It is often triggered by adverse reactions to drugs, but little is known about the safety of different drug combinations.
FORBES: Acute Kidney Injury Associated With Dual Antihypertensive Therapy And NSAIDs
But this plodding approach means it can take years and sometimes even decades to tease out the most effective cancer drug combinations.
Genentech is in a particularly strong position to test new drug combinations because it has so many gene-targeted cancer drugs in its portfolio.
The fancy math models may help drug developers sort through tumor-promoting proteins faster to find which drug combinations might work best on which patients.
By taking such a quantitative approach, researchers may be able to create drug combinations that are far more effective than the ones now in use.
Doctors fear that many people now on drug cocktails may become resistant to their regular drug combinations and will be forced to move on to kitchen sink therapy.
CNN: 'Kitchen sink' therapy last resort for some HIV patients
The idea is that just as having a tolerable, combo pill regimen helped Gilead Sciences become the dominant player in HIV, so too will having potent and safe drug combinations will be the key to dominating the hepatitis C market.
Friend says that he is cognizant of the fact that he's trailing Pfizer, and that he is investing in IGF-1 only because he thinks Merck can develop a market for the drug by having a better scientific understanding of how the drug works--and testing it in populations, and as part of drug combinations, where it will be most effective.
Getting swallowed by Sanofi-Aventis (nyse: SNY - news - people ), itself the result of a string of at least 10 drug firm combinations, might actually endanger Bristol's turnaround.
Herbst said that trials of various combinations of the APO2L drug and existing medicines were now being planned.
Despite this, many politicians and drug-makers are still sceptical whether complex combinations of potentially dangerous drugs can be adequately supervised and monitored in isolated communities.
Furthermore, one can also envision fixed combinations of Januvia and ertugliflozin, which could prove to be an outstanding drug combination.
FORBES: What The Pfizer-Merck Diabetes Deal Teaches About Today's Pharma R&D
应用推荐