In 1991 there were four states in the United States where 15-19% of the population was obese. When the CDC revised the stats in 2010, every state had an obesity rate over 20%.

Together, there are nearly 7,000 orphan diseases that impact nearly 30 million Americans.

Orphan diseases used to be a lonely place in drug development, but with recent analyses showing high profitability potential, support from disease advocacy organizations, and new therapeutic approaches, biopharmaceutical companies are beginning to embrace rare diseases, including Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

How do pharmaceutical or biotech companies afford to develop orphan drugs, knowing that their development will not be profitable?

After the recent failures of two Alzheimer’s drugs that target amyloid beta plaques, many have questioned the approach. But new data released in October shows promise for the amyloid hypothesis, provided plaque-targeting drugs are applied early in the disease process.

Although Alzheimer’s disease (AD) develops differently from person to person, many common symptoms exist.

Samantha Budd, project leader for AstraZeneca’s Alzheimer’s program, discusses the challenges the biopharmaceutical industry faces with this neurodegenerative disease.

Patient-derived xenografts, otherwise referred to as animal avatars, preserve the original characteristics of a patient’s cancer and have been shown to mimic the disease more effectively than deriving tumors from cancer cell lines.

The search for Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet took a huge leap when someone asked, “Why not antibodies?”

Once an experimental curiosity, pharmaceutical companies are embracing the 6-month transgenic mouse carcinogenicity study as an alternative to the 2-year mouse carcinogenicity bioassay. Here’s why.