ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis could produce 14 or more new big-selling 'blockbuster' drugs within five years as it bets on cancer, heart and respiratory treatments to fill the gaps left by expiries on current patents, the Swiss firm said on Thursday. Like many of its rivals, Novartis is facing headwinds as some of its top earners lose patent protection, particularly blood pressure drug Diovan. It is counting on its newest products, such as breast cancer drug Afinitor, to pump up sales. But some analysts caution that recently launched drugs like multiple sclerosis pill Gilenya and eye medicine Lucentis will face growing competition next year as Biogen Idec and Regeneron bring rival products to market. Novartis currently has 139 projects in clinical development including more than 73 new molecular entities spread across a wide area of diseases, it said in a statement published ahead of an investor event in Boston on Thursday. Among its most promising products are serelaxin and LCZ686 to treat patients with heart failure as well as drugs for psoriasis and multiple sclerosis. It plans to file serelaxin for regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe in early 2013. However, the results of a late-stage study for serelaxin … Continue reading →

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have begun testing drugs using a microchip lined with living cells that replicates many of the features of a human lung, a technology that may one day help improve drug testing and reduce researchers' dependence on animal studies. In 2010, researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering developed the so-called lung-on-a-chip technology that mimics the function of air sacs called alveoli, which transfer oxygen through a thin membrane from the lung to the blood. For drug companies, the technology offers a way to better predict how drugs will work in people, ultimately reducing the cost of drug development by identifying problems before drugs are tested in clinical trials. "Major pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of time and a huge amount of money on cell cultures and animal testing to develop new drugs, but these methods often fail to predict the effects of these agents when they reach humans," Dr. Donald Ingber, whose study was published on Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, said in a statement. Now the Wyss team is putting its artificial lung to the test, using the device to recreate pulmonary edema, a condition that causes fluid to leak into the … Continue reading →