and donors seeking to use anti-malaria drugs as prophylactics in African children, and the analysis pinpoints where the strategy would be most effective,
malaria burden, predicted malaria seasonality and the efficacy of the drug combination sulphadoxine, pyrimethamine and amodiaquine (SP-AQ.
because sulphadoxine and pyrimethamine were used to treat the disease before the wormwood wonder drug artemisinin became the gold standard cure.
when drugs are taken as a prophylaxis, which is why THE WHO requires that people on SP-AQ take different medications
if they acquire the disease. At about US$1. 50 for up to four monthly treatments, a season's worth of SP-AQ would cost less than malarone or mefloquine,
the malaria-prevention pills that many tourists take when they visit these countries. At this low price
That's because in addition to procuring the drugs, Nahlen says, countries will need to pay health workers to distribute the medicine,
Gene therapy Europe s drugs regulator has recommended for the first time a gene therapy for approval. Glybera, a treatment for a rare disease in which patients cannot produce enough lipoprotein lipase (an enzyme crucial for breaking down fat),
Second obesity pill Just weeks after it approved its first weight-loss drug in 13 years,
the US Food and Drug Administration on 17 Â July gave the green light to a second obesity treatment:
although it carries a warning that those taking the drug should have monitored their heart rates. See go. nature. com/vtcifa for more.
But the case was reopened after two separate patents covering a way to determine drug dosage, from Prometheus Laboratories in San diego,
Pharma fines Drug giant Glaxosmithkline will pay US$3 billion in fines for enormous health-care fraud.
is pleading guilty to promoting antidepressants for unapproved use, and to holding back data and making unsupported safety claims about its diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone).
Obesity pill The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new weight-loss drug on 27 june
Belviq (lorcaserin), made by Arena Pharmaceuticals in San diego, California, suppresses food cravings by mimicking the effects of serotonin in the brain.
The agency rejected the drug two years ago because of safety concerns, but after additional tests it is now allowing Belviq s use in obese adults
Pharma closure About 1, 000 Â jobs are to be lost with the closure of pharmaceutical company Roche s research site in Nutley
Amylin buy up Two pharmaceutical giants, Bristol-myers squibb and Astrazeneca, are teaming up to acquire the biotech firm Amylin,
and the two firms will share profits and losses from Amylin s drugs pipeline. G. WOOD/AFP/GETTY IMAGESCARBON tax Australia introduced a carbon tax on 1 Â July, in
such as measures to speed up approval of generic versions of protein-based drugs. See page 13 for more. UK science chief Mark Walport will be the United kingdom s next chief scientific adviser
Drug-discovery split Irish pharmaceutical company Elan is to split into two, completely separating its drug-discovery work from the main business.
The firm which is based in Dublin, plans to spin off its research work into a small separate company called Neotope Biosciences,
Elan itself will keep ownership of assets such as its stake in multiple-sclerosis drug Tysabri (natalizumab.
A. DI MEO/EPA/CORBISITALIAN dog-breeding facility at risk One of the largest suppliers of beagles (pictured) for mandatory drug testing in Europe could struggle to survive after an Italian court ordered its temporary closure
Gene-test regulation Personal-genetics company 23andme announced on 30 Â July that it was seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its genetic tests related to health
Alzheimer s setback Research has been halted on a keenly watched experimental drug aimed at treating Alzheimer s disease after it failed two late-stage clinical trials.
and one on 6 august the drug did not prevent cognitive decline. Source: Thomson Reuters/Sciencewatchresearch papers with a single author are becoming a rare breed,
and expense off the drug-development process, says Garry Neil, head of Transcelerate and a former vice-president of science and technology at Johnson & johnson. Smaller companies are invited to join the team.
and the US Food and Drug Administration released reports that found inorganic arsenic in rice products.
Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State Univ. AZT-maker dies Jerome Horwitz, the chemist who inadvertently created the first antiretroviral drug for AIDS,
azidothymidine (AZT), died on 6 Â September, aged 93. News of his death emerged last week.
Horwitz (pictured) created AZT in the 1960s to combat cancer, but he shelved the drug after it showed little efficacy against the disease.
A company that later became part of Glaxosmithkline patented AZT in the 1980s when it was found to be effective against AIDS.
Horwitz received no money for his discovery because he no longer owned the compound, but he did go on to produce treatments for diseases such as cancer at the Wayne State university School of medicine in Detroit, Michigan,
Chemist Bai Chunli, current president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was elected also as the organization s president.
But culturing mammalian cells is currently the only way to make some complex protein drugs.
and the high production costs mean that the drugs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
In May, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Elelyso (taliglucerase alfa) a drug for the lysosomal storage disorder Gaucher disease which is produced in cultured carrot cells.
And drugs made in duckweed safflower and tobacco have progressed as far as clinical trials. However, making proteins with certain sugar patterns using these systems is still difficult or impossible.
But there is a long way to go before maize-made drugs reach the market, says Kermode.
however, maize may one day become the go-to way to make complex protein drugs
The development of new countermeasures, from diagnostics to antibiotics and antivirals to respirators, will help protect human lives in the face of new bugs and superbugs.
His FDA has slowed the drug development process and inserted requirements that drive up the cost of developing new antibiotics.
A robust public health system is only as strong as the tools available, and I will empower the private sector to pursue the breakthroughs that will equip society for the health challenges of the twenty-first century.
The use of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides, as well as animal diseases and even terrorism pose risks. What steps would you take to ensure the health, safety and productivity of America s food supply?
I signed the most comprehensive reform of our nation s food safety laws in more than 70 years â oe giving the Food and Drug Administration the resources,
and minimize pesticides and antibiotics in our food. I set the ambitious goal to increase the number of certified organic operations by 20 percent â oe
And my administration is taking steps to limit antibiotic use for livestock. This will help ensure that antibiotics are used only address diseases and health problems
and not for enhancing growth and other production purposes. And I will continue to work on food safety issues to ensure that public health is the priority in our food safety system.
two teams one led by chemist Donald Mottram at the University of Reading, UK, the other by Richard Stadler at Nestlã in Lausanne,
The US Food and Drug Administration has collected not routinely data on acrylamide in food since 2006,
Diet-pill concern Europe s drug regulators have recommended against approving a diet pill recently cleared for sale in the United states. The European Medicines Agency s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use
But some 3. 7%of new TB cases are now multi-drug resistant. In some countries in Eastern europe and Central asia, multi-drug resistance occurs in more than 20%of cases (see chart.
Because of incorrect diagnoses and a shortage of data in some places, even this is probably an underestimate.
but rarely funds proposals to produce drugs or vaccines in the milk of transgenic livestock.
where advocates of GE animal research aired their frustrations with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
A brief history of some of the genetically engineered food animals submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for review.
The FDA evaluates animals as strictly as it does drugs. In the 17 Â years that the salmon has been under review
Yes, counters David King, a chemist and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, also at Oxford."
Dystrophy drug hope The experimental drug eteplirsen may help patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a clinical trial of 12 boys with the condition reported on 3 october.
which makes the drug, revealed that four boys who had taken a high dose of eteplirsen for nearly a year were able to walk an average of 21 metres farther in six minutes than at the start of the trial.
Those on a placebo showed a decline of 68 metres. The company plans to file for regulatory approval with the US Food and Drug Administration.
About 1 in 3, 600 boys develops DMD, which is caused by mutations in a gene on the X chromosome and eventually leads to paralysis and death.
and a six-year drug war. Enrique Pe  a Nieto will have his hands full
when he heard the identity of the pathogen in the epidemic that originated with the New england Compounding Center pharmacy in Framingham, Mass."
After the fungus was injected along with the drug into the epidural space the space between the dura mater,
The fungus's confinement to just three lots of the drug also remains unexplained. If the facility's water or air supplies in general were contaminated,
Another pathway could be the drug itself: Although the water used for making up the final doses was allegedly sterile,
the steroid drug ingredient was not. Using nonsterile components for injection in somebody's spine?
MÃ lanie Salque, a chemist at the University of Bristol, UK, used gas chromatography and carbon-isotope ratios to analyse molecules preserved in the pores of the ancient clay
a chemist at Bristol and a co-author of the paper. The finding, he adds, is not only an indication that humans had by that time learned to use sophisticated technology,
about safety data from clinical trials of a drug for Alzheimer s disease before the results were made public.
Paul Shepson, an atmospheric chemist at Purdue University in West Lafayette Indiana, led a team that received about US$1. 5 Â million from the National Institute of Standards
and senior vice-president at the UK-based drug firm Pfizer, died on 22 Â January. Cox s research group at Pfizer aimed to find a way to arrange clinical-trial participants on the basis of their genetic make-up.
US food safety On 4 january, the US Food and Drug Administration released the first of its long-awaited proposals for protecting food safety.
Pharma split Abbott laboratories has spun off its drug-discovery business into an independent company called Abbvie,
Illinois, will retain its medical devices, diagnostics, nutritional products and generic pharmaceutical business. Abbvie, headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois,
The now-separate firm plans to expand the market for its blockbuster anti-inflammatory antibody Humira (adalimumab),
and to push forward candidate drugs that include several hepatitis  C antivirals. Stem-cell transfer  Pioneering biotechnology company Geron is shedding its assets in human embryonic stem cells.
and food safety groups are concerned about contamination of food crops with products from a new generation of crops engineered to produce chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
there is no antidote, but symptoms can be treated. The suspect, Paul Kevin Curtis, of Corinth, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
the resurgence of measles and antimicrobial resistance are discussed all at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology
The findings are likely to add urgency to efforts to ensure that infected mothers without access to formula take antiretroviral drugs throughout
and others are used widely as pesticides or herbicides or in the manufacture of solvents, plastics and pharmaceuticals.
Patent blocked India s Supreme court ruled on 1 Â April against an attempt by Swiss drug company Novartis to patent the anticancer drug Gleevec (imatinib mesylate.
India s patent law limits the ability of drug firms to make minor modifications to drugs to extend their patent life, a tactic known as evergreening.
The nation s support for cheap generic drugs has reduced prices, notably those of anti-HIV medicines.
Diabetes drug US regulators have given the green light to the first in a new class of drugs to treat diabetes.
On 29 march, the Food and Drug Administration approved canagliflozin (Invokana), which was developed by Johnson & johnson, headquartered in New brunswick, New jersey.
last year regulators shot down another such drug, dapagliflozin, citing cancer concerns. Source: US National Snow and Ice Data Centera record low in the extent of sea ice in the Arctic last September has been followed by a record refreezing of uncovered ocean surface,
Hepatitis drug A new hepatitis-C drug sofosbuvir, has been found to be highly effective in clinical trials.
the drug is one of several in development that could replace existing hepatitis-C treatments,
On 26 april, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) closed a public consultation on its finding that the engineered fish pose no significant environmental concern.
Lab-death trial Patrick Harran, a chemist at the University of California, Los angeles, will stand trial for the death of research assistant Sheharbano Sangji,
Last week marked the end of the public s opportunity to weigh in on a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) draft assessment of the salmon.
Aquabountythe US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been slow to approve a genetically modified (GM) salmon made by Aquabounty of Maynard, Massachusetts.
Drug application with the FDA. 2001 â Aquabounty submits its first regulatory study to the FDA. 2009 â The FDA releases guidance for its evaluation of genetically engineered animals as veterinary drugs;
Pharma probe The Chinese government is investigating four senior executives of Glaxosmithkline (GSK) in China for allegedly bribing officials
and physicians to boost GSK drug sales, funnelling the money through travel agencies. The executives are suspected of giving 3 Â billion renminbi (US$489 Â million) in bribes since 2007
would ban research involving addictive drugs or transplants of living cells from other species. It would also stop the breeding of dogs, cats and primates in Italy for research,
Indiana, announced on 12 Â July that it will focus on patients with mild Alzheimer s disease in a forthcoming clinical trial of the drug solanezumab.
The antibody-based drug, which targets the amyloid-Ã Â protein, will be tested in a large-scale phase III trial.
But secondary analysis hinted that the drug might help patients with mild forms of the disease.
Lead author Hana Golding, a microbiologist at the US Food and Drug Administration in Bethesda, Maryland, agrees
The authors have called on the US Food and Drug Administration to bar the practice. See go. nature. com/jqccur and page 253 for more.
the Food and Drug Administration and the National institutes of health (NIH) announced on 19 september. More than $273 Â million may be invested over the next five years to help the programme to develop
In October, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to issue a rule that affirms it has the authority to regulate e-cigarettes,
or agricultural fields fertilized with pig manure are more likely to become infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria,
Many researchers think that widespread use of antibiotics to encourage growth in farm animals fuels the proliferation of MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria.
The latest findings suggest that manure is helping antibiotic resistance to spread, says Joan Casey, an environmental-health scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health in Baltimore, Maryland,
For decades, the local cattle have been prime suspects behind the country s outbreaks of drug-resistant,
when global epidemics of drug-resistant salmonella infections began to arise. Livestock was assumed to be the source of the epidemics
When they looked at the strains'antimicrobial resistance, the researchers found that bacteria from humans had more diverse collections of resistance genes than those in local livestock.
The authors therefore suggest that local livestock are not the source of drug-resistant human salmonella outbreaks in Scotland.
The authors stress that the study does not imply that antimicrobial resistance developed on farms is less concerning than previously thought,
including resistance stemming from the controversial practice of giving antibiotics in feed to promote animal growth.
Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, says that the study clarifies how pathogens and drug-resistance genes spread."
"It s not just multi-bug, multi-drug, he says, "but multi-country. Scotland imports most of its red meat,
"Meat sale and meat trade across borders is making it harder to control antibiotic-resistant pathogens at a local scale
Brain implant Patients with epilepsy who fail to respond to medications could benefit from a newly approved brain implant.
California, received a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration on 14 Â November.
and Drug Administration (FDA) approved on 13 Â November a breakthrough therapy to treat a rare blood cancer called mantle-cell lymphoma.
California, is only the second drug to be approved under the FDA s Breakthrough Therapy Designation programme a pipeline launched last year to fast-track regulatory approval of particularly promising treatments.
PLOS ONE 8, e77142 (2013) The number of potential drug leads disclosed in patents each year has plummeted over the past seven years.
Our chemical ecology group which is led by chemist John Pickett is world leading. The idea of introducing aphid alarm pheromones into wheat to protect it against aphid attack that comes out of that group.
the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed eliminating most artificial trans-fats forms of fat associated with increased heart risk from processed foods.
Rare-disease deal Pharmaceutical giant Shire, headquartered in Dublin, announced on 11 Â November the purchase of drug company Viropharma for US$4. 2 Â billion.
Viropharma develops drugs for rare diseases. The bulk of its roughly $400 Â million in annual sales revenue comes from a drug used to treat a rare blood condition known as hereditary angioedema.
Source: ethan perlsteinscience projects seeking crowdfunding in the past two years have included a glow-in-the-dark plant that raised US$484,
The data were collected by Ethan  Perlstein, an evolutionary pharmacologist in Oakland, California (see go. nature. com/3fembu).
Bioensure has been approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of agriculture and independent tests have shown the mixture to be nontoxic.
Pharma patent flap Advocates of affordable medicines expressed outrage last week after leaked documents revealed a proposed public-relations campaign by a lobbying firm in Arlington, Virginia,
to stymie drug-patent reform in South africa. The country is considering loosening patent protections to improve access to cheaper, generic drugs,
in line with moves in India and Brazil in recent years (see Nature 500, 266; 2013.
The Innovative Pharmaceutical Association South africa, a trade group based in Randburg, acknowledged receipt of the campaign proposal,
and Drug Administration to test therapies involving embryonic stem cells. See Nature http://doi. org/q8f (2014) for more.
chemists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have invented now a process that they say easily extracts sugars from lignin and cellulose fibres."
Chemist James Dumesic, who is also part of the Wisconsin-Madison team, has worked with the liquid for years as a potential fuel in its own right,
Novartis woes The Japanese health ministry filed a criminal complaint on 9 Â January against Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis,
Advertisements for the best-selling drug relied on studies showing that it also reduced the risk of stroke and heart attack.
which receives about US$6 Â billion per year to distribute antiretroviral drugs and medical care in countries affected by AIDS (see Nature 457,254-256;
which also examined the United kingdom s stockpiling programme for the influenza drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir), the authors say that evaluation of the efficacy of Tamiflu
and other medicines has been hampered by drug manufacturers withholding data. The report follows recent European and US initiatives to increase data sharing and transparency in clinical trials.
See page 131 and go. nature. com/9lgbd6 for more. Gun controls The US Department of health and human services proposed on 3 Â January that patient-privacy exemptions should be created
Although the drug remains illegal under national laws, the US government has said that it will not interfere with state industries kept under strict local controls.
New drug approvals The US Food and Drug Administration approved 27 Â new drugs in 2013, down from a 15-year high of 39 Â drugs the year before,
The agency told reporters that it had received fewer drug applications for review in 2013 and that the number of approvals was in line with the average of 28 new drugs approved annually over the past five years.
US ICEFOSSIL felony A fossil retailer from Eagle, Colorado, pleaded guilty on 2 january to conspiracy to smuggle dinosaur bones and other fossils into the United states from China and Mongolia.
Drug buyout The biggest pharmaceutical deal since 2009 was announced on 18 Â February with the US$25-billion purchase of Forest Laboratories in New york. Forest is being acquired by Actavis,
and is known for producing generic pharmaceuticals. The buyout will create a company with annual sales of $15 billion from drugs targeting disorders of the heart, digestive system and central nervous system, among other areas.
The expanded company will have combined a investment in new drug development of $1 billion per year. Holt retires Physicist and congressman Rush Holt (Democrat,
New jersey) announced on 18 Â February that he will retire from the House of representatives at the end of this year.
7 13 february 2014sharing drug data Ten major pharmaceutical companies have agreed to share data from early-stage trials with each other and with academic researcher,
is designed to speed up identification of biomarkers and promising drug targets for four diseases: Alzheimer s, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and diabetes.
Stem-cell ruling Certain types of stem-cell treatment should be regulated as drugs, a US appeals court decided on 4 Â February.
is a medical procedure that does not require regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. The court decided that processing the cells for use in the therapy made the end product a drug.
The company has completed not clinical trials on the treatment so cannot market the product in the United states. It does sell it in the Cayman islands (see Nature 488
and could either save the landmark project without the need for tranquillizer darts and wolf crates,
a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel examined the science behind the technologies on 25-26 Â February.
I don't think massive amounts of intoxicating drugs would make Dan's writing any better.
or antidote chemicals) were the norm and proved highly effective although working in a trench while wearing such respirators generally proved difficult and tiring.
#2 Million Americans Annually Get Infections That Antibiotics Can't Curemore than two million Americans get sick every year with infections that defy modern antibiotics.
when we go there to look for a lifesaving antibiotic CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden said during a conference call for reporters.
Without urgent action now more patients will be thrust back to a time before we had effective drugs.
What are antibiotic-resistant infections? How do they arise? Antibiotic-resistant infections develop from using antibiotics.
As the CDC report says Antibiotics are limited a resource. The more that antibiotics are used today the less likely they will still be effective in the future.
It's worse if people take antibiotics when they don't need them or when doctors prescribe unnecessary antibiotics to their patients.
Farmers also contribute to the problem by feeding antibiotics to their livestock. When people (or animals) take antibiotics they don't need the medicines kill off most bacteria
while leaving behind a few germs that are naturally genetically resistant to the treatment. Over time antibiotic use breeds more and more resistant germs.
In addition the weird biology of bacteria means that they are able to easily share genes with one another further spreading antibiotic resistance.
People can harbor their own resistant bacteria get infected with resistant bacteria from another person or encounter resistant bacteria from unhygienic processes in food production.
Who's to blame? Up to half of the antibiotics doctors prescribe to patients aren't needed
or aren't prescribed correctly according to the CDC report. Farmers use antibiotics to cure or prevent diseases in their livestock.
In addition some farmers give their cows pigs and chickens low doses of antibiotics to make them grow faster.
This is unnecessarily and should stop the CDC says. What are the worst infections? The CDC divided the resistant bacteria it knows about into three categories:
urgent serious and concerning. The urgent pathogens include: Clostridium difficile and drug-resistant enterobacteriaceae are generally infections people get
while they are in hospitals from their catheters breathing machines and other invasive equipment. What is the CDC going to do about it?
The U s. health agency says it will work to prevent infections track infections when they happen
and try to develop new drugs. Most importantly it will need to change how people use antibiotics.
You don't get<i>Clostridium difficile </i>from the things you describe above (catheters'breathing machines')as far as I'm aware.
Antibacterial use (appropriate or inappropriate) is what can lead to<i>C. diff</i>infection.
If numbers of these bacteria are reduced by antibacterials then the<i>C. diff </i>spores are more likely to germinate into the'adult'bacteria
Maybe its time to stop injecting livestock with antibiotics and eating them. Maybe its time for in vitro meat t
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