Innovation in Pharmaceutical Assistance

Abstract Innovation is the driving force that is able to create and transform products, processes, and organization in the health system. Innovation in the field of pharmaceutical assistance covers a wide spectrum of aspects, from drug discovery to pharmaceutical care, contributing to the improvement in treatments through novel drugs or methods. This work will present the major characteristics of innovation with special emphasis on aspects pertaining to pharmaceutical assistance. The types and models of innovation, as well as the interaction between academia and industry, will be presented with examples of successful products and methods. In addition, the challenges and perspectives for innovation in pharmaceutical assistance will be discussed with a focus on drug discovery.

Fostemsavir, a Drug with Novel Mechanism for the Treatment of HIV-1 Infection

HIV is a global problem with increased mortality and morbidity. The highly active antiretroviral therapy is effective in reducing the HIV RNA and improving the immune response. The drugs in the current regimen have certain disadvantages such as adverse effects, drug intolerance, and drug resistance. Since there is a demand for identifying the drugs with new mechanism of action, the compounds which target the viral gp120 receptor were screened and the most suitable drug among them was identified. In a Phase II and Phase III trial, the drug BMS-663068 fostemsavir was found to be efficacious in reducing the viral RNA levels. The drug is a prodrug that gets converted into metabolite temsavir BMS-626529. The preferred dose is 600 mg orally 12 hourly in patients who had undergone many treatment schedules with multidrug-resistant infection and those who cannot tolerate the drug regimen due to resistance and safety issues. The drug is metabolized by CYP3A4 and has drug interactions with CYP3A4 inducers and inhibitors. This review mainly comprises the mechanism of action, clinical trials, pharmacological properties, and adverse effects of the drug fostemsavir.

Progress of targeted therapy for multiple myeloma / 白血病·淋巴瘤

With the wide clinical application of proteasome inhibitors (PI), immunomodulary drugs (IMiD) and autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT), the prognosis of multiple myeloma (MM) patients has been dramatically improved. However, MM is still an incurable disease, becoming relapse or disease progression finally. Therefore, the development of new drugs with varying mechanisms and the improvement of treatment regimens can help to eradicate the tumor clone and deepen the degree of disease remission. Although most new agents are in different stages of clinical trials, the emerging development of novel agents abroad currently has made MM patients obtain deeper and more enduring remission according to the early experimental data, adding the good safety and efficacy of the new drugs, which could bring the promising clinical application. Varieties of novel drugs combined with PI or IMiD could provide new treatment regimens for MM. This paper reviews the recent progress of the targeted novel drugs of MM.

Development of new targeted drugs for pulmonary arterial hypertension / 国际药学研究杂志

Pulmonary arterial hypertension(PAH)is a rare disease characterized by progressive elevation of pulmonary vascular resistance that leads to right heart failure and even death. The prognosis of PAH is poor. Before 1990, the era of conventional therapy, patients with PAH were mainly treated with general supportive therapy and calcium channel blockers (CCB). Since 1990, with the coming of the era of new drugs, the advent of compounds targeted at three pathways (prostanoids, endothelin receptor antagonists, and phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors) has improved the clinical symptoms, exercise capacity, and even survival of patients with PAH. In recent years, there have been great research advances in the pathogenesis of PAH, and now more novel drugs are being investigated in clinical trials, which will lead to a burst in the treatment of PAH.

Development of therapeutic biologics from 1984 to 2014 / 中国药理学通报

This article is to analyse the development of therapeu-tic biologics from 1984 to 2014. Data were obtained from the Drugs @ FDA, PubMed, Embase. com and ClinicalTrail. Gov. Descriptive analyses were used to classify therapeutic biologics by level of innovation,therapeutic category and the chemical na-ture of the drugs. The results showed that from 1996 the thera-peutic biologics entered the fast development period, especially from 2001 to 2005. The 125 therapeutic biologics focus on the treatment of tumor, immune system disease, endocrine and met-abolic diseases, blood system diseases, skeletal muscle system diseases. Antibody has become the dominant of therapeutic bio-logics. Antibody is widely used in the treatment of cancer, di-gestive diseases, immune diseases, respiratory diseases, urinary diseases, skeletal muscle diseases, etc.