The world's second biggest pharmaceutical company is to radically shift its attitude to providing cheap drugs to millions of people in the developing world. In a major change of strategy, the new head of GlaxoSmithKline, Andrew Witty, has told the Guardian he will slash prices on all medicines in th...

I was rather intrigued when a drug company representative showed up at my institution with some literature on a medication called Vaprisol manufactured by Astellas Pharma. This drug is one of a class of drugs called vasopressin receptor antagonists (VRA's) and is used to treat low blood sodium level...

digg_url ="http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/tan.html"; A drug that stimulates the body's tanning response — turning pasty skin caramel for up to two months  — has been approved for human trials, but not for tanning. Although the drug will not be available for cosmetic purposes any...

The depth of the global recession was glimpsed yesterday when almost 80,000 jobs were lost or put under threat in the UK, Europe and US, making it one of the bleakest days in recent memory. Household names, including electronics retailer Philips, construction equipment maker Caterpillar, and drug gr...

The IPKat was happy to read this morning that the Court of Appeal has ordered NICE (the UK body that determines which drugs the National Health Service will prescribe on grounds of, amongst other things, cost effectiveness) to grant the pharmaceutical manufacturers Esai and and Pfizer access to info...

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has 180-day exclusivity rights to sell a generic version of Risperdal, Johnson & Johnson's drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar mania. Do you want better mental health? Go work with farm animals. Unless you're from –......

Face it—the American establishment just has some deep-seated fear and hatred of drugs that you smoke, snort, or inject. Marijuana is bad, but drugs that you drink or swallow in pill form are okay. It's obviously some of oral fixation deeply rooted in this nation's culture. For that reason, and bec...

Another casualty of the War on Drugs is anyone who has suffered a cold this winter. When we get a cough and the sniffles, we run down to Walgreen's and buy one of those multi-combination elixirs that promise to sooth all the symptoms. The problem is they are worthless, unless you want to buy an 80 p...

Watch TV in the daytime, and you'll see a lot of commercials for junk food: cookies, fast food, soda—anything with a high content of sugar, trans fat, and all that other good stuff. At night, there's nothing but commercials for pharmaceuticals, especially the super-expensive prescription drugs. Th...