Coronary heart disease is the single largest killer of people living in the U.S. Some of the risk factors include hypertension, obesity, smoking, and dyslipidemia, an irregularity of a patient’s lipid profile. Dyslipidemia covers a variety of disorders relating to abnormal levels of total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides. The incidence [...]

Manufacturer: Genentech, OSI Pharmaceuticals Description: Erlotinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, belongs to a group of cancer drugs known as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-inhibitors. EGFR-inhibitors can destroy some types of cancer cells while causing little harm to normal cells. EGFRs are proteins in the body that help to activate intracellular tyrosine kinase (an enzyme). This [...]

Manufacturer: American Pharmaceutical Partners, Inc./American Bioscience, Inc.
Description: Abraxane™ combines the active drug pacli-taxel (Taxol®, Bristol-Myers Squibb) with a natural protein (albumin) into a nanoparticle that is one-hundredth the size of a red blood cell. As a result, no solvent is needed. This product is the first approved solvent-free, nanoparticle albumin-bound chemotherapeutic agent. It has the [...]

Doxorubicin HCl Liposome Injection (Doxil®)
Manufacturer: Tibotec Therapeutics, Division of Ortho Biotech Products, LP, Johnson & Johnson
Updated Approval: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted full approval to doxorubicin HCl lipo-some injection for the treatment of patients with ovarian cancer whose disease has progressed or recurred after platinum-based chemotherapy.

Speaker: Christopher J. Lettieri, MD, Respiratory Care Specialist, Pulmonary and Critical Care Service, Department of Medicine, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC.
Treatment with gamma-interferon 1b (IFN) (Actimmune®, InterMune) resulted in enhanced functional capacity and improved exercise tolerance in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) when compared with control patients with IPF who were given [...]

Speaker: Horst Olschewski, MD, Professor and Chair, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Medical University Clinic, Medical University, Graz, Austria.
In a subset analysis of patients with New York Heart Association (NYHA) class IV pulmonary hypertension (PH), treatment with iloprost (Ventavis®, CoTherix, Inc.), a prostacyclin that offers a noninvasive inhaled dosing approach, resulted in a significant improvement in [...]

Speaker: Anthony D. P’Urzo, MD, MSc, Family Physician and Director, Primary Care Asthma Clinic, and Lecturer, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The combination of AstraZeneca’s budesonide (Pulmicort®) and formoterol (Oxis® [BUD/FORM]) (Symbicort®, Single Inhaler Therapy™, AstraZeneca, Canada), administered for both maintenance and relief in patients with asthma, reduced the [...]