The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has today announced their recommendation to withdraw the marketing authorisations for dextropropoxyphene-containing medicines (including co-proxamol) across the European Union (EU). This recommendation was made after the Committee on Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) concluded that the risks, particularly of potentially fatal overdose, were greater than the medicine’s benefits.
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White House officials said Thursday that biotech drugs (also known as biologics) should only be protected from generics competition for seven years, Reuters reports. “The amount of protection for brand-name companies is a sticking point among lawmakers working to set up a legal pathway for approval of generic forms of biotech drugs.
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The Wall Street Journal reports that drug companies are increasingly using medical science liaisons: “Pharmaceutical companies are barred by the Food and Drug Administration from promoting unapproved drug uses, called off-label use, but they are using employees called ‘medical science liaisons,’ who are often physicians and pharmacists, as a legal way to discuss those uses.
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In the bustling economy of the cell, little bubbles called vesicles serve as container ships, ferrying cargo to and from the port - the cell membrane. Some of these vesicles, called post-Golgi vesicles, export cargo made by the cell’s protein factory. Scientists have long believed that other, similar vesicles handle the reverse function, importing life-supporting nutrients and proteins through an independent process.
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Using a “neurologger” specially designed to record the brain activity of pigeons in flight, researchers reporting online on June 25th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have gained new insight into what goes through the birds’ minds as they fly over familiar terrain. The study is the first to simultaneously record electrical brain activity integrated with large-scale navigational movements of free-flying birds, according to the researchers.
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An unusual and touchingly domestic glimpse into the life of the world’s most famous naturalist, Charles Darwin, will be made public at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition, starting on Tuesday (30th June). While searching for material to include in an exhibition of Victorian Science, Royal Society curators were surprised to find a cache of personal relics of the father of evolution - some of Darwin’s gardening tools, including part of the outdoor cloak that he wore.
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A new Auburn University-designed, high-tech pharmacy in Meridian, Miss., is the first of its kind and is a model facility that could be built in communities across the United States. Auburn pharmacy professors Kenneth Barker and Betsy Flynn led a multidisciplinary team in designing the recently opened facility for Vital Care Inc., which will help pharmacists offer complex medications for in-home use, ones that are normally administered only in hospitals.
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Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have identified a protein that marks the tumor suppressor p53 for destruction, providing a potential new avenue for restoring p53 in cancer cells.
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An enzyme that naturally occurs in the brain helps destroy the mutated protein that is the most common cause of inherited Parkinson’s disease, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found. Their study, using human cells, provides a focus for further research into halting the action of the mutated protein. One of the most famous carriers of the mutation is Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who wrote about it on his blog in 2008.
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Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, came a step closer to understanding how cells close gaps not only during embryonic development but also duringwound healing. Their study, published this week in the journal Cell, uncovers a fundamental misconception in the previous explanation for a developmental process called dorsal closure.
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