I have the lead news story in Nature Medicine this month, on how medical regulators are joining forces to keep up with their duties [html] [pdf]: Regulatory authorities such as the US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency face continual criticism for their plodding pace of drug approval decisions. In 2009, the last [...]
Thirty years ago this month, scientists first reported the existence of AIDS, and in the intervening decades researchers have focused steady efforts on prevention, long-term treatments such as antiretroviral drugs, and patient care. What has fallen in and out of fashion during that time is seeking a ‘cure’ for HIV. That changed when scientists reported [...]
MADRID — In Spain, the government’s overall spending on research is set to wither by about 8% this year, according to an analysis released last fall by the Confederation of Spanish Scientific Societies. Given the climate of budget cuts, it’s perhaps no surprise that scientists there are turning to the public for funding. Historically, Spain [...]
Portuguese businessman António Champalimaud surprised his family when his will, opened after his 2004 death, revealed that he was bequeathing €500 million ($690 million), about a quarter of his estate, to establish a foundation for applied biomedical research. He also surprised law professor and one-time Portuguese Health Minister Leonor Beleza, whom he named to lead [...]
The EU’s €50.5 billion ($69.4 billion) research framework is the biggest such fund in the world. But it is not known for being nimble, and it is underused by European businesses. Now, as the seven-year program approaches its half-time review, a change in the political lineup could lead to shifts in funding priorities that favor [...]
Britain’s historically strong role in clinical trials seems to be diminishing. Slow returns on drug investment and poor relations between industry and the UK National Health Service (NHS) have been cited as two reasons for this decline.
The scientist fired from the British government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) last year has launched a privately funded scientific committee to advise the public on the risks of drug use. David Nutt, a psychopharmacologist from Imperial College in London, was dropped from the ACMD in October after his remarks contradicting the [...]
This past July, the European Commission released estimates that if generic drugs were to enter markets immediately after patents expire—instead of the present average of seven months later—EU patients and national health services might save €3 billion ($4.5 billion) annually. But regulators acknowledge that costly and time-consuming patent disputes, and possible anticompetitive practices in the [...]
Last month, DNA sequencing in the UK got a boost with the launch of the Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in the eastern city of Norwich. The £13.5 million ($22 million) facility hosts biologists and bioinformaticians who will perform genome sequencing on plants, animals and microbes, as well as develop new bioinformatics tools for handling the [...]