Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD In Danielle Ofri’s recent column in The New York Times “My Patients Used to Be Enthusiastic About the Covid Vaccine. …
Pharmacy
Plant-Based Drug Discovery—Nature’s Pharmacy
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Before there was a pharmaceutical industry, humans looked to plants as source of medicines. Today’s post focuses on medicines derived…
Wound Care and Healing
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD CAVEAT: THIS POST INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS OF TISSUE INJURIES AND MAY CAUSE SOME READERS DISCOMFORT. An 81-year-old, retired accountant is on…
Nicotine and Vapes
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Humans have been smoking tobacco for more than 10,000 years, but e-cigarettes (“vapes”) have only existed for less than two…
Trends in Pharmaceutical Autoinjector Design and Use
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD In today’s post, some important aspects of development and manufacture of combination products with pharmaceutical autoinjectors are considered. Pharmaceutical autoinjectors…
Subcutaneous Suspensions for Challenging Formulations
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD In today’s post, we will look at subcutaneous suspensions as a way of meeting difficult drug delivery challenges. To decide…
Investing in Pharmaceutical Startups
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD PharmaTopo recently posted on the topic of founding a pharmaceutical startup. Today’s post looks at pharmaceutical startups from the investor’s…
Founding a Pharma Startup
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD In the late 1950s, electronics scientists and engineers like Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Eugene Kleiner invented the idea that…
Steroid Hormone Replacement Therapy (Part 2 of 2)
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Steroid hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is a topic that has been in the scientific and popular press a lot recently. …
Male (Androgen) and Female (Estrogen) Hormone Pharmacology (Part 1 of 2)
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Steroid hormones are frequently in the news—sometimes in infamy, as in the case of sports doping, but also in many…
Skin pH, Water Content, and Water Loss
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Our skin does so much for us. Skin protects us against infection and dehydration. Skin allows us to be in…
Solving Drug Shortages
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Imagine that you have an infection, and you need a common antibiotic, but you cannot find a drugstore that is…
Oral Delivery of Protein Drugs
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Proteins and peptides are commonly delivered subcutaneously and by infusion; however, these approaches have disadvantages. Among the chief problems are:…
Immediate, Delayed, and Extended-Release Drug Products
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD The focus of today’s post is oral drug release—immediate, delayed, and extended. Many technologies exist for controlling drug release—the focus…
Vaccines for Lyme Disease
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD In 1991, Helmut and Erika Simon, two German tourists hiking in the Alps near the Austrian/Italian border when they saw…
Pharmaceutical Product Launch
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Above is a photo from the 1947 launch of the M.V. St. Essylt at J.L. Thompson and Sons was a…
Anti-TNF Medications
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD I have a weakness for old Hollywood movies. The movie still that appears above this paragraph depicts John Carradine in…
Pharmaceutical Patent Strategy
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD When I think of patent law, I am reminded of a line from the play A Man for All Seasons. …
Moderna’s Bivalent Booster
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Back in April, PharmaTopo posted on lipid nanoparticle formulations for Covid-19 vaccines [1]. Because the Moderna bivalent vaccine recently arrived…
Pharmaceutical Design Focus: Clot Busters (2 of 2)
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD In the first part of this post, we looked at urokinase. In the second part, we will look at tissue…
Pharmaceutical Design Focus: Clot Busters (1 of 2)
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD This November will be the 35th anniversary of the approval of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA, alteplase) a leading treatment for…
Amazon’s Push Into Healthcare
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD I was intrigued by Amazon’s recent purchase of One Medical for $3.9B in cash. Amazon is implementing a strategy to…
Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease (2 of 2)
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Having discussed the pathological processes of Alzheimer’s disease in the first part of this post, the current status of Alzheimer’s…
Improving the Patient-Doctor Conversation
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Eventually, all of us need to talk to a doctor or a nurse, maybe about a headache, flu symptoms, or…
Lipid Nanoparticles for Covid-19 Vaccines
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD Hopefully, you have received your Covid-19 vaccine. If you did, there’s a pretty good chance it was delivered in lipid…
Payment for Pharmaceuticals
Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD The United States has a mixed public and private insurance system for health care. Payments for pharmaceuticals are provided through…