October 2015

Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada announce the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) monotherapy, the company’s anti-PD-1 (programmed death receptor-1) therapy, at a dose of 2 mg/kg every three weeks, for the treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors express PD-L1 as determined by an FDA-approved test and who have disease progression on or after platinum-containing chemotherapy. Patients with EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations should have disease progression on FDA-approved therapy for these aberrations prior to receiving KEYTRUDA. Under FDA’s accelerated approval regulations, this indication for KEYTRUDA is approved based on tumor response rate and durability of response. An improvement in survival or disease-related symptoms has not yet been established. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in the confirmatory trials.

Researchers from Stockholm University, in international collaboration with UK and Japan, has reached a breakthrough in understanding how fructose is transported into our cells. This could be a potential benefit for the development of novel treatments against some forms of cancer, obesity and diabetes. The results are published as an article in the scientific journal Nature.

WHO cautioned that "indiscriminate" use of antibiotics is increasingly leading to resistance to medicines and treatment failure even as it asked India and South East Asian nations to "urgently" address this threat to public health.