Tacrine hydrochloride treatment IND: methods for rapid physician and patient enrollment and data retrieval.

A Treatment IND (TIND) is a mechanism available to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States by which promising new drugs can be provided to patients with life-threatening illnesses. In many instances, the illness is life-threatening but of relatively low incidence, making the demand for the new treatment limited. However, if the disease is more prevalent and incidence is increasing, the demand for access to an experimental therapy may be substantially greater. Novel approaches and technologies would help manage recruitment of physicians, enrollment of patients and retrieval and timely analysis of data. Such was the case in the TIND for tacrine hydrochloride (Cognex), a cholinesterase inhibitor which was under development for the treatment of patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). There were an estimated 4 million prevalent cases of AD in the US for which no approved therapeutic option was available at the time this TIND was initiated. We anticipated that there could be a large demand by both physicians and patients to enroll in the TIND. Therefore, to meet this demand, various mechanisms were employed to allow rapid enrollment and drug shipments to the patient. In addition, physicians who participated in the TIND were able to use a telephone touch-tone data entry system for reporting data and ordering new supplies of tacrine for their patients. Serious adverse events were reported directly to trained operators and summarized on a weekly basis for reporting to the FDA. At the time the programme was terminated, nearly 2000 physicians had enrolled to participate in the TIND and nearly 10,000 patients had received tacrine under the programme. The methods employed in this study to collect clinic visit and safety data met both regulatory and good clinical practice guidelines. In summary, a large volume of data was handled rapidly and efficiently in this programme.

[Experimental and clinical studies on BRL 25000 (clavulanic acid-amoxicillin) granules in the pediatric field].

Fundamental and clinical studies have been performed on BRL 25000 (clavulanic acid 1 part-amoxicillin 2 parts) granules in the pediatric field. The antibacterial activities of BRL 25000 and amoxicillin (AMPC) were investigated against clinically isolated and laboratory stocked strains. BRL 25000 was superior to AMPC against strains of E. coli, Salmonella sp. and Klebsiella sp., and similar against Gram-positive cocci. Serum concentrations of AMPC and clavulanic acid (CVA) were measured 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4 and 6 hours after administration of BRL 25000 granules at dose levels of 7.5, 10, 15 and 20 mg/kg. At 7.5 mg/kg peak level of AMPC of 2.69 micrograms/ml was achieved about 2 hours after dosing with a biological half-life of 1.64 hours; corresponding value for CVA was 0.53 micrograms/ml at 1 hour with a T 1/2 of 1.46 hours. At 10 mg/kg, AMPC also peaked after 2 hours (3.82 micrograms/ml) and the T 1/2 was 1.63 hours, whilst for CVA the value was 0.56 micrograms/ml with a T 1/2 of 1.24 hours. Value for AMPC at 15 mg/kg was 5.18 micrograms/ml at 1 hour post dose with a T 1/2 of 1.48 hours, and for CVA 4.01 micrograms/ml at 1 hour with a T 1/2 of 0.89 hour. At the highest dose of 20 mg/kg, AMPC level reached 4.21 micrograms/ml after 2 hours with a T 1/2 of 2.39 hours, and the CVA peak was 1.64 micrograms/ml at 1 hour with a T 1/2 of 1.01 hours. The 6 hours urinary recovery of AMPC and CVA following administration of the BRL 25000 granules ranged from 38-64% and 2-33%, respectively. In the clinical studies, the BRL 25000 granules are administered to 15 cases with pediatric infections and the clinical response was excellent or good in all cases treated (100%). Bacteriological investigation was performed on 13 strains from 12 cases and all strains were eradicated (100%). Regarding side effects, elevation of eosinophil was observed in 1 case and vomiting in 3 cases.