Detective work

Although the heat from clinical and product blowups eventually subsides, researchers continue to try to elucidate the causes of the setbacks. Two recent academic reports shed such light, one expanding on the risks of COX-2 inhibition and the other, for a more distant event, posing an alternative explanation for the severe side effects seen in the attempt to try gene therapy in X-SCID patients.

Although deletion of microsomal prostaglandin E synthase-1 (mPGES-1) has been known for some time to have anti-inflammatory effects, researchers have only just published data supporting the hypothesis that mPGES-1 inhibition will not cause the same cardiovascular side effects as some COX-2 inhibitors. ...