Massachusetts lawmakers may repeal a two-year old law requiring medical firms to disclose gifts to doctors, The Associated Press/Boston Herald reports. “Health care advocates say such a move could put a quick halt to efforts to rein in health care costs and increase transparency in the industry. Those pushing for repeal say the law has [...]

A surprising discovery about the complex make-up of our cells could lead to the development of new types of medicines, a study suggests. Scientists studying interactions between cell proteins – which enable the cells in our bodies to function – have shown that proteins communicate not by a series of simple one-to-one communications, but by [...]

News outlets report on the pharmaceutical industry and a new requirement by the Food and Drug Administration. The Washington Post: “The Food and Drug Administration this week began posting online the results of safety evaluations of recently approved drugs and vaccines. The action follows a law enacted in 2007 that requires the agency to provide [...]

For three September days, Lisbon, Portugal will become the capital city of pharma quality professionals. Senior level executives from Europe and World leading companies will meet to discuss the best practices on how to achieve QC laboratory excellence, how and where to deploy and develop measurable quality systems, Quality Risk Management, QbD & PAT and [...]

“The AARP says that manufacturer prices for brand-name prescription drugs commonly used by people on Medicare rose 9.7% for the year ending in March – the biggest annual jump since the group started tracking prices in 2002,” The Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports. “The price of specialty drugs like biologics and injectables rose 9.2%. [...]

The Wall Street Journal: A report out Thursday on the accessibility of doctors to pharmaceutical reps showed that fewer physicians are letting reps visit them. “The number of physicians who were ‘rep-accessible,’ defined as meeting with at least 70% of salespeople who come calling, dropped by 18% from last year, according to sales and marketing [...]

A House committee is looking at Johnson & Johnson after the company announced a recall of children’s medicines. “Lawmakers requested information on Thursday from regulators about Johnson & Johnson’s recall of Children’s Tylenol and other over-the-counter pediatric medicines, saying the company’s repeated recalls ‘point to a major problem’ with production,” Reuters/The New York Times reports. [...]

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Inovio Biomedical Corporation (NYSE Amex: INO), a leader in DNA vaccine design, development and delivery, has unveiled its new CELLECTRA-SP series of hand-held, cordless electroporation devices at the DNA Vaccines 2010 conference being held in New Orleans, LA. Existing generations of electroporation systems consist of an electrical pulse generator box the size of [...]

A spray-on skin product and an injectable cell therapy forheart attack patients are among 17 regenerative medicine technologies that will be showcased during the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum, set for April 6-8 in Winston-Salem. Representatives from 17 startup biotech companies have been selected to present their technologies to a group of venture capitalists and companies [...]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health today unveiled an initiative designed to accelerate the process from scientific breakthrough to the availability of new, innovative medical therapies for patients. The initiative involves two interrelated scientific disciplines: translational science, the shaping of basic scientific discoveries into [...]