Europe

The Food and Drug Administration is taking care of a few approvals and committee meetings ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday week. They include drugs for COPD, a pain drug, and a sublingual film formulation of a well-known drug for erectile dysfunction. Here’s a look.

Biopharma companies name new members of their leadership teams. Who made big moves this week?

BASF AS completed a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial in the U.S., newly published in Nutrients, evaluating the use of high concentrate omega-3 to correct the nutritional deficiency of omega-3 fatty acid in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Several studies have shown that NAFLD patients have lower levels of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)i.

Oxurion NV announced today the appointment of Adrienne Graves, Ph.D., to its board of directors. Dr. Graves will replace Paul Howes, who has been a board member since 2014.

Physicians can possibly use immunotherapy in cancer patients more effectively. More and more voices are in favor of giving this new treatment before the surgeon removes a tumor instead of afterwards. This could have huge benefits, like a better immune response against the tumor. On 22 October, researcher Christian Blank and his colleagues at the Netherlands Cancer Institute presented the results of a new study among melanoma patients at the ESMO conference.

Progress in Q3 2018

Pancreatic cancer is currently rated as the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., and is projected to be the second by 2020. It’s a notoriously difficult cancer to treat and is typically diagnosed so late in the game that it has metastasized throughout the body.

There are plenty of great scientific research stories out this week. Here’s a look at just a few of them.

The mice had been genetically modified to have symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s. They were given a synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for six weeks. In their study, the mice receiving the THC performed as well on a memory test as the healthy mice.

AstraZeneca has spent the last seven years getting hammered by loss of patent protections on older drugs. However, this quarter marked a return to sales growth driven by high demand for its new drugs, especially in the oncology segment.