Below are articles of special interest recommended in the February issues of the
EBC – external environment report.
Report: Health in the EU improves, but remarkable inequalities remain (EurActiv)
EU member states have achieved significant gains in population health over the past decades, but large inequalities remain both inside and across countries, a new report concludes.
Changing the way the EU looks at clinical trials (EU Reporter)
European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM) Executive Director Denis Hoorgan: Clinical trials are vital to patients and the advancement of cures for myriad diseases, but the issues surrounding countrywide and, even more so, pan-European trials and their application in modern-day medicine are complex.
European Database on Traumatic Brain Injuries (EC DG Research)
A European database makes it possible for neurologists to compare their patients’ cases with similar ones. Furthermore, the project’s biomedical engineers combined algorithms and statistical models to enable analysts to accurately predict the outcome of planned treatments for individual patients.
European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia Consortium announces new collaboration (EPAD)
The collaboration consist of 35 partners from industry and academia aims at developing a platform using existing information from national or regional patient cohorts or register studies, which have already identified potential patients, which hopefully will help speed up the drug discovery process.
AbbVie wins US approval for Parkinson’s treatment (Reuters)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AbbVie Inc’s treatment for Parkinson’s disease. The treatment, Duopa — a combination of carbidopa and levodopa — is the first to be effective for 16 hours, compared with existing oral formulations that last for up to four hours following a single dose.
J&J strikes Alzheimer’s research deal with Swiss firm AC Immune (Reuters)
Johnson & Johnson boosted its research efforts into battling Alzheimer’s on Monday, striking a deal potentially worth more than $500 million to develop anti-tau vaccines with Swiss biotech firm AC Immune.
The public consultation on how the transparency rules of the European Clinical Trial Regulation will be applied in the new clinical trial database was launched by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in early January. Stakeholders are invited to send their comments before 18 February, 2015.
