Pharmaceutical Tech

Aug12017 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Would Virtual Clinical Trials Work?

Further into the future, clinical trials to test the efficacy of new drugs would not require the test subject physically traveling to a clinical research facility or hospital. Mobile devices – smart phones, watches or glasses with inbuilt wearable sensors – would be enough to connect one to the clinical research study and report general information and adverse events. These sensors would record data such as body temperature and blood glucose levels, which would be sent to the Electronic Data Capture (EDC) record. The clinician would then visit the subject at home for drug administration and follow-up. One could even postpone or pre-pone the visit using automated reminders in their devices but within a time frame permitted by the study protocol. The future of pharmaceutic...

Jul252017 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Issues with Detecting Counterfeit Drugs

Drug Counterfeiting

Counterfeit medicines have been pervading the pharmaceutical industry, with a sharp increase by 51% between the years 2011 and 2015 as per the Pharmaceutical Security Institute in Vienna. The high reimbursement costs of medicines due to the higher R&D risks have attracted a massive chain of drug racketeers that sell spurious medicines at prices too good to believe. Even legitimate pharmaceutical supply chains, including community and online pharmacies, haven’t been spared by adulterine medicines. Counterfeit drugs pose a serious health threat to the public and cause serious financial damages to pharmaceutical companies. Fake medicines are of two kinds – contaminated, contain the wrong or no active ingredient; or could contain the right active ingredient at the wrong dos...

Jun222017 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Gene Therapy For Disease-Free Society

Biotechnology, Cure & Prevention, Medicine

As per several genome research organizations, a sizeable percentage of diseases acquired by newborns are genetic, which means the diseases were acquired through hereditary or mutations. In simpler terms, when the egg and the sperm (genetic material) fuse, the embryo formed will acquire some hereditary traits that may carry diseases. A random mutation, although rare, may cause an extremely rare genetic condition. Rather than making futile attempts at discovering newer drugs for genetic disorders, in May 1989, scientists made the first successful attempt at modifying human DNA by injecting favourable genes into the nucleus of the cell. This method, called gene therapy, ever since has been advancing by leaps and bounds. Coupled with the latest genetic editing tool called CRISPR/C...

Mar152017 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Genomic Personalized Medicine

Clinical Trials, Cure & Prevention

Diagnostics and prognoses are done based on set standards in Medicine. These standards include symptoms. Any two persons sharing similar symptoms can carry the same kinds of diseases or afflicted with the same disorders. But a question always looms when diagnostics (or prognoses) fail – the two persons share similar symptoms and have been given the same medicines and dosage; what could have gone wrong? Quite logically, the physician runs another trial based on their expertise, or simply recommends another doctor. But the revolutionary research going on in the field of the human genome and the recent startling finding that a person’s biological future (future diseases, life span, etc.) can be mapped using the human DNA. This is being referred as “personalized medicine” or genom...