November 2015

The next time a hangover hits you hard the morning after a late-night party, look in the mirror to see if your hair is turning white or your hairline is receding.

Once they enter memory, depressive thoughts can linger for long in affected people, and this extended duration may reduce the amount of information that these individuals can remember, suggests new research.

 Like HIV and Ebola, the hepatitis A virus is of likely animal origin, finds a large-scale study looking into the evolutionary origins of the global pathogen.

Particulate matter and nitric dioxide emissions from industrial plants or vehicles increase the risk of heart attacks, despite being within 'safe' levels of air pollution, a new study has claimed. The study examined the effect of short term exposure to air pollution on the risk of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). This type of myocardial infarction (heart attack) has the worst prognosis and is caused by thrombotic occlusion of a coronary artery that damages the heart.

ViiV Healthcare, a global specialist HIV company with GSK, Pfizer Inc. and Shionogi Limited as shareholders, announced that the Phase IIb study LATTE 2 (NCT02120352) met its primary endpoint at 32 weeks. These results show that the investigational, long acting, injectable formulations of cabotegravir (ViiV Healthcare) and rilpivirine (Janssen) were comparable in maintaining viral suppression rates to a three drug oral regimen of investigational cabotegravir and two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs). The 32 week results of LATTE 2 will be presented at a forthcoming scientific conference. ViiV Healthcare and Janssen Sciences Ireland UC (Janssen) are collaborating to conduct LATTE 2.

Merck Serono has signed a collaboration with Polish biotechnology firm Selvita to jointly discover small molecule based drugs targeting proteins involved in cancer cell metabolism.

GSK and Merck, known as MSD outside the US and Canada, announced the initiation of a phase I clinical trial designed to evaluate GSK’s investigational immunotherapy GSK3174998 as monotherapy and  in combination with Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, Keytruda® (pembrolizumab) in patients with locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic solid tumour(s) that have progressed after standard treatment.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) announced that they have entered into a collaboration agreement with The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins as part of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Immuno-Oncology Rare Population Malignancy (I-O RPM) program in the U.S. The I-O RPM research program is a multi-institutional initiative with academic-based cancer centers focused on the clinical investigation of immuno-oncology therapeutics as potential treatment options for patients with high risk, poor prognostic cancers, defined as a rare population malignancy.