Personalized medicine takes a (tiny) step forward
(UPDATED: See below.)
For at least a decade, biotech futurists have been predicting that the genomics revolution will lead to medical treatments tailored to the genetic quirks of individuals. And for at least as long, we’ve all been waiting for evidence that this “personalized medicine” revolution is coming to pass.
On Monday, the field took a baby step forward when the FDA approved Selzentry, a new AIDS drug from Pfizer. Selzentry is unique in a number of ways… Continue Reading
Profectus Bio wins $200K grant for HIV therapies
Baltimore, Md.-based Profectus BioSciences, a biotech developing new strategies to attack HIV, received a $200,000 small-business innovation grant from the National Institutes of Health to improve the effectiveness of anti-HIV antibodies. Last month, the company received a similar $300,000 grant (PDF link), just a few days after the company raised $3 million in a private placement.
Profectus, which was spun out of the Institute for Human Virology in 2005, has so far rased a total of… Continue Reading
Reader feedback: Cheap drugs for poor nations, the art of the drug deal
I’m at work on a longer post that hasn’t yet come together, so I thought I’d pull an old dodge favored by daily newspaper columnists and respond to some reader comments instead. Fortunately for me, both comments left here in the past day or so have been thought-provoking — maybe there’s hope for the Internet after all.
With respect to the tussle over patents and drug pricing in Thailand, Gal Josefsberg wrote:
I’m not sure how they expect… Continue Reading