Scientists test 5,000 combinations of 100 existing cancer drugs to find more effective treatments
Scientists in the United States have tested all possible pairings of the 100 cancer drugs approved for use in patients in order to discover whether there are any combinations not tried previously that are effective in certain cancers.
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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2012 to Robert J. Lefkowitz Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA and Brian K. Kobilka Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors.
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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.
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First-ever treatment for rare childhood aging disease shows improvement in all trial participants
Results of the first-ever clinical drug trial for children with Progeria, a rare, fatal "rapid-aging" disease, demonstrate the efficacy of a farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), a drug originally developed to treat cancer. The clinical trial results, completed only six years after scientists identified the cause of Progeria, included significant improvements in weight gain, bone structure and, most importantly, the cardiovascular system,
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Ten pharmaceutical companies unite to accelerate development of new medicines
Ten leading biopharmaceutical companies have formed a non-profit organization to accelerate the development of new medicines. Abbott, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Genentech a member of the Roche Group, and Sanofi launched TransCelerate BioPharma Inc.
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Canada needs national approach to protect against drug shortages
Canada needs a national approach to managing its supply of pharmaceutical drugs, starting with a mandatory reporting system for drug shortages, argues an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and CPJ (Canadian Pharmacists Journal).
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World Health Assembly endorses new plan to increase global access to vaccines
Ministers of Health from 194 countries at the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly endorsed a landmark Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a roadmap to prevent millions of deaths by 2020 through more equitable access to existing vaccines for people in all communities.
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