pharmaceutical

Minoxidil looked like the great miracle medication against baldness. A pharmaceutical company financed by Google has just overcome it

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The fight against alopecia is A thriving market. The first laboratory to achieve the “miracle treatment” that manages to avoid or reverse androgenic alopecia (conventional hair loss associated with age) could take a lucrative prize comparable with the success of formulas such as Ozempic. One of the best positioned laboratories in this race seems to be Pelage Pharmaceuticals. Preliminary results. A few days ago, the Pelage Pharmaceuticals laboratory announced “positive” preliminary results in the second phase of its clinical trials of the compound PP405. According to its announcement, the formula showed a quick and statistically significant response in these trials. PP405. The compound developed by this company, pp405, is designed for topical application and with the aim of reactivating latent follicular stem cells (HFSC), thus allowing the restoration of hair growth. According to Explain the laboratorythese cells usually alternate latency and activity cycles when they work conventionally. However, with age or in response to certain external or internal stimuli, these cells can be “blocked” in the sleeping phase of this oscillation. As highlighted, this state of latency does not imply its disappearance or loss of viability. Test treatment seeks to “restore the regenerative capacity” of these follicles, which entails the recovery of capillary growth. 78 participants. Preliminary results published by the company They belong to phase 2a of clinical trials of the compound. It is a randomized and controlled study in which 78 participants, men and women with androgenic alopecia have taken part. The participants were divided between the experimental group and control group or placebo: the participants of the experimental group applied the compound in their scalp for four weeks; while the control group received a placebo. After four weeks of application, a 12 weeks were monitored to check the effects on the participants. Results. The results now presented do not correspond to those obtained after the essay but to their eighth week (after four weeks of treatment and four subsequent monitoring). The responsible team observed that among men with more advanced baldness, 31% Of these they showed a 20% increase in capillary density. They stood out for this reason the speed of the response to treatment, at least in principle faster than that observed in contemporary treatments. A crucial difference. However, the key to this treatment was in its effect on inactive follicles. The experiment showed regenerative potential both in the areas of weak growth and in the areas where the hair was no longer growing. The treatments we have in the present are useful when reinforcing growth in weakened but active follicles, not those that have already fallen in a state of latency. “These early clinical results reinforce the potential of our approach to go beyond the slowdown of the hair loss process and directly attack the hair follicle tegeneration,” pointed in a press release Christina Weng, medical director of Pelage Pharmaceuticals. A long way to go. The results are preliminary and correspond to a study conducted in a limited sample, so we will have to wait for the company to give new data on the drug evaluation process. According to the laboratorythe last stage of this process, phase 3 of clinical trials, could begin in 2026. The support of a giant. The origin of the project is in the work carried out in the last decade by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles and other institutions. According to the company, the development achieved the support of investors led by Google Ventures. In Xataka | The hair industry in Türkiye has a new enemy: a protein that protects us from baldness Image | Donald Teel

China is the great candy of pharmaceutical thinning. And there is a wild race for selling the new ozempic

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Few would have guessed not so long that a pharmacist focused on the insulin segment would become a company with A higher value than Tesla. Novo Nordisk became the most valuable quoted company in Europe Thanks to the fashion product: Ozempic. This diabetes treatment spun by becoming the Miracle of weight loss that many needed, Despite its side effects. But there are situations that do not last forever and China is about to seize Ozempic tooth in a market with a lot of potential. And they have about twenty biosimilar copies calling the door. Challenging the reign. In recent days we have seen that something strange has happened with Ozempic. By mistake or for a failure in the calculations, Novo Nordisk carries years without paying protection rates of the Ozempic patent in Canada. It is a quota that serves to protect the compound on which the popular Ozempic and Wegovy drugs, the same pharmaceutical drugs. It is something that is allowing local companies to be Finally generic medications based on the peptide similar to LPG-1. It is about the hormone that “mimics” the semagglutide that allows this antidiabetic and thinning effect. The Chinese market rubs your hands. In China, something similar happens. The patents have a life time that allow those who have registered them with that competitive advantage, but after the established period, the ban opens. While in Europe and Japan this patent will expire in 2031, and in 2032 in the United States, the protection of the patent in China It will expire Next year, as we read in South China Morning Post. Lek Consulting is a consultant based in Boston and comments that “China is home to populations with the highest number of diabetic and overweight people, and has become a key battlefield for both global pharmaceutical giants and for local actors.” Montones competitors. According to the SCMP report, in China there are at least 20 biosimilar copies that will compete for this market share, which will generate absolute pressure in the prices of the semaglutida. “The panorama in China is expected to become even more competitive than in the developed markets, where the category of GLP-1 medicines is dominated by large multinational pharmaceuticals,” commented Helen Chen, global co -director of Medical Care and Life Sciences of Le.K. Currently, Novo Nordisk opera In China both with Ozempic and Wegovy, but Eli Lilly also operates in the Chinese market, the American company with a response to the drug that could enter the country thanks to the premises Innovent Biologics. In the summer last year, They announced An expansion plan of more than 200 million euros to expand a plant in Suzhou with which to meet demand in the Asian giant. But, in addition, there are several dozens of drugs that are in advanced phases of clinical trials in China and, as they comment from Le.K., some have potential to compete directly with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly products. A very fat cake. That there are so many interested parties is the most normal. China, by overwhelming population numbersit is a huge market for any product, but in this field, we are talking about the second largest pharmaceutical market in the world, with almost 150 million adults with diabetes. It is more than any other country and, according to the International Diabetes Federation, the estimate is that the figure increases to 168 by 2050. But also, in 2021 The Lancet Medical Magazine estimated that 402 million people over 25 years in continental China had obesity. By contextualizing, it is a figure that represents 38% of the population and that reflects the country’s life progress. In 1990, the figure was 15.8% and wait that reaches 61% in 2050. New generation. Grand View Research is an American consultant who wait That the GLP-1-based medication market triples its sales in China by 2030, from 1,430 million dollars last year to 4.7 billion. But of course, there are more competitors for Ozempic does not imply that Novo Nordisk is cross -arms. A few months ago, the Danish company announced that the results for Your new medicine, called CagrisemaThey were promising. In the essays, its new combination of Semaglutida and Cagrilintida It has shown a striking potential, with a medium weight loss of 15.7% in 68 weeks compared to 3.1% of the group that received placebo. In addition, they reached a development and manufacturing agreement of another compound known as UBT251 with a Chinese laboratory, United Biotechnology, which will be responsible for commercialization in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Everything based on miracles? It is evident that Novo Nordisk does not want to lose the train of the new generations of drugs that have exploited in popularity thanks to their status as miraculous compounds for weight loss. But not everything is needles, since Eli Lilly is already Testing pills with the same effects as the ‘Ozempicazo‘And more natural alternatives are being explored, such as diet, in the search for a “Natural Ozempic” Although, beyond the miracle, the closest thing to that “natural ozempic” is a balanced diet, exercise and good rest. The Holy Trinity of Healthy Lifeultimately. Images | Javier Quiroga, HAVEREDAS In Xataka | The Danish city paradox where the “formula” of Ozempic is manufactured. It is the epicenter of childhood obesity of the nation

The world pharmaceutical industry has been sunk in its “Deepseek moment”: China is devouring it

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This summer we estee that, for the first time in history, China beat Europe as a new medication developer. It was not a stroke of luck: the pharmacist is one of the most complex sectors in the world and China has been determined to compete in it at the highest level. A decision that is paying off. So much that, today, the question is not whether China will stand up to the US. The question is whether the western pharmaceutical industry is facing its own “moment Deepseek“: The appearance of a more agile competitor, cheaper and (at least on paper) equally good. A small panoramic. Historically, Europe was always the great world pharmaceutical superpower. However, in the decade that goes between 1995 and 2005, the situation changed: the US made a very strong biomedical commitment and managed to advance the old continent. That has not changed in the last 20 years. In fact, according to the latest edition of the ‘The Pharmaceutical Industry in figures‘(The 2023), they say that the 90 new molecules, 28 were American compared to 17 of European origin. The surprise was another: that China had managed to put 25 on the table. And although that, alone it changes (almost) everything; There was something else. In autumn, summit therapeutics announced that its drug He had surpassed Keytruda, a well -known Merck immunotherapy against lung cancer that moves more than 30,000 million a year. To get an idea of ​​the bombing: only that news catapulted Summit to the top positions of world biotechnology (with a stock market capitalization of billions) even though … it has no approved drug. As David Wainer explained“China’s rise in biotechnology has been managing for years, but now it is impossible to ignore it.” In 2020, less than 5% of the large pharmaceutical transactions worth 50 million dollars or more were related to China. “In 2024, that figure had increased to almost 30%,” According to the journalist. Why does this happen? Although everything has some speculative air, experts agree that There are some key factors behind Of all this: Lower costs: both for the ease of access to highly qualified labor and low cost and access to thousands of people for optimized clinical trials. Minimum bureaucracy and less security obstacles that accelerate the market arrival process. And what consequences can it generate? That may be what most matches all this with What happened to Deep Seek: That the uncertainty about what may be doing in China, makes investors think much more if it is profitable to finance new projects. What is the point of spending hundreds of millions on something they can do in China for a dozen (And what, in fact, are surely doing even if we don’t know it)? And Europe? While innovation seems to go to China, Europe is still changed. Successes like Novo Nordisk and Ozempiceven invisible that we are losing a career that we should not lose (it is more, that we have been losing it for years). Josep Borrellformer high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has passed years saying that “When the pandemic arrived we realized that in Europe there was not a single gram of paracetamol.” That was something that did not worry anyone because Europe had always thought it was a problem of productive outsourcing. Now we are discovering that, along the way, we were outsourcing much more than that. Image | Mika Baumeister | Deepseek + Philipp Katzenberger In Xataka | Ozempic is sweeping. So much that it is a problem for supermarkets and sugary drinks

Our rivers have been contaminated with medications for years. The EU has a solution: let the pharmaceutical companies pay

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When we read that one of the great environmental challenges of our time is the state of our rivers, our imagination travels directly to the fecal waterindustrial pollution or, lately, microplastics. In what we don’t usually think It’s in the medications. But the problem is real and the European Union is determined to solve it. How can medications ‘contaminate’? Drugs (whether for medical or veterinary use) have a very long life after consumption. And, inevitably, a good part of the medications end up being expelled from the body and entering wastewater. From there, despite the efforts of treatment systems, they reach rivers, lakes and seas. An increasingly solid scientific consensus. Although it is difficult to get a complete idea of ​​the impact of this type of pollution on the environment, the investigations that are appearing They make it clear that it is very far from being an anecdote. In fact, at least 631 pharmaceutical substances (human or veterinary) have been found in more than 71 countries on five continents. Many of them, at levels higher than those considered safe. In 2022, the CSIC analyzed 258 rivers and, after cataloging the Manzanares River as “the most contaminated by drugs in Europe”, warned that we were in the face of “a global threat to the environment and human health.” “Global threat (…) to human health”? Are we not exaggerating? In the case of antibiotics, to use an example we are all familiar with, this is clearly seen. We have been warning for years that the abuse of these medications leads to the emergence of multiresistant bacteria. That’s true on the consumption part, yes; but also in the part in which enormous quantities of them are dumped into nature every year (with the problems that this causes for ecosystems and the risks that it poses). Why is this news now? Because the European Union wants to take action on the matter and, as Oriol Güell explainsis introducing a whole new battery of measures in the renewed Directive on Urban Wastewater Treatment. The goal is to “reduce the compounds discharged into the environment by more than 80%”; the environment, the introduction of a whole series of “quaternary treatments” (ozone, activated carbon, new membranes, etc…) in the treatment systems. The problem? that the EU wants them to pay the affected industries: above all, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. An idea that the sector has not liked. As expected, the application of the “polluter pays” principle in these terms has not pleased the sectors involved. Above all, because of the costs. According to the employers’ associations of both sectors, the application of the European directive would lead to an increase of about 500 million euros in Spain alone. And, beyond the expected conflicts between companies and administration, it is true that the movement is paradoxical. Not because it is not reasonable to charge the costs of water treatment to those who produce them; but because just a couple of years ago, Europe announced its intention to bet on having drug factories on the continent (and thus reduce its dependence on international supply lines). Towards a culture of responsible drug use. Be that as it may, in the end we always return to the same thing: the drug industry is heading straight into a very complex crisis in which health, economic, environmental and cultural issues intermingle so as not to lead us to a dead end. One in which we risk our health, the future and our lives. Image | manuel mv | Joshua Goge In Xataka | The Ozempic boom is so big that US pharmacies have decided to do something unusual: start manufacturing it themselves

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