John S. James

Summary: KP-1461, an experimental HIV drug already in a phase II trial, works so differently from other antiretrovirals that at first glance it looked like science fiction, and we found it hard to take seriously as a current possibility today. In fac...

The FDA has asked the pharmaceutical industry for help in testing technology to track drugs electronically through the supply chain to prevent drug counterfeiting -- a huge worldwide problem that mushroomed in the U.S. several years ago, centered esp...

Many thousands of people could not continue filling even their current prescriptions after the new Medicare Part D (prescription drug coverage) started January 1, 2006. Many thousands are wrongly being told to pay hundreds of dollars, when they are o...

Today's pharmaceutical research and development has two huge problems, one widely recognized and the other often missed.

1. New-Drug Prices

Under the current system most of the world's people will have no access to new, patented drugs for up to 20...

Tipranavir (brand name Aptivus), a protease inhibitor that usually works against HIV that is resistant to other protease inhibitors, was recommended for approval by the FDA's Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee at a meeting on May 19, 2005. The drug, ...

Summary: In mid December 2004 three Associated Press stories created widespread doubts about nevirapine, a well-known, critically important drug that can prevent HIV in many of the 1,800 babies now infected every day by their mothers in childbirth. T...

By presidential decree India changed its patent law in December 2004 to meet a January 2005 deadline to allow patents on the chemical molecules used in drugs -- not only for new drugs starting in 2005 but also for many others that were patentable aft...

SculptraTM (marketed in some countries as New FillTM) was approved in August 2004 by the FDA "for restoration and/or correction of the signs of facial fat loss (lipoatrophy) in people with human immunodeficiency virus." It was approved narrowly for t...

Dr. Cal Cohen is the research director of the Community Research Initiative of New England, teaches at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and is affiliated with Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. Dr. Cohen spoke with AIDS Treatment News on September...

Five major academic medical centers in Philadelphia are forming a "supersite" known as the Integrated Research Group, so that pharmaceutical companies can conduct clinical trials at all of them with only one contract and one IRB (Institutional Review...

In July 2004 the Infectious Diseases Society of America published Bad Bugs, No Drugs on the lack of new antibiotics being developed by pharmaceutical companies, while drug resistance to existing antibiotics rises rapidly. People should know:

Drug-re...

A study of 1,716 HIV-positive women who were given blood tests and interviews twice a year for seven years from 1994 through 2001 found that those who met research criteria for chronic depressive symptoms were 2.2 times as likely to die of AIDS-relat...