The central lesson from the 1994 Oscar Award-winning movie, “Forrest Gump,” starring Tom Hanks as the title character, is “when in doubt, haul ass” (our words, not an actual quote lol). Forrest is constantly running — away from trouble and after his flighty childhood...
Symbol of the French revolution, the guillotine, a ruthlessly efficient beheading machine, is in the news of late. Lead EpicentRx therapy, AdAPT-001, is a molecular guillotine that decapitates the immunosuppressive cytokine, transforming growth factor-beta (TGFβ)....
WOOHOO! It’s on! Heck, yeah, it is! It’s on like freakin’ Donkey Kong. We’re talking about a good old-fashioned, knock-down, drag-out, winner-take-all heavyweight slugfest between AdAPT-001 and soft tissue sarcoma (STS), for which a Phase 3 clinical trial has been...
“Say shibboleth 5 times in a row if you can.” Shibboleth Definition (noun): custom, tradition, mode of dress, way of speaking, widely held belief, slogan, catchword, or truism that distinguishes on group from another: (as in widely held belief) “it is a shibboleth...
We’ve all heard the expression “tempus fugit” or “time flies,” which is especially true on vacation or if you are 1 day ahead in Australia. (Here’s one you haven’t heard “fruit flies — in a food fight” since we just made it up. See above. LOL 😂) But time doesn’t...
Too right. In 1979, Buggles, an oversized sunglasses-wearing English band, wrote a prescient and catchy-as-all-get-out earworm called “Video Killed the Radio Star." It was no accident that when MTV debuted just after midnight on August 1, 1981, Video Killed the Radio...
This morning as we sat down in front of the computer to write a blog post and stared at the blank screen, waiting for inspiration to strike, it dawned on us that for the first time maybe ever, we were blocked. Try as we might, “we got nothing.” Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch....
Beady eyes are round and shiny usually with malice or greed like this. BD eyes are often — but not always — squinty and narrow from research, research, research, networking, evaluation of potential partners, back-to-back face-to-face meetings, writing and reading term...
"It is bad grammer not to know the word solecism." Solecism Definition (noun): 1) a grammatical mistake “to say we done it instead of we did it is a solecism” 2) a faux pas, a gaffe, bad manners “it is a social solecism to ask someone how much money they earn.”...
The log in the title here refers to “logjammed,” a word that means a crowded mass of logs, which block a river or in the case of lead EpicentRx therapy, RRx-001 (nibrozetone), a crowded mass of cells that obstruct blood flow in tumor vessels. In a well cited 2021...
Ever stop to consider, as we did this morning for no apparent reason, that the interesting symbol @ has the most atrociously unimaginative and booooring name ever: at? This is no offense to AT, the uber-talented, cool, and creative MCS Healthcare PR point person,...
Here’s our word of the weak, spelling intentional: next gen. This is the cringeworthy, empty phrase overused by the “fake it until you make it” crowd to describe cars, cellular service, software, and even pharmaceuticals. Why say “advanced”, “innovative” or...
“In the future, it will help to learn the definition of prolepsis.” Prolepsis Definition (noun): 1) The anticipation or portrayal of an event before its actual occurrence. “Dead man walking is an example of prolepsis because the man isn’t dead yet.” “Another example...
The “log” in the title refers to “log phase.” Our use of this term in a strictly mathematical sense to describe the exponential rate of replication of intracellular AdAPT-001 (or log phase of growth) has engendered some confusion. That’s because in common parlance,...
The speed of light, made up of particles called photons, is the fastest in the universe at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). The infinitely slower speed of lysis, that is the speed at which cancer cell membranes rupture or lyse during infection...
Are you lost at SCLC, a complex tumor type with several potential up-and-coming therapies including RRx-001 (nibrozetone)? If so, read this EpicentRx-authored review entitled, “Lost at SCLC: a review of potential platinum sensitizers.” The review focuses on five...
The fog of war. This was a metaphor coined by the Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz in his book, On War (1832), to describe the confusion, and uncertainty that results from the chaos of warfare. Comparable to the fog of war is the fog of treatment since it...
“This definition of Fingerspitzengefühl should be at your fingertips.” Fingerspitzengefühl Definition (noun): instinctiveness, intuitiveness, flair, or extreme situational awareness. “If a guy asks his girlfriend whether she's put on weight, or gotten dressed in the...
Raise your hand if – like us – you can’t stand the phrase “to your point.” 🙋 No, can’t stand is too mild. We despise it. Those three simple words grate like fingernails on a chalkboard. To. Your. Point. Screeeeech! We hear it all the time from talking heads on TV, and...
Gulp. Forget Lord Byron. The person perhaps most deserving of the famous epithet “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” is a fictional one — Jack Reacher who goes by “Reacher” only in the celebrated series by the author Lee Child. Reacher is a super-swole, vigilante...
The latest craze on TikTok with over 31M views is called #underconsumptioncore. This long and unwieldy phrase ironically champions/romanticizes an ethos of minimalism, make-do-and-mend, and less is more at a time when prices and rents are up, many live...
Act your age, young people, and don’t grow up so fast! According to research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, which took place from April 5th-10th, accelerated aging is to blame for the recent troubling trend of rising...
“It’s not too late to learn about the definition of l’esprit de l’escalier.” l’esprit de l’escalier Definition (noun): a perfect comeback thought of on the way home and, therefore, much too late. “The French have had the wit to pack into the words esprit d’escalier...
A long-range forecast from the Climate Prediction Center favors warmer-than-average weather beginning this Fall across most of the United States. A long-range forecast from the EpicentRx Prediction Center, which includes Principal Investigators like Drs. Anthony P....
Going up? Not if Will Ferrell’s, Buddy the Elf, was on the elevator with you. LOL! Love that scene. However, if you were a Pharma exec and our heads of business development, Babak Alizadeh and Sa’ar Yaniv, happened to encounter you on an elevator, assuming Buddy the...
Not to be confused with the newly minted Olympic sport of breaking, which featured the instantly memeable routine of Australian University lecturer, Rachael Gunn aka “Raygun,” shown above, is pharmaceutical breaking. The indubitable champion of pharmaceutical breaking...
Per tradition, the Olympic cauldron burns for the duration of the Games until the Closing Ceremony when it is extinguished. 🔵🟡⚫️🟢🔴 #Paris2024 To borrow an instructive analogy from this EpicentRx authored manuscript entitled, “What Exactly Is Inflammation (and What Is...
“An apodictic statement is incontrovertible.” Apodictic Definition (adjective): incontrovertible, irrefutable, demonstrably true, not false. “He spoke with apodictic certainty about a subject that he knew well”; “Faith in a higher power does not require apodictic...
With the 2024 Olympics now in full swing, we thought to recognize lead EpicentRx therapy, and torchbearer, AdAPT-001. This is an oncolytic adenovirus that encodes and expresses a transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) trap. On injection, the AdAPT-001 TGFβ trap, which...
Jerry Seinfeld recently declared that comedy is dead. Is he right? Maybe. But, hey, why let that stop us from trying on a few jokes for size. After all, we have nothing to lose but our dignity — and we already lost every shred of that a long, long time ago! Haha! Here...
On the heels of a previous post entitled “Mad, Bad, and Dangerous To Know”, which was Lady Carolyn Lamb’s famous epigram about the English poet, Lord Byron, we decided just for fun to list out some Chads that are dangerous, essential and/or interesting to know. ...
“If a prequel to Shallow Hal were ever made, when the actor was young and immature, it could be called Callow Hal." Callow Definition (adjective): immature and inexperienced. “No longer a callow youth, he is now older and wiser." "High school students are...
The end, the cataclysmic end, is near (or nigh to use the Biblical term). Extinction—nay, extermination on par with the event (asteroid strike?) that ended the 150-million-year reign of the dinosaurs— is almost a foregone conclusion. All signs point to an imminent...
The Rock in this case isn’t the ex-professional wrestler and somewhat salacious actor, Dwayne Johnson. The rock to be discussed here is not salacious but siliceous, which refers to a high content of silicon dioxide (SiO2) or silica. When siliceous rocks are...
If Phil Collins, Genesis band member and genius solo songwriter, had also been an oncologist, he might have renamed his hit song from the 1980s, Sussudio, Sussudio-progression, which, mouthful though it is, makes a lot more sense. (Perhaps Sussudio, an otherwise...
“If you give a feck, read below.” Feckless Definition (adjective): worthless, weak-in-character, incompetent, irresponsible, inept. “It is impossible to rely on a feckless person; The attempt was ill-fated and feckless; Congress is feckless." Pronunciation: feh- klis...
Why did we spell “smog” like “sm-AH-g” in the title? Well, if you made it past that first sentence, it’s not to imitate a “Bahston” accent from, say, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, or Mark Wahlberg, even though we have been known to say, “Pahk yah cah in Hahvahd Yahd” and...
This summer across the US the heat is on - really on - both outside and thanks to lead EpicentRx therapy and transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) inhibitor, AdAPT-001, inside tumors as well. Inside tumors it is the presence or absence of infiltrating T cells that...
Let’s play not the Blame Game or the Plame Game (which involved the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2007) but the Flame Game with lead EpicentRx therapies, RRx-001 (nibrozetone) and AdAPT-001. The object is to determine under what circumstances or conditions...
Following on from a previous post called, “A Blog About Smog,” is this one about Smaug, an antagonistic, treasure-hoarding dragon from J. R. R. Tolkien’s, The Hobbit. In “A Blog About Smog,” we describe the mechanism of action of lead EpicentRx therapy, RRx-001...
“For a universal definition of ecumenical read below.” Ecumenical Definition (adjective): 1) general; universal; worldwide “The FDA issues an ecumenical set of policies for drug developers hoping to get their drug approved in the US” 2) interreligious or...
Los Angeles. City of Angels…and smog. In LA, famous for its smog as much as its celebrities and palm trees, bad air quality is sort of par for the course like the constant rush hour traffic no matter the time of day - this is just a fact of life. Natural topography...
The IO from the title stands for immune-oncology. This term, IO, refers to therapies that mobilize the immune system to recognize and eradicate tumor cells. Instead of 7 dwarfs, EpicentRx features 2 therapies: RRx-001 (nibrozetone), a small molecule, with a molecular...
Why is the word “blog” spelled like “blawg” in the title? For the Aw! factor. Dogs, or rather, dawgs, are awesome. Some would say pawsome. 😁 And cute! So cute! Yes, they are! Aren’t you, boy? (Petting one right now). Look at this bloodhound below and tell us he isn’t...
“Hopefully this post is short enough not to contain longueurs.” Longueur Definition (noun): a long, boring section or a tedious stretch of time usually used in the plural form. “Drug development is not without its longueurs, but it is always exciting when we see...
The following is excerpted from a WebEx that EpicentRx gave in January. “Divert shields!” is a common battle cry from the captain of the USS Enterprise in the TV show/movie Star Trek when one part the spaceship is under “phaser” or ray attack, which if you’ve ever...
Move over, Dean Winters, the good actor who plays the part of the disaster-prone Mayhem mascot in those fun-to-watch Allstate commercials. Make way for an even better agent of Mayhem and Chaos that is played by bad actor, transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), a...
The most heavily fortified and militarized border in the world isn’t the one between North and South Korea, all appearances to the contrary. That distinction belongs instead to the border between tumors and their surrounding tissues. Chiefly responsible for the...
We asked the all-knowing, all-seeing Magic 8-ball - you know the plastic sphere shaped like an oversized eight ball that when shaken answers your most pressing questions with uncanny accuracy and speed - whether marijuana use is associated with head and neck cancer....
“Be patient with this definition of longanimity.” Longanimity Definition (noun): patient forbearance under stress or adversity. “Your longanimity in the middle of rush hour even when you are late for work is impressive”. Pronunciation: lawng-guh-nim-i-tee Longanimous...