Bivalent Polio vaccine being tested

The world's first bivalent vaccine - that will protect children against both P1 and P3 strains of polio virus - is being tested in India.

Around 900 newborn children in Indore, Chennai and Pune have already been given two doses of the oral bivalent vaccine (BOPV). Bivalent vaccine can potentially play an important role in rapidly eliminating P3 virus and sustaining high level of immunity against P1.

Scientists at the Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR) want to see whether the bivalent vaccine, manufactured by Panacea, provides as much immunity to children as the present day vaccine of choice -- monovalent oral polio vaccine (MOPV). 

This is the vaccine's first study. In the trials, BOPV has to show atleast 90% efficacy for it to be considered. A child is being given the first dose of BOPV at birth and then again on the 30th day .
If found effective, it will  be tested  in other polio affected countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is one of the studies that are being conducted to optimise the use of polio vaccines to meet the challenges of the evolving epidemiologyof P1 and P3 polio viruses.    

    P1 accounted for 95% polio cases in the country till 2006. P1 causes paralysis in one out of every 200 children compared to P3, which causes paralysis in one out of every 1,000 infections. 
In 2008, India recorded 549 polio cases of which 68 were caused by the P1 strain and 481 were P3 infections. P1 is the most dangerous form of polio virus as it can cause huge outbreaks and travel long distances.

Simulation softwares for teaching Pharmacology

A number of simulation softwares are available for teacing of pharmacology to students at the following sites:

WINSIM, University of Strathclyde
http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/PhysPharm/

Sheffield BioScience Programs http://www.sheffbp.co.uk 

Pharma-CAL-ogy British Pharmacological Society www.bps.ac.uk 
http://www.bps.ac.uk/site/cms/contentCategoryView.asp?category=240

Biosoft www.biosoft.com

InterNiche www.interniche.org

AVAR database www.avar.org

EuRCA database www.eurca.org

NORINA database http://oslovet.veths.no/NORINA/

CoAcS http://www.coacs.com/software/bespoke_software/default.htm 
http://www.coacs.com/software/published_titles/pharmacology_menu.htm

IAUPHAR http://www.iuphar.org/sections/teaching/t_resources.html

IndPharNet www.indphar.org

Pharmacology Simulations

The Strathclyde Pharmacology Simulations package is a suite of programs simulating pharmacological experiments on isolated tissues or whole animals. A range of drugs in varying concentrations can be applied and the effects observed. The programs will run under Windows 95 or later.

Available at http://spider.science.strath.ac.uk/sipbs/page.php?show=software_sims

Simulations
Virtual Cat	Installation File (v2.5.6; Jul 05)
Virtual Rat	Installation File (v3.3.3; Jan 09)
Virtual Twitch	Installation File (v2.1.8; Jul 05)
Virtual NMJ	Installation File (v2.1.8; Jul 05)
Virtual Organ Bath	Installation file (v1.3; Sep 07)
Virtual Nerve	Installation File (V1.1.1 13/8/8)

Phase 0 - Microdosing strategy in clinical trials

Drug development is an activity that is long, complex and expensive. In 2004, attrition in the drug development paradigm prompted the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to introduce its ‘Critical Path’ document, which highlighted the serious discordance between major scientific advances and limited drug development process. One issue addressed was that of microdosing. The concept of microdosing involves the use of extremely low, nonpharmacologically active doses of a drug to define the pharmacokinetic profile of the medication in human subjects. Microdosing, thus, appears as a new viable concept in the ‘toolbox’ of the drug development activity. It appears that microdosing strategy could complement standard animal-to-human scaling, redefining the existing concept of phase I clinical research. In future, when research methods and technology involved in Phase 0 studies become more sophisticated, human microdosing may be applied to a number of drugs developed subsequently.

New impact metric by PLoS ONE

In an attempt to provide alternative metrics to the traditional journal impact factor, the open-access journal Public Library of Science ONE announced that it will release a slew of alternative impact data about individual articles in the coming months. The new "articles-level metrics project" -- which will post usage data, page views, citations from Scopus and CrossRef, social networlking links, press coverage, comments, and user ratings for each of PLoS ONE's thousands of articles -- was announced by Peter Binfield, the journal's managing editor.

"No one has any data other than [ISI] impact factors," Binfield told The Scientist. "Our idea is to throw up a bunch of metrics and see what people use." From its inception at the end of 2006, PLoS ONE has eschewed the notion of impact factors. (It is not currently listed by the ISI Web of Science's rankings.) Binfield argued that the traditional impact factor judges a journal's overall performance, rather than assessing impact at the article-level. The new scheme, however, is aimed at evaluating each article on its own merits, regardless of the other papers in the same journal, he said. Binfield hopes that the journal's readers will use the information to come to their conclusions. "We're putting the data out there and letting the world figure it out." Eventually, Binfield hopes that readers will be able to personalize how they view the data, and sort articles according to the metric of their choice. "The more metrics we have, the more it'll lead to a dilution of any one [metric]," said Bjoern Brembs, a neuroscientist at the Free University of Berlin in Germany and member of PLoS ONE's editorial board.

ExPharm (Pharmacology experiment software)

The software is aimed at helping the UGs understand, remember and recall drug actions. The package contains four programs :

1. Rabbit - Effects drugs on the rabbit eye
2. Heart - Effects of drugs on the frog heart
3. Ileum - Bioassay of histamine on the guinea-pig ileum
4. Oesophagus - Effects of drugs on the frog oesophagus

The above programs can simulate drug actions. The user can conduct experiments and collect data. Each program can be run in two modes (a) Tutorial mode (b) Examination mode
Drugs can be chosen (from a list drugs available) and administered. The effect is displayed in animated sequences for realistic simulation. All programs are menu driven and user friendly. The entire package is mouse operable and the need to use key board is minimal.

In tutorial mode, drugs administered are known whereas unknown drugs are given in examination mode. The student has to identify the unknown drug(s). Examination mode which available only in ver E1.00 can be used for conducting examinations.

ExPharm will be helpful for UGs doing a course in Pharmacology. The software can be used for Medical and Dental UGs and also for the students of paramedical courses such as nursing, pharmacy, medical laboratory technology and physiotherapy.
This software is NOT a DEMO package. It has fully functional and usable modules.Installation :
Download all nine files into a single directory in your hard disk. Run 'setup.exe' to install the software.
You can download and use version T1.00 and use it without any restrictions.
To download go to http://ampiweb.org/indphar/epwin.htm

How PharmaLive (Exclusive Pharma search engine) works

To search, click here

Results are focused specifically on authoritative sources for the pharmaceutical professional. PharmaLiveSearch is aimed specifically at professionals in the pharmaceutical industry and provides several important refinements of the search process that are particularly relevant to pharmaceutical related searches.
Precision-Tuned SearchSearch Scopes
PharmaLiveSearch has three different search scopes from which to choose:
“Publisher Recommended Sites” designates a set of more than 25,000,000 documents from more than 2,600 domains and focuses on the most relevant pharmaceutical sites as chosen by the editors. As a result, spam and irrelevant documents have already been filtered.
“Search PharmaLive” provides the option to search results within the PharmaLive Website. “Search Web” provides results beyond selected domains, but they are ranked for relevance and filtered for spam.

Search Categories
Within each scope you can search by categories, represented by tabs at the top of the search results. PharmaLiveSearch sorts results into different categories based on the type of information source.
Categories within the Publisher Recommended Sites include:
Companies (results from the top pharmaceutical companies in the industry)
Government (results from top drug sites)
Research and Development (results from drug research organizations)
Media (results from top journals and pharmaceutical publications)
Associations (results from various health and medical related organizations)

Main results
The main results for your query are listed in the largest central window of the results page, ranked by relevance to the query and date published. A “P” symbol reflects that the information in the document is password protected and/or requires a subscription. You may need to register with the organization responsible for the Website to get full access to that document. A PDF symbol next to a result shows that page is available in Portable Document Format only.
PharmaLiveSearch filters duplicate records, therefore results initially reported will almost always be greater than the actual number available. To view all results including duplicates, go to the last search results page and click on the link at the bottom of the results.
PharmaLiveSearch is also unique in that it implements knowledge associated with the pharmaceutical industry. It recognizes many industry-specific acronyms (e.g., “FDA”, “ALS”) and industry synonyms (e.g., “high blood pressure” and “hypertension”). It also recognizes more general and specific concepts for many drugs and diseases (e.g., brand names or generic versions of many drugs). This knowledge is used to increase the accuracy of searches, improve displayed results, and retrieve more relevant results.

pharmaceutical-industry specific search engine

PharmaLiveSearch.com generates more precise results than general search engines, eliminating irrelevant links. PharmaLiveSearch.com suggests broader and narrower search terms, recommends related search terms, and displays the most popular searches.
Enter a keyword in the search box to query information on companies, products, diseases, therapeutic categories, and more:
http://www.pharmalivesearch.com/search?qgeneral=&searchtype=defLink

Exclusive Academic Pharma Research Website

"www.pharmaresearch.in" is the India's 1st exclusive and free Pharma website for academic research to bridge the existing lacuna between academic institutes and Pharma industry association and to provide the research problems to all research scholars by industrial experts for the research deliberations and rational solutions. The research theme will be actual research problems/research in the areas of R&D, F&D, Pharmacology, Biotechnology and Herbal drug Technology units and thus it will offer a paramount opportunity to each of the research scholars to show their potentials according to need of research in Pharma industry.
Apart from this, website will also provide as a sole destination to many information On latest Pharma news about seminars & workshops in India, Free access to Pharma journals, Indian Pharma publications, Impact factor for Pharma journals, Pharmaweb links, Free Pharma Software, Sources of financial assistance for research project in India, sources for travel grants, List of CROs in India, List of facilities for instrumental analysis, List of facilities for herbarium and plant identification and many more Pharma updates.

Pharmacotherapy of Chronic Pain

Advances in basic and clinical research have greatly expanded the options for analgesic pharmacotherapy. There are three broad categories of analgesic medications: (1) nonopioid analgesics, which includes the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), acetaminophen, dipyrone, and others; (2) a diverse group of drugs known as the “adjuvant analgesics,” which are defined as “drugs that have primary indications other than pain but may be analgesic in selected circumstances;” and (3) opioid analgesics. The advent of highly selective COX-2 inhibitors has generated excitement because of the possibility that these new NSAIDs will be much safer than previous COX inhibitors. However, the cost–benefit of using these relatively more expensive drugs versus other NSAIDs plus gastroprotective therapies needs to be determined. Adjuvant analgesics can be grouped into four major classes according to their use: multipurpose, neuropathic pain, musculoskeletal pain, and cancer pain. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of these drugs during the past two decades and they now play an important role in the management of chronic pain. Pain specialists are now using opioids for chronic nonmalignant pain in addition to the traditional use for acute and cancer pain. This change in practice evolved from recognition that selected patients with chronic noncancer-related pain can experience sustained analgesia and function better with these drugs, without developing an addictive disorder. The combination of opioids and other drugs, such as an N-methyl- -aspartate-receptor antagonist, may improve the balance between analgesia and adverse effects.