Pharma News

The CSIR-Central Drugs Research Institute (CDRI) will inform Prime Minister Narendra Modi about three new drugs being developed by the Institute during its visit to the campus. Modi is also president of the Scientific and Industrial Research Council (CSIR) and this will be his first visit to any of his laboratories in the country. The institute is also organizing an exhibition to highlight the CDRI's contribution to the discovery and development of PM medications.

The health ministry is ready to deploy "Mission Parivar Vikas" in these districts to improve access to family planning services, raise awareness and make family planning options available. To achieve the goal of faster population control, the government has decided to accelerate family planning measures by identifying 146 districts where the total fertility rate (TFR, the number of children born per woman) is more than three, 28% of the population.

In great relief for foreign tourists visiting India for medical and wellness travel, the government has decided to standardize the cost of such services in the country through a centralized web portal "The growth of medical tourism and wellness in the country has been between 23 and 25 percent in the country and there is a lot of potential here, so we have decided to standardize services in this sector," Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma said.

Bhutan and the Maldives have eliminated measles, a highly infectious disease that is a major child killer worldwide. The two countries have become the first in the WHO South-East Asia region to be verified for having interrupted the endemic transmission of the measles virus, before the regional target of 2020.

The Intensified Diarrhea Control Fortnight (IDCF) has been launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in order to intensify efforts to reduce child mortality from diarrhea. The Ministry has made it a national priority to bring health outcomes among children to an equitable level with the rest of the world. Through this initiative, the Ministry will mobilize health workers, state governments and other stakeholders to prioritize investment in controlling diarrhea, one of the most common childhood diseases. Its goal is to create mass awareness about the most effective and low-cost diarrhea treatment, a combination of oral rehydration salt solution (ORS) and zinc tablets.

LEO Pharma announced that the first patients have been dosed in a phase 3 clinical study of tralokinumab. Tralokinumab is an investigational human monoclonal antibody that specifically targets the cytokine IL-131, which plays an important role in the development of moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis2. Tralokinumab is not currently licensed in any indication.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Janssen) announced results from the Phase 2b Topaz Trial which demonstrated that treatment with pimodivir (JNJ-63623872) significantly decreased viral load over seven days versus placebo, in adult patients with acute, uncomplicated seasonal influenza A. Patients treated with pimodivir and oseltamivir (OST) also demonstrated a significantly lower viral load compared with those who received pimodivir alone at the same dose. 

Aurobindo Pharma Limited is pleased to announce that the company has received final approval from the US Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) to manufacture Sevelamer Carbonate oral suspension, 0.8 gm and 2.4 gm. Sevelamer Carbonate oral suspension, a therapeutic equivalent generic version of Genzyme's Renvela® oral suspension. The product is being launched immediately.

Sex-specific cardiovascular drug dosages are needed to reduce adverse reactions in women, according to a position paper from the European Society of Cardiology published in the June issue of European Heart Journal - Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.

Cells in nearly any part of the body can become cancerous and transform into tumors. Some, like skin cancer, are relatively accessible to treatment via surgery or radiation, which minimizes damage to healthy cells; others, like pancreatic cancer, are deep in the body and can only be reached by flooding the bloodstream with cell-killing chemotherapies that, ideally, shrink tumors by accumulating in their ill-formed blood and lymph vessels in higher amounts than in vessels of healthy tissues. To improve the low efficacy and toxic side effects of chemotherapies that rely on this passive accumulation, a team of researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Boston Children's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School has developed a new drug delivery platform that uses safe, low-energy ultrasound waves to trigger the dispersal of chemotherapy-containing sustained-release nanoparticles precisely at tumor sites, resulting in a two-fold increase in targeting efficacy and a dramatic reduction in both tumor size and drug-related toxicity in mouse models of breast cancer.