Research on neuroactive drugs is a pharmaceutical sector of high interest and growth. The discovery of efficient drugs that can relieve pain is a subject of research in the pharmaceutical industry and academic field because pain is a symptom of many diseases. This review will summarize results on the discovery of essential oil constituents with analgesic-like activity from the chemical and phar...

Various metrics are employed in pharmaceutical sector to define a system-wide, cycle-based perspective so as to deduce an accurate measure of ‘greenness’ of chemical processes and products. Green metrics cover areas of resources, materials, processing, cleaning, life cycle assessment and renewability. This review describes commonly used metrics to measure greenness of chemical reactions and pro...

　There are several rapid microbiological methods becoming available that have useful applications in pharmaceutical and medical devices. They are ATP bioluminescence, fluorescent labeling, electrical resistance, and nucleic acid probes. In choosing to employ rapid methods, the microbiologist should examine their prospective performances against the specific requirements for that sector. Some me...

Patent protection and factors unique to prescription drugs weaken the forces keeping prices near costs for other products. A growing public consensus that affordable drugs should be available to all is likely to increase the upward pressure on prices. To restore competition to all parts of the pharmaceutical industry, we propose a new institute at the National Institutes of Health that would co...

João Carapinha (BPharm, MM P&DM) is the owner of PharmaLogica, a consulting company active in South Africa and the USA. Its aim is to respond with effective and innovative insight to the needs of the pharmaceutical sector in developing countries. PharmaLogica has worked for non-profit institutions, government agencies and also consulted on a project basis for pharmaceutical companies. This rese...

BACKGROUND This paper has set out to map the state of pharmaceutical regulation in the developing world through the construction of cross-national indices drawing from World Health Organization data. The last two decades have been characterized by deep changes for the pharmaceutical sector, including the complete transformation of intellectual property systems at the behest of the World Trade O...

pharmaceutical sector in the past decade is well documented1. Many of these analyses have attempted to identify specific causes leading to such questionable performance metrics, as well as suggest possible solutions1-5. In the latter case it has involved consideration of better technology investments; build-out of IT, bioinformatics and knowledge management tools; creation of efficient decision...

BACKGROUND We utilized our previous studies analyzing the reforms affecting the health sector developed in the 1990s by financial groups to frame the strategies implemented by the pharmaceutical industry to regain market positions and to understand the challenges that regulatory agencies are confronting. METHODS We followed an analytical approach for analyzing the process generated by the dis...

PROBLEM A multinational company with operations in several African countries was committed to offer antiretroviral treatment to its employees and their dependants. APPROACH The Accelerating Access Initiative (AAI), an initiative of six pharmaceutical companies and five United Nations' agencies, offered the possibility of obtaining brand antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) at 10% of the commercial pri...

There is a lack of effective, safe, and affordable pharmaceuticals to control infectious diseases that cause high mortality and morbidity among poor people in the developing world. We analysed outcomes of pharmaceutical research and development over the past 25 years, and reviewed current public and private initiatives aimed at correcting the imbalance in research and development that leaves di...