Pharmalot… Pharmalittle… Good Morning
1 CommentBy Ed Silverman // August 30th, 2010 // 7:02 am
Good morning, everyone. Nice to see you again. Hope your weekend was relaxing and refreshing. Now, of course, the routine returns with all those meetings and deadlines. It may be that time of year when many take a vacation break, but the world, of course, continues to spin. So grab a cup of stimulation and join us as we peruse some key events. Have a great day…
Sanofi Experimental MS Pill Reduces Relapses (Bloomberg News)
Plavix Gains From Rival Studies (The Wall Street Journal)
FDA To Alter Rules On Cancer Drug Cocktails (Bloomberg News)
Merck Pays For Wastewater Improvements (The Reporter)
Greg Pawelski
Cancer Drug Cocktails Are Next?
Cocktails have become standard treatment in many oncological protocols: concoctions of two or more powerful cytotoxic agents which supposedly will attack the tumor in different ways. The ability of various agents to kill tumor and/or microvascular cells (anti-angiogenesis) in the same tumor specimen is highly variable among the different agents. There are so many agents out there now, doctors have a confusing array of choices. They don’t know how to mix them together in the right order.
Data show conclusively that patients benefit both in terms of response and survival from drugs and drug combinations found to be ‘active’ in functional profiling assays even after treatment failure with several other drugs, many of which are in the same class, and even with combinations of drugs found to have low or no activity as single agents, but which are found in the assay to produce a synergistic and not merely an additive anti-tumor effect.
Source: Weisenthal Cancer Group, Huntington Beach, CA and Departments of Clinical Pharmacology and Oncology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. Current Status of Cell Culture Drug Resistance Testing May, 2002.