Greetings from Stockholm Sweden
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I haven't been posting much lately because I am in Stockholm at a computational biology meeting where I am reviewing resumes and offering career guidance to PhD students and postdoctoral fellows.
For those of you who have never considered visiting Stockholm, I highly recommend that you do. It is a stunning city located on an archipelago of 14 different islands. The Swedes are hospitable, the food is great and it starts getting dark around 11:00 pm.
I will be back in the US after July 4.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!
From time to time, I come across some interesting facts and statistics that are worth noting. This month’s issue of Pharmaceutical Technology Europe offered several things that were blog-worthy. Here they are: 
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I was in the gym the other day, trying to regain my “girlish figure,” and I happened to see Brooke Shields in television ad hawking Latisse, the new eye lash-enhancing prescription medication from Allegan. For those women (or men for that matter) who haven’t heard, Latisse was recently approved for hypotrichosis of the eye lashes. Hypotrichosis is medically-defined as a reduced amount of hair, and in this case, it refers to eyelashes. Who knew that reduced eyelash hair was a burgeoning unmet medical need? Anyway, back to Brooke.
Carl Icahn, former corporate raider, hedge fund owner and activist investor, is still trying to exert his influence at Biogen/IDEC a biotechnology company in which he owns 5.6 percent of its outstanding shares of stock. 
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is trying to regain sole marketing rights to Remicade, its lucrative anti-TNF treatment for arthritis and psoriasis, because Schering Plough (SGP)—which has most of the marketing rights to the drug outside of the US—is being acquired by Merck. JNJ is seeking arbitration to determine whether or not Centocor, its subsidiary that manufactures Remicade and Simponi, can terminate a marketing agreement for the two drugs—based on terms stipulated in the original contract —if there is a “change of control” at SGP..jpg)
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One day after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Dysport, a new product that will compete with Botox, the 
Vincent Racaniello, an intrepid virologist and 
By now everybody has heard that there is a Swine Flu epidemic that started in Mexico and may morph into a worldwide pandemic. The media's coverage has been mind numbing and overwhelming. For those of you who want the real skinny on the outbreak, I recommend that you read a 
The FDA has approved Johnson and Johnson’s Simponi (golimumab), a new treatment for adults with moderate-to-severe 
The long sought after cow genome has been sequenced. Heralded as a milestone in animal genetics, unraveling the cow genome will provide scientists with “tantalizing clues to explain the essence of bovinity.” Two papers describing the results of the project will appear in today's issue of the journal.jpg)
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I just returned from a weekend of teaching regulatory affairs to biotechnology students at Georgetown University where I tried to convince them that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is fundamentally sound despite its near demise during the Bush administration. Even before the Bush-induced wreckage, the agency was chronically understaffed, under funded and had serious leadership and morale problems. This, coupled with two nationwide Salmonella outbreaks in the past year, several highly publicized drug recalls, and steadily declining drug approval rates has prompted its critics to propose that FDA be split into two separate agencies—one that oversees the drug industry and another that would have responsibility for cosmetic and food safety. For those of you who may not know, FDA became responsible for oversight and regulation of the food and drug industries, in addition to the drugs, after passage of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1938..jpg)
A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (my alma mater) genetically engineered a strain of Streptomyces platensis to 
Anybody who has started a biotechnology company will tell you that it is a labor intensive, time consuming and daunting task. After the patents are filed and the business plan is finished, the next step in the process is determining whether or not somebody is willing or crazy enough to invest in your fledgling company.
Allergan, the drug maker that brought us Botox is at it again! The company has a new .gif)
Each year, after the holiday season has ended, there is a spate of articles and posts related to weight lost. I typically.jpg)
Sometimes reality is stranger then fiction. The Pharmalot blog reported today that US Senator 
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A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel Thursday rejected a proposed antibiotic by Arpida Ltd. (ARPN.EB) to treat serious skin infections, a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said. The rejection was expected because results from Phase III clinical trials showed that patients taking iclaprim (a trimethoprim-like antibiotic) had lower cure rates than Pfizer's 
Researchers at the 
An article in today’s New York Times
I finally started using Twitter a couple of months ago and I think it is pretty cool. That said, I am still a neophyte and I have yet to master the intricacies and nuances of Twitter speak (why are tweets not called twits?—it was a rhetorical question).(2).jpg)
Optimer, a San-Diego, CA-based biopharmaceutical company, reported 
According to a recent analysis conducted by 
e you, like me, wondering how we got into the economic predicament that we are currently in? Do you know what a mortgage-backed security is? For that matter, do you understand the ins and outs of the mortgage and loan business? 
Each year the World Bank compiles a report that assesses the world’s friendliest business climates for small companies. The top three companies on this year’s list, Singapore, New Zealand and the US have been there four years in a row. The real shocker this year was that several previously lagging nations moved up on the list, mostly because of business-friendly reforms. This year’s most improved nation is Azerbaijan, which moved up 64 spots to a overall ranking of 33rd because it reduced the time required to start a new business from 122 to 16 days, reforming its civil code and creating an online tax filing system.
year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry for their pioneering work on the Green Florescent Protein (GFP). GFP revolutionized the fields of molecular biology and cell biology and led to a greater understanding of the roles of proteins in cell, physiology, development and molecular trafficking..jpg)
The New York Times reported today that the Wuhan Zoo in Central China has taken to feeding its two 3-year-old pandas homemade chicken soup to reduce stress and provide them with a “nutritional boost.” Xiwang and Weiwei needed a boost after China’s weeklong National Day celebration. As many as 30,000 visitors swarmed the zoo this past Wednesday and over 1000 people packed into panda enclosure to see them. This caused the pandas to pace restlessly and zoo officials decided that it would be good to give them some chicken soup because they were “fatigued and had a bit of a shock.” Their normal diet consists mainly of bamboo, milk and buns..jpg)
As reported yesterday by the 
As an undergraduate at Cornell, I took a course called "Bee Keeping" mostly because it had the reputation of being a “gut” course (i.e., easy to ace) and I had a passing interest in entomological microbiology. To this day, I will tell you that it is one of the best courses that I have taken in my academic career. It was taught by a practicing bee keeper who maintained hives in Florida during the winter and in Ithaca during the summer (not surprisingly the course was taught in the Spring semester so that his bees could pollinate the local crops).
According to a 
First, King Pharmaceuticals posted a non-branded high blood pressure video on YouTube in early 2007. Next, Novartis added a 60-second commercial (as part of its .jpg)
snack on a piece of chocolate from time to time? Because of the growing incidence of tropical diseases, pests and global climate change, Mars, the giant candy maker (M&Ms, Snickers), 
Have you ever felt like mixing up a few batches of DNA in your spare time? Well, for those of you who sometimes get the urge I found an 
s important in detecting sarcasm may open the door for new diagnostic tools in detecting mental illness, according to 
I want to thank Emily who sent me the following comment about red yeast rice.
that they reached a settlement in the dispute over the mark. Not surprisingly, a settlement was reached shortly after a judge threw out much of J &J’s trademark claim against the Red Cross. Of course, as it typically in these cases, the terms of the settlement were not disclosed..jpg)
Somebody once said “Jews know two things—suffering and where to find good Chinese food”. Since I am Jewish, it is not surprising that I have experienced a fair amount of suffering throughout my life and, wherever I go, I seem to know where to find “good” Chinese food. That said, my interest was piqued when I found a post in Yahoo Science News entitled “Study finds Chinese food good for your heart”. Given my lifelong fondness and penchant for Chinese cuisine, I thought that all of that eating that I had done had finally paid off. Unfortunately, after reading the subtitle of the article; “Chinese red yeast rice reduces repeat heart attacks/mortality rates” I realized that my joy and optimism were somewhat premature. 
eak is identified federal and local health officials in both states have recommended that infants, the elderly and anyone with an impaired immune system avoid eating Roma and red round tomatoes that are not grown at home or sold attached to the vine.” So far, 40 confirmed cases, with patients ranging in age from 3 to 82, have been reported in New Mexico and Texas since April. To date, 17 people have been hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported.
Karen Ventii
I apparently made a few errors in the post about the recent Salmonella food poisoning outbreak at PU (pun intended). I want to thank the anonymous member of the Princeton Graduating Class of ’09 for pointing out the inconsistencies and errors in the post. First, the so-called “dining clubs” are actually called eating clubs. Second, fraternities and sororities are allowed at PU and I hear that they are alive and well. Finally, I inadvertently noted that the University has severed contracts with several of its produce suppliers which may have been the putative source(s) of the outbreak. In fact, the University didn’t cancel contracts but only temporarily closed a few of the eating stations at the Frist Campus Center. My local newspaper reported that contracts where severed–I guess you truly can’t believe everything that you read!
It looks as though Enzon Pharmaceuticals, the first company to successfully commercialize protein PEGylation, finally buckled under the pressure exerted by Carl Icahn, one of its major shareholders. As I mentioned in a .jpg)
The European commission is expected to grant marketing approval for the product in the EU. The product, developed by Israel-based Teva, a global generics manufacturer, will be sold under the brand name TevaGrastim. The company is seeking EU approval for TevaGrastim a as treatment of chemotherapy-induced neutropenia. .jpg)
Yes, even the Ivy League isn’t immune to food poisoning outbreaks from time-to-time. There are currently 10 confirmed cases of .jpg)
About five years ago, a friend of mine and I had an idea to form a non-profit dedicated to providing consumers with information regarding the safety of marketed pharmaceutical and biotechnology medicines. At the time, we observed that consumers were repeatedly being misinformed about the safety and efficacy of many products, most notably follow-on biologics aka biogenerics. Unfortunately, we could not garner enough interest or financial support to get the organization off the ground. I guess that we had a good idea, but, as usual, were a little ahead of our time. A new organization called 
Has it really been 10 years since the launch of Viagra, the first drug that was approved to treat erectile dysfunction (ED)? Why it seems like just yesterday. For those of you who don’t know, Pfizer was originally developing Viagra as a treatment for cardiovascular disease (it increases blood flow). However, members of the Viagra clinical development teams quickly observed Viagra’s unmistakable erectogenic potential and understood the impact that it would have on male sexual function for years to come. 
Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot reported today that Health Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the FDA has beaten the 
Until recently, Amgen dominated the biotechnology industry and was anointed the world's largest biotechnology company. However, Amgen recently lost its number 1 ranking to Genentech. Over the past year or so, Amgen, which is now ranked number 2, has been acting a lot like Avis, the car rental company , which in the 1970s adopted the slogan “Avis: We Try Harder” when it was number 2 to Hertz in the car rental rankings. Like Avis, which never overtook Hertz to claim the number 1 spot, Amgen’s efforts to regain its number 1 ranking are failing.
ephalosporin antibiotics.
As you all know, the brackets for this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament were revealed Sunday evening. As I have done for the past 20 years, I waited until this morning to find a detailed, printed version of the brackets to use for my office pool. That said, I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see that the sports editor of the NY Times decided to arrange the teams that did (and didn’t) make the tournament in a “.jpg)
According to a .jpg)
Who can resist those adorable black and white Giant Pandas? Late last week, the International Giant Panda Genome Project was launched by Beijing Genomic Institute-Shenzhen, China. The goal of this project is to finish the sequencing and assembling of the draft sequence within six months. 
Where have the folks at FDA been hiding for the past decade? I thought that by now everybody had heard about multi-drug resistant bacteria and the need for new antibiotics. Why, I bet that even President Bush knows this –hmmmm– well, okay– but you get my point!
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The US Food and Drug Administration said Monday
Due to some technical problems, articles posted after February 4th, 2008 are currently unavailable. So, if you were looking for them, I apologize. But, the good news is that the IT guys over at Lexblog, the company that built and hosts biojobblog, told me they all should be back by tomorrow AM.
The Bush administration's proposed 2009 fiscal year budget for the FDA.jpg)
Over the past few years, I have heard rumors that artificial sweeteners like saccharine, aspartame and sucralose actually cause people to gain rather than lose weight. I summarily dismissed these stories because they did not make sense to me nor did I think that they had any scientific merit–
For the past 30 years or so, the Unites States government has been looking for any reason what so ever to argue against the legalization of marijuana. This is despite a growing body of evidence that marijuana use provides documented, palliative and therapeutic benefits to people who suffer from serious illness like glaucoma, chronic pain and the side effects of cancer chemotherapy. Although marijuana use for medicinal purposes is illegal at the federal level, some Western States, most notably California, have legalized its use —it can now be purchased by people who have valid prescriptions from specially-designed .
Last December, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked GlaxoSmithKline for additional information related to its cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix. The company has yet to reply to unspecified queries in the FDA's "complete response letter" that it received last December. 
Two companies, Theravance and Targanta, have developed two new glycopeptide antibiotics, similar to 
Despite putting itself up for sale and finding no buyers, Carl Icahn still believes that Biogen is an attractive buyout opportunity for some unsuspecting pharma company. In fact, it was Carl who forced Biogen to put itself up for sale last fall (to avert a nasty proxy fight that he threatened). Carl, who owns 4.2 % of the company, believed that Biogen was underperforming and its stock price was too low.
It was only a matter of time. On Thursday, a lawsuit seeking class-action certification was filed against Merck and Schering-Plough in federal court in Seattle, alleging the companies violated state consumer protection laws arising from the sale and marketing of Zetia and Vytorin. The suit claims the companies have known since 2006 that the cholesterol-lowering drugs, Zetia and Vytorin (which is a combination of Zetia and Zocor), were no more effective than a generic version of Zocor in blocking arterial plaques that can cause heart attack and stroke, as the drug makers led consumers to believe..jpg)
day, my good friend Pete learned that he had prostate cancer. His prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels were slightly elevated over the past few years (they were in a gray zone that made a definitive diagnosis difficult without doing a biopsy). After being urged by his wife and urologist, he had the biopsy performed and, unfortunately, a diagnosis of prostate cancer was made. Hopefully, his cancer is localized to the prostate and will be easily treated via conventional therapies. As many of you may know, prostate cancer is easily treat and the cure rates high if it is detected early.
The Danish drug maker Novo Nordisk announced today.jpg)
Swiss drug maker Novartis on Thursday
It goes without saying that Amgen has had a run of bad luck over the past six months. But, just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse, two former Amgen sales representatives are suing the company, alleging it pushed its sales force to search doctor's confidential medical records for potential patients to boost sales of its blockbuster drug .jpg)
Despite the Martha Stewart-Sam Waksal insider trading scandal in 2001, ImClone, the company founded by Waksal in 1984, is doing well and managed to sell $1.1 billion of its anti-cancer drug .jpg)
Can anything else go wrong at Amgen? 
t to discuss scientific considerations for safety testing for cellular therapy products derived from human embryonic stem cells. , the committee will meet to discuss updates on the following topics: (1) Research management related to the September 29, 2005, review of research programs of the Office of Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research; (2) 's Somatic Cell Therapy Letter; and (3) recently released FDA guidance documents." 
Once again I have to tip my hat to Ed Silverman over at .jpg)
As the debate continues to rage in the US about how to regulate biogeneric drugs, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has given the 
I am sure that most of you have heard by now that it takes about $1.0 billion to shepherd a new drug from discovery through commercialization. It is a nice round number but methinks that “something is rotten in pharma land”. The massive pharma layoffs in 2007 were justified because of nearing patent expiry, encroachment by generic manufacturers, over zealous FDA scrutiny and failing stock prices. To that end, how do you explain this little tidbit about Wyeth that my colleague Ed Silverman at Pharmalot reported on late last week? 
The New York Times reported today.jpg)
Several lawyers representing people who sued Merck over Vioxx
Until yesterday, I had never been admitted to a hospital via emergency services. I ended up in a hospital \emergency room because earlier in the week I had this sharp pain in my lower right abdomen and it bothered me enough to seek professional help. After a visit to my doctor and a CAT scan at my local hospital, I was asked to walk my films around the corner to the emergency room where I would be met by a surgeon because I had a perforated appendix–my worst fears had come true. Now, here is where it got interesting from a medical and microbiological standpoint. .jpg)
Shares of Amgen had their steepest decline in seven months on Friday after the company reported that it may have to revise the safety information for its largest product Aranesp. Amgen shares fell $3.05 or 5.3 percent to $52.10 in regular trading.
The Wall Street Journal Online published an .jpg)
Sinus infections are diagnosed in about 31 million Americans each year and are among the most common reasons for doctor visits. The infections affect the air spaces (sinuses) around the nose and in the lower forehead. Inflammation and excess mucous can cause nose congestion, headaches and eye and face pain. Causes include bacteria, viruses, fungal infections and allergies. 