Some cancers, though, are armored against taxanes: Their cell membranes carry a multiple-drug-resistance pump that identifies taxanes as a threat and pumps them out before they can infiltrate the cell.
An initial human test of the combo--chemotherapy drug idarubicin and Millennium Pharmaceuticals' multiple myeloma drug Velcade--is under way at the University of Kentucky.
Guidant, meanwhile, has suffered multiple setbacks in its drug-coated stent program, and is now far behind its competitors.
Shares in Biogen Idec dipped 2.7% not only because the Food and Drug Administration said it would take an extra three months to review its key multiple sclerosis drug, BG-12, but because an Abbott Laboratories kidney cancer medicine that in some ways works similarly to BG-12 failed.
FORBES: Biogen Says Its FDA Delay Unrelated To Abbott's Failed Medicine
Tysabri, the multiple sclerosis drug made by Biogen-Idec and Elan, was pulled from the market for increasing the risk of deadly brain infection.
Drug development is a costly and time-consuming process, requiring multiple rounds of FDA trials before a drug can be approved.
FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?
The reason: Biogen's (nasdaq: BIIB - news - people ) top-selling drug was another multiple sclerosis drug, Avonex.
Lofty expectations for its multiple sclerosis drug Antegren, to be co-marketed with Biogen Idec, have caused shares to quadruple this year.
After one death due to an apparent side effect, Biogen (nasdaq: BIIB - news - people ) and partner Elan (nyse: ELN - news - people ) pulled their multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri, which had been approved with rapid speed by the Food and Drug Administration only four months before.
When the data are good enough, the FDA sometimes approves a drug based on these trials, as happened recently with Velcade, a Millennium Pharmaceuticals (nasdaq: MLNM - news - people ) drug that treats multiple myeloma.
Take Millennium Pharmaceuticals (nasdaq: MLNM - news - people ), which makes the multiple myeloma drug Velcade .
At the American Society of Hematology in Philadelphia last week, Millennium presented data showing its cancer drug Velcade beats back multiple myeloma in one-third of patients who had failed other therapies.
Other medicines, including multiple myeloma drug Velcade, from Millennium (nasdaq: MLNM - news - people ), and rheumatoid arthritis medicine Enbrel, from Amgen (nasdaq: AMGN - news - people ).
What NICE hasn't considered is the long term saving of keeping people with multiple-sclerosis in work and off benefits as a result of offering a drug which could control the relapses which can cause patients to go blind and leave them paralysed.
Giusti founded the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation in 1998 with the goal of using her drug industry know-how to get treatments developed.
Warrell says that Erbitux's troubles validate his more conservative approach to testing Genta's Genasense drug, now in final-stage testing for melanoma, lymphoma and multiple myeloma.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has only approved it for one-time use, rather than multiple uses.
However, he said it would almost certainly need to be a vaccine combining multiple "Achilles heels" - in the same way that HIV therapies are a combination of drug treatments.
For Schering, which has been making strides into biotech and cancer treatment with a treatment for multiple sclerosis and Campath, a cancer drug licensed from Ilex Oncology (nasdaq: ILXO - news - people ), it is a strategic step forward.
Scott Johnson, a 52-year-old multiple sclerosis patient who served as chief executive of three startups, is influencing the direction of early drug research for his disease.
The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation is working with 30 drugs, up from none in 2000, and just recruited a cancer-drug executive from Bayer to help run its effort.
应用推荐