As the specter of a worldwide outbreak of avian or “bird flu” lingers, health officials recognize that new drugs are desperately needed since some strains of the virus already have developed resistance to the current roster of anti-flu remedies.

A new report co-authored by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Benjamin Zycher, and Joseph DiMasi, and Christopher-Paul Milne, researchers from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, examines case histories for thirty-five important pharmaceutical innovations.

A new mass spectrometry test can help sports anti-drug doping officials to detect whether an athlete has used drugs that boost naturally occurring steroid levels. The test is more sensitive compared to previous alternatives, more capable of revealing specific suspicious chemical in the body, faster to perform, and could be run on standard drug-screening laboratory equipment.

The largest ever study into the administration of blood thinning drugs, principally Warfarin, has concluded that dosages calculated by computer are at least as safe and reliable as those provided by expert medical professionals.

Preliminary U-M studies indicate that oral use of RU-486's companion drug misoprostol is safe, but vaginal use may undermine body's immune responses

Concerned by the growing numbers of people using stimulant medications such as methylphenidate (MP)—either legally or illegally—to improve attention and focus, researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with the radiotracer fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) to assess the effects of the drug on brain function in the normal human brain.

To develop improved drugs for fighting cancer and other diseases, pharmaceutical researchers are finding increasingly potent drug ingredients that will allow smaller doses while causing fewer side effects, according to an article scheduled for the June 16 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.

Drug companies could save millions thanks to a new technology to monitor crystals as they form.

A Duke University chemist has apparently solved a long-standing frustration in creating certain synthetic molecules that make up drugs, which could lead to better drugs with fewer side effects.

Researchers devise new method of creating human antibodies to flu, other illnesses.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health has published an overview of sales of various drugs used in fish breeding in Norway from 2001-2007.

Medicines to the value of 17.4 billion Norwegian kroners (NOK) were sold last year in Norway – the equivalent of 3, 700 kroner per inhabitant. The increase in 2007 was 3.4 percent compared to 2006. These figures come from the Wholesaler-based Drug Statistics maintained by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.