Compounders can compound

A judge has dismissed Novo Nordisk’s lawsuit — the one that tried to stop compounding pharmacies from making versions of semaglutide (ruling PDF). Novo had claimed that the compounded versions weren’t FDA-approved … but compounded medication is never FDA approved, although the ingredients are.

Compounding pharmacies, by law, are allowed to create compounded versions of medications when the branded drugs are in shortage — as semaglutide is.

Putting childhood T cells to work

Here’s a nifty trick: Almost everyone’s had a bunch of childhood vaccinations, right? Most of the time the T cells are hanging out doing nothing unless you’re exposed to measles, mumps, or whatever. So UMass chemical engineers decided to give them something to do: attack tumors.

The idea is simple (at least to explain): Have a modified salmonella virus deliver an antigen to the inside of tumor cells. That would trigger bored T cells to attack the tumor, thinking it was a virus.

And what d’ya know, it worked (in mice):

The therapy cleared 43% of established pancreatic tumors, increased survival and prevented tumor re-implantation [….] “We had complete cure in three out of seven of the pancreatic mice models.”

Not only that, but the mice essentially developed an immunity to the cancer. Their planned first target, if and when human trials can start, is liver cancer.

Betaxolol recall

KVK-Tech is recalling a batch of its 10mg betaxolol tablets (batch 17853A) “due to a single oxycodone HCl tablet 5 mg foreign tablet found on the packaging line.”

Like mice, cockroaches, or hipsters, if you see one oxycodone tablet on the production line, there are probably more.

Pharma investment opportunity

While McDonald’s might be on the losing end of the boom in weight-loss meds, you know who’s doing well? Companies that fill syringes — a segment known as “fill-finish.”

Research firm The Insight Partners predicts the fill-finish market will more than double between 2019 and 2027, to $12.5 billion. That is about twice the pace for tablets or capsules, an industry expert said.

[…]

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act is also boosting development of biologic drugs, some of which are injected. Injectables are increasingly used in elderly care settings, and some new Alzheimer’s and generic arthritis drugs are administered by injection.

Running for happiness

It seems, based on a new Dutch study, that running for 45 minutes a day, twice a week, is as effective as SSRIs for depression — plus it has the added benefits of a good physical workout.

The hassle of taking a daily pill vs. running 45 minutes twice a week. I wonder what people will prefer?

You really don’t want long Covid

Getting Covid itself is probably not a big deal these days — although it’s still putting some people in the hospital. The scary thing is rolling the dice over long Covid, where symptoms persist for months … or longer. But it’s worse than that.

A new study out of the UK found that long Covid has effects throughout the organs:

MRI scans revealed that people with long Covid were 14 times more likely to have lung abnormalities than people who never had the disease, three times more likely to have brain abnormalities and two times more likely to have kidney abnormalities.

The good(ish) news is that the severity of those symptoms is usually linked to the severity of the disease itself, so a minor bout might only give you minor brain fog.

It’s not always Covid that’s long

A different British study found that other respiratory illnesses can persist long after the infection is cleared, which they call a long cold — “long-lasting health effects from other respiratory infections, such as colds, flu, or pneumonia, that are currently going unrecognised.”

It’s not quite the same as long Covid, e.g., there aren’t issues with brain fog or taste or smell, but it’s still out there.

Here, something to worry about

Dengue. The warming climate means that the mosquitos that carry it will be moving north from the (current) tropics to the southern USA.

Dengue is spread by infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which behave differently to the malaria-carrying kind. For example, they bite people indoors, and they bite all day rather than overnight. They also breed in very shallow water.

The good news is that there’s a vaccine for it. The bad news is that people will have to get vaccinated.