When a drug fails late on in clinical trials it’s a major setback for launching new medicines. It can cost millions, even billions, of research and development funds. Now, an ‘adaptive’ approach to clinical trials and a genetic tool for predicting success are increasing the odds of picking a winner.
Researchers are working with pharmaceutical companies to make improvements across the whole supply chain, from how a pill is made to the moment it is swallowed by the patient.
How will precision medicine define 21st-century therapeutics? What will future healthcare look like? And what actually lies ‘beyond the pill’? Professor Chris Lowe, inaugural Director of the Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences, takes the long view on the future of therapeutics.
An ambitious seminar series began last week with a discussion of a remarkable documentary. Filmed in a pioneering hospice, The Time to Die addresses a subject that remains taboo for many. Joining the conversation are health professionals, medical students and members of the public, as well as those interested in film and ethics. The series continues on 9 November 2016.
Researchers have identified the cause of chronic, and currently untreatable, pain in those with amputations and severe nerve damage, as well as a potential treatment which relies on engineering instead of drugs.
An approach that could reduce the chances of drugs failing during the later stages of clinical trials has been demonstrated by a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Lawrence King (Department of Sociology) and Piotr Ozieranski (University of Bath) discuss how EU member states use complex policy instruments to determine how much they are willing to pay the pharmaceutical industry for its products.
Graham Ladds, lecturer in pharmacology, discusses the controversy around a group of drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes.
Scientists have found that some drugs from a group of anti-diabetic treatments may, in certain circumstances, act on glucagon receptors in the body, meaning that they could also potentially enable the release of sugar into the bloodstream.
A new drug for ovarian cancer, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and AstraZeneca, has today become the first of new class of drugs, known as PARP-inhibitors, to be granted approval anywhere in the world. The drug, Lynparza, has been granted Marketing Authorisation from the European Commission.
© 2025 University of Cambridge