Researchers at the University of California have been able to successfully create a liquid blood pressure medication that can be absorbed through the skin, without the requisite skin toxicity. The implications for transdermal drug delivery are multiple and profound.
drug discovery
There is an op-ed in today s New York Times written by former Obama administration health guru Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, which supposedly addresses the dire need for new antibiotics which is both wrong and misleading.
Screen Shot 2014-12-23 at 1.46.58 PMNormally, this wouldn t even make the news. A new antibiotic approved. Not only that, but it belongs to a class of antibiotics (called cephalosporins) from the class of 1960s, which is hardly novel. There are about 60 cephalosporins that have been approved since 1964, when cephalothin was launched by Lilly.
By any measure, malaria is one of the most ruthless threats to global human health. It has been estimated that the parasite a protozoan called Plasmodium kills one child per minute in Africa alone. While it used to take the lives of over one-million people each year, mostly sub-Saharan African infants and children, the number has been reduced substantially thanks to modern public-health efforts, to approximately 650,000. But this number is still unacceptable, and twenty-times that number are chronically ill from malaria.
Dr. Josh Bloom on Science 2.0, November 11, 2014
Named after the location of first documented outbreak (Norwalk Ohio in 1968) norovirus, aka the "Stomach Flu," "Winter Vomiting Bug," or the "Cruise Ship Virus" is an evil little demon that spares no one. There are few, if any of us, who haven't experienced its misery; it infects 21 million people annually in the...[Read more].
In the world of drug research, the language can be a little unusual. For example, it is fair to say that easier disease targets, such as HIV, hepatitis C, ulcers and high blood pressure, and certain cancers, have seen advances that have resulted in game changing therapies for those diseases.