Allison Whitten

Nashville

Assistant Editor at DDN

Assistant Editor @DrugDiscovNews. PhD @VanderbiltU. Past @AAASMassMedia @DiscoverMag @QuantaMagazine. Fan of @UMichFootball.

Articles

The biggest barriers in drug development today

2 weeks ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

We asked industry leaders and academic researchers in the fields of hematology, pain, HIV, and neurology what they see as the major obstacles holding back the development of new drugs today. What do you see as the biggest barriers in drug development today?
Giving promising drug compounds a second chance

4 weeks ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

After two decades working in leadership positions at big pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca and Novartis, immunologist and emergency physician Volkan Manga wanted to go in a new direction. He realized that as he watched some drugs pass through clinical trials and reach real patients, many more drugs with great potential sat by the wayside.
2025 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences announced | Drug Discovery News

1 month ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten |Stephanie DeMarco |Dika Ojiakor

Advances in GLP-1 research for diabetes and obesity, multiple sclerosis discoveries, and DNA editing are awarded in this year’s prestigious prize.
Antibiotics disrupt the beneficial mucus barrier lining the gut

1 month ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

Antibiotics target bacteria, but new work in mice shows they also harm the mucus layer that protects the intestinal lining from microbes. Antibiotics target bacteria, but new work in mice shows they also harm the mucus layer that protects the intestinal lining from microbes.
What’s next for the first non-opioid pain drug in 20 years

1 month ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

Opioids provide extremely quick pain relief — within a single minute when injected directly into the bloodstream. But they come with a high cost: Opioids are highly addictive due to their direct activation of opioid receptors involved in the brain’s reward circuitry. In 2022 alone, more than 80,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose (1). Novel non-opioid pain medications are urgently needed, but none had been approved in more than 20 years.
A dual-threat cancer drug takes aim at resistance mechanisms

1 month ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

Judy Sebolt-Leopold and her team at MEKanistic Therapeutics developed a single molecule targeting two kinase enzymes that drive resistance to cancer therapies. Judy Sebolt-Leopold and her team at MEKanistic Therapeutics developed a single molecule targeting two kinase enzymes that drive resistance to cancer therapies.
Illuminating the full side effect profile of GLP-1 drugs

2 months ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

When Lili Zarghami walked out of her doctor’s office with a free box of Mounjaro — a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist from Eli Lilly — she felt hopeful that the drug might help her shed extra pounds she had gained related to having polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). She injected herself with the first dose on a Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday, her appetite — and any thoughts about food whatsoever — had vanished. “There was literally no desire to eat anything,” said Zarghami.
T cells nibble at CAR T cells to gain antitumor immunity

2 months ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

While developing a way to get chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells into the brain tumor microenvironment of mice, Stefano Barbera “bumped into” an entirely different discovery, he said. As a molecular biologist and new postdoctoral fellow in Anna Dimberg’s lab at Uppsala University, Barbera had planned to engineer multiple types of CAR T cells that would bind in different ways to brain endothelial cells.
A new migraine medication is on the horizon

2 months ago | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

| 8 min readAllison Whitten, PhDRegister for free to listen to this articleThe word migraine comes from the Greek word “hemicrania” meaning “half of the head” — a perfect illustration of the throbbing head pain that individuals so often feel on one side (1). While it’s not clear why, women are three times more likely to suffer from migraines compared to men, and some estimates suggest that nearly one in five women are impacted by this painful neurological disease (2,3).
Novel endocrine therapies for breast cancer are on the way

Feb 12, 2025 | drugdiscoverynews.com | Allison Whitten

Breast tissue responds to fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone throughout a woman’s menstrual cycle. Unfortunately, when breast cancer cells have receptors for estrogen or progesterone — as they do in hormone positive breast cancer — the natural presence of these hormones can promote tumor growth. To fight back, oncologists often use endocrine therapies to lower the level of hormones in the body or stop them from reaching the tumor.