Chronicles in drug discovery

New brief reports this month include: Strategies for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Various approaches are being explored to abate the dystrophic process including cellular therapies (transplanting stem cells or myogenic precursors into muscles), molecular approaches (delivering a functional or correcting the mutant dystrophin gene), such as MyoDys, Biostrophin(R) and antisense technology, and pharmacotherapeutics, which include calcium channel blockers, calpain inhibitors, phosphodiesterase inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies; Immunotherapy for Multiple Myeloma: Increasing numbers of antibodies and immunoconjugates with anticancer drugs are entering clinical development; Acute respiratory distress syndrome is among the most frequent reasons for intensive care. Current medications include antibiotics, diuretics, drugs to counteract low blood pressure caused by shock, anxiolytics and antiinflammatories, while there are eight potential drugs in active development; Pulmonary Hypertension: Drugs intervening at four signaling pathways (endothelin, prostacyclin, nitric oxide and platelet-derived growth factor), which are implicated in pulmonary hypertension, include readily available bosentan, sildenafil citrate and sitaxsentan sodium and investigational aviptadil and TBC-3711, among others.