Therapeutic advances

Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Florida College of Medicine, P.O. Box 100286, Gainesville, FL 32610-0286, USA Surgical Therapeutic Advancement Center, University of Virginia Health System,... 

Bhatt DL, Topol EJ (2003) Scientific and Therapeutic Advances in Antiplatelet Therapy. Nat Rev Drag Discov 2 15-28... 

Selkoe, DJ (1999) Translating cell biology into therapeutic advances in Alzheimer s disease. 

Smith, J., Zhang, Y.L., and Niven, R., Toward development of non-viral gene therapeutics, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, 1997, 26, 135-150. 

Akhtar, S., Hughes, M.D., Khan, A., Bibby, M., Hussain, M., Nawaz, Q., Double, J., and Sayyed, P. 2000. The delivery of antisense therapeutics. Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews 44(1), 3-21. 

Wiseman H (1994) Tamoxifen new membrane-mediated mechanisms of action and therapeutic advances. Trends Pharmacol Sci 15(3) 83—89... 

Pharmacogenomics represents a true paradigm shift for health care. The potential to effectively treat or cure most diseases will come at a price. These therapeutic advances will create economic and ethical dilemmas at all levels of the economy. At the individual level, there will be economic barriers to access, particularly for disadvantaged or disenfranchised populations. The costs of diagnostic tests and treatments may be prohibitive, and mechanisms (e.g., insurance, income subsidies, rationing) to distribute and pay for care must be devised. With limited health care resources, trade-offs between cost, access, and quality are inevitable. 

Tomalia, D. A. in Walsh, B. (ed.), Non-Viral Genetic Therapeutics Advances, Chal-langes and Applications for Self-Assembling Systems, IBC USA Conferences, Inc., Westborough, MA, 1996, pp. 1.2-1.2.36. 

An understanding of the pharmacology of nicotine and how nicotine produces addiction and influences smoking behavior provides a necessary basis for therapeutic advances in smoking cessation interventions. This chapter provides a review of several aspects of the human pharmacology of nicotine. These include the presence and levels of nicotine and related alkaloids in tobacco products, the absorption of nicotine from tobacco products and nicotine medications, the distribution of nicotine in body tissues, the metabolism and renal excretion of nicotine, nicotine and cotinine blood levels during tobacco use or nicotine replacement therapy, and biomarkers of nicotine exposure. For more details and references on the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of nicotine, the reader is referred to Hukkanen et al. (2005c). 

It was repeatedly claimed throughout the 1990s that the uptake of therapeutic advances in the United Kingdom was sub-optimal.In the year 1990, only 38% of the UK medicines bill was for products launched onto the market in the previous 20 years, thus 62% of medicines by value prescribed on the NHS were active substances introduced into the UK market earlier than 1970 It was claimed that cost reducing philosophies and constraints have resulted in the under use of therapeutic advances in the United Kingdom. ... 

In this volume many investigators report on their own studies in conformationally directed drug design. The common theme of all the chapters is the importance of the conformational structure of peptide and nucleic acid in the design of drugs that are either peptide- or nucleic-acid-based or that interact with peptides or nucleic acids. We anticipate that at the present rate of progress significant therapeutic advances will result from... 

The fluoroquinolones represent an important therapeutic advance and are extremely useful agents. They are important for the treatment of Gram-negative urinary tract infections, especially those from sulfa-resistant strains of E. coli, and for the treatment of serious hacterial infections such as those caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. On the basis of microbiological considerations, the fluoroquinolones may be further subdivided into three groups ... 

On the other hand, nurses and doctors who lived through the period before 1953/54 and then saw the introduction of modern psychopharmaceuticals could hardly believe the unprecedented therapeutic advances that these medicines provided how much suffering, anxiety and waste of human life could be eliminated inside and outside of psychiatric hospitals. Relief and sometimes elation, together with new therapeutic optimism, can be sensed in the early publications on the discovery of antipsychotics and antidepressants (see Chapter 2). 

Modern psychopharmacology is about 50 years old. Few doctors and nurses survive to relate how clinical and ambulatory psychiatry looked and felt before the first neuroleptic and antidepressant medications became available. Drug treatment is routine in today s psychiatric practice, and even some of the most severe mental disorders are no longer fatal In view of the dramatic therapeutic advances brought about by psychopharmaceuticals it is of interest to ask how the introduction of these drugs has affected psychiatry as a science and what impact psychopharmacology has had on psychology. 

This third edition essentially retains the structure of the second edition but its contents have been revised, with considerable changes in some parts. Thus, account is taken of the fact that a new generation of antidepressants has been available for some years, that concepts of the mechanisms of neuroleptic action have altered several times and have led to products with new mechanisms of action, and that therapeutic advances have even been recorded in a field that was only recently considered to be hopeless, namely Alzheimer s disease. New methodological developments, especially in the use of imaging techniques in psychiatry, and changes in opinions on the best possible use of psychopharmaceuticals and their duration of use in schizophrenia and depression have been suitably taken into account. 

This section describes the role of interferons as cancer drug therapies, emphasizing key contributions of recombinant biotechnology that made these therapeutic advances a reality. Additionally, some of the mechanisms by which the IFNs elicit antiproliferative or antitumor effects wiU be explored. 

Structural modification of an existing molecule to improve its therapeutic value, e.g., by making it more effective, less toxic, better absorbed, or longer acting (such modification can also lead to the discovery of a new pharmacologic action, as in point 2 above, or of new therapeutic effects in man, as in point 5 below). An instructive example of the major therapeutic advances that have been obtained by molecular modification is seen in the family of penicillins that followed benzyl penicillin, the original member of the series. In little more than a decade from its first characterization, the original benzyl penicillin molecule was... 

A similar pattern was observed in both analyses when the percentages of U.S.-originated "significant" NCEs (i.e., those rated by the FDA as representing important or modest therapeutic advances) over time were calculated. 

Table I documents a brief chronology of important therapeutic advances since the end of the 18th century. We should keep in mind that there could exist a parallel listing for the development of toxins used in warfare and agriculture.

Nakano J. General pharmacology of prostaglandins. In Cuthbert MF, editor. The Prostaglandins Pharmacological and Therapeutic Advances. Philadelphia JB Lippincott, 1973 23-124. 

Selkoe, D. J. (1999). Translating cell biology into therapeutic advances in Alzheimer s disease. Nature 399(6738 Suppl.), A23-A31. 

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