The Long Saga of Apo-A1 Milano
It’s been six years since I titled a post “Remember Apo-A1 Milano?” If you go back even further, I wrote about the topic on this blog back in 2003 (!); scroll down to the November 11 post on that page....
View ArticleSimple, Right?
So, name a class of prescription drugs that lots of people have been taking daily over a period of decades: how about statins? From a distance, the story is completely understandable: statins inhibit...
View ArticleAmgen Will See You In Court – Again
If they ever get around to making movies about drug discovery and development, perhaps someone will take on PCSK9. It has a neat origin in mutated humans, a race to the clinic, big money and big hopes,...
View ArticlePCSK9: Real World Data Arrives, Unfortunately
So, PCSK9. A wonderful story of genetics-based drug discovery, and a huge commercial opportunity. People with loss-of-function PCSK9 genes have very low LDL cholesterol, with no other ill effects, and...
View ArticleWhat PCSK9 Is Telling Us About Drug Discovery
Friday’s news about the real-world effects of PCSK9 drugs continue to reverberate. It’s worth going into the topic again, but from a wider view of genomics-driven medicine, because this is currently...
View ArticleThe Genomics Revolution Shows Up Late, But Shows Up
Robert Plenge has an excellent overview of the PCSK9 story up on his site; I recommend it. His take may sound different from mine at first, but I think we’re actually in agreement on a lot of important...
View ArticleA Clinical Trial Torpedoed By Fraud and Incompetence
Via @AndyBiotech on Twitter, here’s a story on some very troubling developments in offshore clinical trials. That Cardiobrief article is referring to this letter in NEJM, and the subject is the NIH’s...
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Now This Is A Drug That Does Not Work
I’ve already written about how Eli Lilly’s inhibitor of cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) did not work in the clinic. Now that the data from their failed trial have been published in the NEJM,...
View ArticleThoughts on An Antibody Failure
Talking with some drug discovery folks the other day, I said “You know, if you don’t hold your breath when your compound goes into tox testing, you haven’t been doing this stuff long enough”. Well,...
View ArticleTwo Diabetes Drug Mysteries
Here are some data to file under “Drugs do things that we don’t expect”. The SGLT-2 inhibitors are a class of diabetes medications that work by inhibiting the sodium/glucose transporter 2 protein in...
View ArticleHold On, Merck’s CETP Inhibitor Actually Works?
Well, maybe. I have to admit that my first reaction was disbelief. Merck has come out this morning with a statement that its long-running outcomes trial with anacetrapib, their cholesteryl ester...
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AMPK: Time To Think Hard
AMP-activated protein kinase, now that’s an enzyme for you. It sits at the center of a cell’s metabolic switchboard, and if you’re talking about anything to do with the response to levels of fuel like...
View ArticleInhaled Nanoparticles – Good Ones, That Is
Never give up on drug delivery ideas – that’s one of the big points I get out of this paper. The authors, part of a multi-center team from sites in Italy and Germany, have previously shown that calcium...
View ArticleA Run of Contrary Results
From the outside, medical progress looks a lot easier than it really is. Well, I realize that’s true of a lot of things, but it’s especially true in progress against disease, and that’s especially...
View ArticleMetformin and Exercise
I’ve written about metformin quite a few times over the years on the blog, and for several reasons. It is (for starters) obviously a frontline drug for treatment of Type 2 diabetes, a condition that...
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Angiotensin and the Coronavirus
There’s quite a bit of confusion around the ACE proteins and coronavirus infection, and I can see why. The names in this area are pretty confusing, for one thing, and if you’re not familiar with the...
View ArticleCovid-19, Blood Pressure Medication, and Ibuprofen
One of the questions that shows up often in the comments to the various Covid-19 posts here (especially this one) and very often in my own emails is whether people who are taking hypertension...
View ArticleAngiotensin and Coronavirus Infection: The Latest as of April 7
I wrote here the other day on the recent recommendation that people taking either ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors or ARBs (angiotensin receptor blockers) should not alter their treatment...
View ArticleThe Latest Hydroxychloroquine Data, As of April 11
We have new data on hydroxychloroquine therapy to discuss. The numbers will not clear anything up. First off is an abstract from the Marseilles IHU group of Dr. Didier Raoult. It presents 1061 patients...
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