No single drug developed in the past decade for advanced colorectal cancer represented a major breakthrough.
There are limits to how much reducing the cost of a single drug can save, however.
And Lilly isn't alone in relying heavily on a single drug that will soon face patent expiration.
The idea behind Vytorin is that combining Zocor and Zetia could lower cholesterol more than any single drug.
The improvement is equivalent to what can be achieved with a single drug.
The problem, however, is larger than Lilly or than any other single drug.
Some are more desperate than others: around 40% of AstraZeneca's total sales, for example, come from a single drug, Losec, whose American patent is scheduled to expire this year.
While a drug is protected by a patent, the company has the exclusive right to sell it--and that often results in a single drug bringing in sales of billions of dollars.
That looks like almost nothing compared with the double-digit growth that comes with a single big drug.
The smaller cartels no longer have the same concentration of power that single "drug lords" had before.
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That temptation must be even worse for small firms whose prospects are tied to the approval of a single unapproved drug.
"Most of us agree this virus is not a single-drug disease, " says Dr. Jeffrey Crippin of Washington University School of Medicine in St.
But Millennium's gene databases have not yielded a single marketed drug, either for Millennium or any of the partners who ponied up big bucks.
Each company soared in the 1990s on the strength of a single blockbuster drug that accounted for a large fraction--one-quarter or one-third--of its total sales.
But biotechs tend to become profitable through a single big drug.
As a patchwork solution, some drugmakers first seek approval of a new single-ingredient drug that contains a new active moiety in order to secure five years of exclusivity.
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By skipping a single missing letter, the drug makes a shorter but effective version of dystrophin.
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The TSI said illegal money-lenders targeted vulnerable people, such as single mothers, people with drug addictions or those with mental health problems.
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To fix these problems, Ketek grapples onto a second spot inside the bacteria, so bacteria can no longer escape the drug with a single mutation.
To fix these problems, Ketek grapples onto a second spot inside the bacteria, so the bugs can no longer escape the drug with a single mutation.
In the new world of drug making, staying single may be better for companies' health.
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The drug worked on the single protein that went defective in GIST cancer cells, and the cancer stabilized.
Although the blockbuster antibiotic Zithromax is losing patent protection, Pfizer plans to launch a single-dose version of the drug.
"Throughout his 20-plus year professional career, Mr. Armstrong has been subjected to 500 to 600 drug tests without a single positive test, " the refiled suit reads.
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"Alcohol is a worthless drug that affects every single cell in your body, " says Harris Stratyner, director of addiction recovery services at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Overall, traders are exchanging more than two call options on the drug maker for each single put option in action, out of total daily options volume in excess of 57, 000 contracts thus far today.
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Just a few years ago researchers had naively hoped that they could design a drug to blast a single cancer-causing protein and send the disease into remission for years without forcing the patient to endure the side effects of prolonged toxic chemotherapy.
Those will take years, and a single serious side effect could sink the drug.
Aside from restrictions placed on it by the FDA (for instance, it will be sold only through a single mail order pharmacy), the drug causes the buildup of fat in the liver, a warning sign that it may also cause liver damage.
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