The sun is shining on the nation’s medicine chest this morning. And so as we reach for our first cup of stimulation, please join us in catching up on events. We hope your days goes well - meetings, deadlines and assorted pressures aside…
Pfizer Drops NicOx Glaucoma Drug (Yahoo/Reuters)
Long-Term Ibuprofen Use Cuts Alzheimer’s Risk (Reuters)
Glaxo Creates [...]

Pharma won a “stunning victory” over the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, which a UK Court of Appeal ruled had acted unfairly in refusing to allow Pfizer and Eisai full access to a computer model that was used to assess cost-effectiveness of their Aricept drug for Alzheimer’s, The Times of London [...]

The drugmakers say that a mid-stage clinical trial of an Alzheimer’s vaccine has been suspended while they look into a potentially serious side effect suffered by one patient in the study, Reuters reports. Dosing in the study of the experimental vaccine, ACC-001, was halted after the patient was hospitalized with skin lesions from what the [...]

An Alzheimer’s disease research paper published last September in Archives of Neurology failed to disclose the financial ties that one co-author had to Elan and Wyeth as a paid consultant to the drugmakers, TheStreet.com reports.
The paper describes the use of a new test - the neuropsychological test battery (NTB) - to measure memory and mental [...]

As many as 60 percent of Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes are given antipsychotics - both older neuroleptics and atypicals - to control behavior. But a study has found that the older meds provided no benefit for patients with mild behavioural problems and were associated with a marked deterioration in verbal skills. The research focused [...]

What would you think if the two drugmakers decided to use a new and unproven endpoint to measure the memory and mental status in patients in a Phase III trial of their closely watched, experimental Alzheimer’s treatment? Might Wyeth and Elan be searching for an easier route to win FDA approval for their medication, known [...]

Bob traveled to Washington DC yesterday to use a Senate hearing as a platform to implore government action on Alzheimer’s, a disease on which the drugmaker has spent about $450 million during the past five years. And the Wyeth ceo argues Alzheimer’s requires the same kind of national response that was given to AIDS starting [...]

A new oral vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease is proving safe and effective for the mouse in your house. Now, small-scale clinical trials in humans may start later this year, says Takeshi Tabira, who runs the National Institute for Longevity Sciences in Aichi, central Japan.
“We hope the Phase I trials go well,” he says. “Animals are [...]