Merck trumpets a global research initiative to speed cancer drugs

Merck (NYSE: MRK) has pieced together an international network of cancer research centers that will collaborate with the Big Pharma company on new and better ways to speed the development of cancer drugs and vaccines. In trumpeting the move, Merck cited a recent IOM study which concluded that half of all cancer trials were scuttled due to bureaucracy, bad procedures and poor coordination-hurdles that could be overcome through better coordination and collaboration. "By partnering at an...

GSK tries an open-source strategy for drug development

For years now, consumer advocates have blistered Big Pharma companies with ongoing criticism of the secretive nature of their drug development work. Now GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) is trying a whole new approach, creating a unique open-source development program that will offer up 13,500 chemical compounds that have the potential to throttle the parasites that cause malaria. Three Web sites will host the treasure trove of information, according to an in-depth feature from the Wall Street...

Bill Gates bets $10M on the future of drug development software

It may amount to only spare change for Bill Gates, but the billionaire's $10 million investment in a Portland-based drug development software outfit could give him a strategic position in the quest to use powerful computers and state-of-the-art software to reengineer the development of pharmaceuticals. Gates told the Wall Street Journal that he has sunk his money into Schrodinger, a company with a staff of 140 and a mission to create software that can be used to simulate the lab work that...

Researchers revisit pulmonary arterial hypertension survival

Setting out to determine the survival of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), researchers at the University of Chicago Medical Center and their colleagues also discovered that an equation used for more than 20 years to predict survival is outdated.read...