Astellas Pharmaceuticals

Telavancin (28 Vibativ Theravance/Astellas Pharmaceuticals, 2009), was discovered by Theravance as an antibacterial agent, and was developed in partnership with Astellas. " Telavancin (28), a semi-synthetic derivative of vancomycin (27), inhibits bacterial growth by binding to... 

M Mori, University of Hokkaido, Hokkaido, Japan T Kitamura, Astellas Pharmaceutical Ltd., Ibaraki, Japan... 

Initial clinical work focused on a product that would be used to convert patients who were hospitalized for recent-onset AF as an alternative to a cardioversion procedure. Cardiome partnered with Fujisawa (now Astellas Pharmaceuticals) for the clinical development of a vernakalant (1), which produces robust AF conversion rates and none of the ventricular conduction abnormalities associated with less selective agents.35 By the close of 2009, vernakalant had been in 5 large trials and several smaller trials, including a total of over 1200 AF patients. Four Phase III studies—Atrial Arrhythmia Conversion Trials (ACT 1, 2, 3, and 4) —examined patients with recent onset AF (< 45 days) and the measured the rate of conversion to NSR in various periods after drug administration.36 38 The conversion rate was 45-63% in these studies, which tended to exclude patients with more compromised heart function or a history of heart failure. While there has been no specific study looking at QT prolongation, monitoring in both patients and in healthy volunteers showed only modest increases in the QT interval with no directly associated incidents of TDP across all trials. 

The selective mTOR inhibitor OSI-027 (67) from OSI Pharmaceuticals (now Astellas) is undergoing a Phase I clinical trial in patients with advanced solid tumors or lymphoma.123 A comparison study of this compound with rapamycin showed that while the mTORCl inhibitor rapamycin only partially inhibited phosphorylation of 4E-BP1, OSI-027 fully inhibited this process. OSI-027 also proved more effective than rapamycin in induction of apoptosis in a variety of tumor cell lines.124 Other studies demonstrated that OSI-027 is effective in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients with a particular... 

Yoshida, T., Nakanishi, K., Maeda, A., Sako, K., Kasashima, Y, Kondo, H., et al. (2009a). Astellas Pharma Inc. Pharmaceutical composition containing lipophilic IL-2 production inhibitor. International patent apphcation WO/2009/054463. July 14, 2010. 

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