Idrugs
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The basis for this meeting ras the fact that many neurological and psychiatric disorders are accompanied by neuronal loss, either acutely or chronically. Furthermore, many of the underlying mechanisms of neural tissue damage are similar across a wide variety of neurodegenerative conditions, including stroke, central nervous system damage secondary to cardiac surgery,epilepsy, traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and even some psychiatric diseases. Despite a large number of animal studies with promising neuroprotective agents, no successful strategy for neuroprotection from any of these conditions has been successfully demonstrated. The aim of the meeting was to review the current status of neuroprotection and provide new ideas on how to get further in research, preclinical and clinical study designs, and perhaps to generate 'out of the box' ideas for future progress by bringing together experts from different fields of neuroprotection.
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The European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) annual congress provided an opportunity for basic scientists and clinicians to share recent findings. In addition to the numerous free communications, several sessions by established speakers were dedicated to state-of-the-art tutorials. ⋯ It is evident that the benefits of several new compounds observed experimentally need to be confirmed in the clinic. The ESICM congress is a unique opportunity to implement and promote collaborations between European basic scientists and clinicians.
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Elan Pharmaceuticals (formerly Neurex) is developing ziconotide, a neuron-specific N-type calcium channel blocker, for the potential treatment of severe pain and ischemia. A US NDA for the use of the compound in intractable pain is under review [351606,357600] and phase III trials for ischemia are ongoing [261455,292579]. Elan received an approvable letter from the FDA for pain in June 2000, and by October 2000, was responding to questions raised by the FDA in the letter [372580,386279]. In December 2000, DRAXIS filed an NDS for ziconotide with the Therapeutic Products Programme of Health Canada [393773]. The drug has Priority Review status in Canada [387218]. PAIN: In pivotal studies, ziconotide showed a significant reduction in pain compared to placebo. In the two trials, completed by December 1999, more than 700 patients received the drug for the treatment of intractable pain intrathecally. This included patients who had failed morphine therapy, or who had become intolerant of therapy due to side-effects. The drug was safe and well tolerated over periods as long as 3 years [351606]. ⋯ Elan and Pfizer (formerly Warner-Lambert) are also developing ziconotide for the treatment of ischemia associated with head trauma and stroke [292579]. In September 1997, Neurex and Warner-Lambert restarted a pivotal phase III head trauma study with no changes in the study design. In July 1997, patient enrollment had been halted pending analysis of clinical data from earlier studies to determine the relative risk/benefits of administering ziconotide with the current protocol [261455]. By April 1999, Parke-Davis (now Pfizer) was also working on the development of nonpeptide analogs of ziconotide, with the aim of developing an orally available agent for the treatment of chronic pain [325613,324954]. In July 2000, Merrill Lynch predicted FDA approval and launch in the third or fourth quarter of 2000 [375966], but in January 2001, the prediction of approval was revised to be in 2001 [395423].
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The 35th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), held at the Georgia World Congress Center, was attended by 20,260 cancer clinicians, academics and research and pharmaceutical industry scientists. The meeting program consisted of a varied series of poster and poster discussion sessions, education sessions, oral abstract presentations, plenary sessions, 'meet the professor' sessions, special lectures and integrated symposia. Some of the main 'hot topics' included gene therapy, immunotherapy, biological therapy (including vaccines and antibodies), prostate cancer, signal transduction inhibitors, anti-angiogenesis agents and several novel therapies and approaches.