Acacia Pharma Group plc (“Acacia Pharma”), the supportive care company developing products for US and international markets, announces positive results from a pivotal Phase 3 study investigating BAREMSIS™ (amisulpride injection, formerly APD421) for the treatment of established post-operative nausea & vomiting (“PONV”). These data further support the efficacy of BAREMSIS which has previously been shown to prevent PONV alone, and in combination with standard anti-emetics in pivotal Phase 3 prophylaxis studies.

Dr Julian Gilbert, Acacia Pharma’s CEO commented: “We are delighted with these data demonstrating that BAREMSIS is safe and effective at treating patients suffering PONV after surgery. It confirms our confidence in the dopamine antiemetic mechanism of action, and that BAREMSIS is effective at treating, as well as preventing, PONV. Our objective is to seek approval for BAREMSIS for the treatment and prophylaxis of PONV alone and in combination, which will provide us with a broad and unique label once approved. No other antiemetic has a PONV treatment claim following failed prophylaxis with standard antiemetics and no other antiemetic has a combination use claim in PONV prophylaxis.”

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When his son Sam was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at six months of age, Doug Melton was incredulous. “I remember at night, my wife and I pricking his heel, and saying ‘No, this can’t be, this can’t be,’” he says. “It felt like we had lost the lottery.”

Later, his daughter would receive the same diagnosis. By then, Melton had already dropped what he was doing—studying frog eggs at Harvard—and launched an effort to grow pancreatic cells from scratch in his lab. The beta cells of the pancreas are the ones killed off in type 1 diabetes, and Melton reasoned he could replace them using new tissue manufactured from embryonic stem cells.

Melton’s effort, involving a 30-person lab at Harvard and a startup company, Semma Therapeutics, which he named after his children, Sam and Emma, is one of the most costly and sustained efforts to turn stem cells into transplantable tissue, an attempt that Melton admits has been full of false starts and dead ends. “The public definitely doesn’t appreciate that much of science is failure,” he says.

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This summer, more than a million tons of chardonnay grapes are plumping on manicured vineyards around the world. The grapes make one of the most popular white wines, but their juicy fruit and luscious leaves are also targets for diseases such as downy mildew, a stubborn fungus-like parasite. If left unchecked, downy mildew coats grapes in white fuzz and strips the plant’s leaves, which means any surviving fruit won’t produce enough sugar to make good wine. Downy mildew is found practically anywhere wine grapes are grown, from California to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa[, and New Jersey].

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Since the market clamors for familiar varieties, New Jersey growers have been stuck with the vulnerable grapes, which require regular pesticide sprays for protection. But a new genetic tool called CRISPR may eventually offer an alternative: a chardonnay genetically edited to resist downy mildew.

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