Head of Biology, European ScreeningPort GmbH
The pre-clinical phase of drug discovery spans a period in the region of five years and requires contributions from multi-disciplinary teams often working at different sites. These teams can generate significant amounts of data which are processed using standard as well as specialist software. The recording of a substantial amount…
13 December 2011 | By Nalini A.L. Mehta & David J. Dow, Molecular and Cellular Technologies, Platform Technology and Science, GlaxoSmithKline and Anthony M. Battram, Molecular and Cellular Technologies, Platform Technology and Science, GlaxoSmithKline & Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London
In recent years, the development of Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS) technology has significantly impacted molecular biology research, resulting in many new insights and discoveries. NGS technology goes beyond traditional DNA sequencing with applications that reach across the central dogma of molecular biology from DNA to RNA and protein science.…
